Welcome to IEEE Network - The Magazine of Global Internetworking. IEEE Network, published bimonthly, offers readers topics of interest to the networking community. As such, IEEE Network provides a focus for highlighting and discussing major computer communications issues and developments. The articles are intended to be surveys or tutorials, slanted towards the practical, and comprehensible to the nonspecialist, as well as practitioners.

Special Issue on Cyber-Physical Security for Cloud and Fog-Hosted Industrial Cyber-Physical System
Submission Date: 2024-09-30

As cloud and fog platforms gain widespread adoption, their open and shared nature provides significant convenience to Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPSs), but it also comes with an accompanying increase in potential risks and vulnerabilities. Cyber-Physical Security (CPS) aims to integrate the consideration of the stringent security requirements in traditional isolated industrial systems and the vulnerabilities inherent in open cloud and fog platforms into system design. This integration is vital to ensure continuous and reliable operation, even in the face of disruptions. Additionally, cloud and fog-hosted ICPSs necessitate fulfilling secure approach that simultaneously protects the system’s integrity from unauthorized access or destruction, prioritizes human safety, and guarantees the ability of the system to function when the normal, reliability-controlled condition is lost. CPS security is gaining significant attention and research focus to meet the increasing demands for security and resilience in modern cloud and fog-hosted ICPS. One tangible example can be found in smart factories, where production lines benefit significantly from CPS security solutions. These solutions ensure that the real-time data collected from various sensors and devices on the production line is securely transmitted and monitored. Moreover, rapid identification of security risks and the implementation of isolation also help safeguard the production line. To provide comprehensive and consistent protection, it is crucial to undertake joint optimization across communication, computation, and control, a concept known as 3C Co-Design. The collaborative study on 3C Co-Design faces multiple key challenges, including the need for hard real-time response, efficient allocation of computing resources, and maintenance of operational stability and continuity within ICPS. The advent of cloud computing has indeed introduced new challenges to this research due to its dynamic and complex nature. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate novel CPS security architectures to satisfy the complex and dynamic nature of cloud and fog-hosted ICPS. Striking a balance between performance, cost, and security within ICPS is a paramount concern to ensure efficient operation while maintaining a high level of security.

This Special Issue (SI) aims to make significant contributions to the exploration of the potential challenges of CPS security for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS. Our primary purpose is to strive for a balanced and comprehensive research approach and guide future research and development in this field. This SI is intended to be interdisciplinary, and contributions from a variety of fields, including information security, communication engineering, computer science, and automatic control, are welcomed.

This SI seeks to bring together a diverse range of contributions, covering both the theoretical and practical aspects of this field. The scope of CPS security in cloud and fog-hosted ICPS includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

    Network architecture and protocols with CPS security for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Network modeling and optimization under security, safety, and resilience constraints for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Novel performance metrics for measuring network security, safety, and resilience for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Novel engineering and life cycle tools for security, safety, and resilience of cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Testbeds and attack/defense experiments for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Physical layer security for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS over wireless networks.
    Model-based and in-network security, safety, and resilience verification for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Enhanced safety communication over wireless network for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS. 
    Self-learning and adaptive methods for intrusion detection and defense for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Self-learning and adaptive methods for network orchestration for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Network and cloud-aware zero-trust solutions for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS.
    Safety verification and assurance for cloud and fog-hosted ICPS deployed in open network environments.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the “Information for Authors” section of the Paper Submission Guidelines. All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through the magazine’s Manuscript Central submission site. Select “April 2025/ICPSSecurity” from the drop-down menu of Topic titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30 September 2024
Initial Decision Notification: 31 November 2024
Revised Manuscript Due: 30 December 2024
Final Decision Notification: 31 January 2025
Final Manuscript Due: 10 February 2025
Publication Date: April 2025

Guest Editors

Zhibo Pang
ABB and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Jialin Zhang
Shenyang Institute of Automation of CAS, China

Peng Cheng
Zhejiang University, China

Mo Sha
Florida International University, USA 

Lei Zhang
University of Glasgow, UK 

Yang Xiang
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia 

Quanyan Zhu
New York University, USA 

Special Issue on Deterministic, Reliable, Resilient and Programmable Networks for 6G
Submission Date: 2024-11-01

Creating a deterministic (understood as end-to-end time sensitive, reliable, resilient, and predictable) network, remains a challenge for cellular networks, especially in an industrial context. Wired deterministic communication standards have already emerged. In this scenario, Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), Deterministic Networking (DetNet), and 5G have specified mechanisms for interworking with those standards. However, the available support of 5G in conjunction with TSN and DetNet is not sufficient for future end-to-end time-critical applications.

Network programmability is key in supporting emerging 6G networks in achieving their promises of increased performance and flexibility at a lower cost. Deep network programmability is expected to characterize the new generation of mobile networks (6G), currently under development, towards supporting extreme performance requirements and service-specific operations.

Enriching next-generation (6G) mobile networks with data plane programming capabilities can bring significant benefits with regards to network slicing and multi-tenancy, dynamic traffic engineering, offloading network functions to the data plane, etc. Coupled with edge computing solutions and advanced machine learning algorithms for network automation can help to overcome network performance limits, e.g., in terms of latency and deterministic delivery.

This Special Issue (SI) aims to explore how future 6G networks can be more resilient, reliable, and time sensitive, while benefiting from additional flexibility through advance network programmability techniques, which can also be used to support deterministic networks.

The SI welcomes submissions from both academic and industry researchers, contributing to the progress of 6G networking research and development. Its scope includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

    Programmable data planes for TSN.
    Network softwarization for 6G.
    Programmable Networking Protocols.
    Programmable SDN and NFV: languages and architectures (P4 and others).
    Hardware acceleration for programmable network functions.
    Multi-tenant data planes.
    Orchestration and Management of Software-Defined Deterministic Networks.
    Control and Management of Data plane programmable devices.
    Artificial intelligence for deterministic networks.
    In network Machine Learning.
    In-network service level tuning and optimization; QoS.
    High precision traffic monitoring/telemetry.
    Service assurance and fulfillment programmability.
    Slicing for 6G.
    Intent-based systems and Digital twinning applied in 6G.
    Resiliency, reliability, time sensitiveness and predictability in 3GPP and WiFi systems.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the “Information for Authors” section of the Paper 

Submission Guidelines.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through the magazine’s IEEE Author Portal submission site. Select “January2025/DetNetfor6G” from the drop-down menu of Topic titles.
Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 November 2024
Initial Decision Notification: 15 January 2025
Revised Manuscript Due: 15 February 2025
Final Decision Notification: 28 February 2025
Final Manuscript Due: 31 March 2025
Publication Date: May 2025

Guest Editors

Chrysa Papagianni
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Dave Cavalcanti
Intel Labs, USA

Fabio Luciano Verdi
Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brasil

David Chieng
University of Nottingham Ningbo China, China

Carlos J. Bernardos
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain