This special issue is proposed to provide the latest research and development on smart grid communications systems. The electrical power grid has remained unchanged for more than a century. It has become increasingly apparent that the power grid nowadays requires a drastic change in order to deal with more diversified challenges, including environment and infrastructure. The future-generation smart grid is a modernized grid that proactively uses state-of-the-art information technology in the areas of sensing, communications, control and computing to improve efficiency, sustainability, reliability, stability, and security. The success of smart power grid is highly dependent on the communication technologies and architectures that support efficient and reliable end-to-end two-way information flows. In addition to delivering a large amount of metered power data, the communication architecture is required to support market and business related issues, including active demand management, load balancing, self-healing and operation in islanded mode, and seamless integration of renewable energy sources. Due to its inherent advantage of low-cost deployment, wireless solutions play a crucial role in the smart grid architecture.
The aim of this special issue is to present a collection of high-quality research papers that report the latest research advances in smart grid communication systems. It will include a number of related topics, demonstrate pioneer works in this field, and also attract more readers.
Topics
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
 Communications architectures, protocols, services, and systems
 Home-area, Neighborhood-area, Field-area, and Wide-area networks
 Sensor, actuator, and machine-to-machine networks for smart grid
 Energy efficiency and greenness
 Cyber-physical system and cyber-physical approach
 Analysis, model, optimization, and control
 Economic approaches
 Cyber security and privacy management
 Demand response management
 Quality-of-Service provisioning
 Standardization, interoperability, and regulation
 Reliability, availability, robustness, and fault-tolerance
 Dynamic Radio Spectrum access and management for smart grids.

Submission Guidelines
Questions about the special issue should be directed to the Guest Editors. All manuscripts for this special issue should be submitted electronically to the IEEE Systems Journal website (http://systemsjournal.org/papersub.html). Authors should indicate that their manuscript is being submitted for the Special Issue on Smart Grid Systems. All submissions must be prepared according to IEEE Systems Journal submission guidelines. A copy of the manuscript should be emailed in PDF format to the special issue Guest editors.
Schedule
 Paper submission deadline: deadline EXTENDED to April 15, 2012 (BE CAREFUL)
 Acceptance notification: July 1, 2012
 Publication date: TBD by EiC

CFP dissemination
CFP will be sent through various mailists, such as tccc, itc, and tccn etc. The special issue guest coeditors will also try their best to spread the special issue information in national channels. The wide dissemination will improve the special issue as well as the journal visibility and attract paper submissions.

Guest Editors
 Seong-Lyun Kim, Yonsei University, Korea. Email: slkim@yonsei.ac.kr
 Paris Kitsos, Hellenic Open University, Greece. Email: pkitsos@ieee.org
 Maziar Nekovee, BT Labs, UK. Email: maziar.nekovee@bt.com
 Richard Yu, Carleton University, Canada. Email: Richard_yu@carleton.ca
 Yan Zhang, Simula Research Laboratory and University of Oslo, Norway. Email: yanzhang@ieee.org