The IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking aims to publish high-quality, original research results derived from theoretical or experimental exploration of the area of communication/computer networking. This covers all types of information that would be transported over the network (wired or wireless). The journal welcomes theoretical as well as applied contributions reporting on novel experiences and experiments with actual systems.

    Network types: Networks of all types are welcome from within chip to inter-planetary networks including communication, social, and computing networks, including future XG networked systems, internet, edge networks; wireless (cellular, WiFi, IoT, etc).
    Networking aspects: architecture; design; control; protocols; network software; network hardware; operations and management; measurements; security.
    Methods: Optimization; Control; Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning; formal methods; protocol and algorithmic development; testing; etc.
    Application domains: Application and networking interaction such as AR/VR, customer experience; gaming; etc. 
    Interfaces with networks in other domains: including information dissemination and related distributed systems aspects of social networks, and biologically or nature-inspired techniques for communication networks, etc.

Please note that the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking does not publish survey or tutorial manuscripts. Manuscripts whose primary contribution is to review and classify the state of the art should instead be directed to one of the many venues dedicated to such topics, e.g., the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials.

Co-Sponsor: Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)

Special Issue on AI and Networking
Submission Date: 2025-01-15

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a powerful tool in the domain of networking systems, addressing complex tasks across edge computing, cloud computing, Internet-of-things, embedded systems, and NextG cellular wireless networks. Recent research has also unleashed the potential of AI techniques in optimizing various aspects of wireless and wired networking and communications, fundamentally changing the design approaches across all layers in the protocol stack. Meanwhile, AI has also evolved into a ubiquitous service deployed over a large variety of networking systems. Thus, enhancing the performance of AI-based networking systems and facilitating AI on top of a wide spectrum of networking systems have become increasingly paramount in modern network system designs. In addition, utilizing the power of AI solutions to secure networking and communications against adversaries and developing new networking solutions for distributed AI security have become focal points in the AI and networking research communities. As a result, developing efficient and robust AI technologies on and for wireless and wired networking is crucial, particularly in networking systems that operate under limited communication and computational resources. To address all these new networking challenges in the era of AI, this ToN special issue aims to bring together experts from the fields of AI, wired and wireless networking and communications, and security fields to facilitate the dissemination of cutting-edge research findings in the areas of “AI for networks” and “AI on networks,” which will further foster emerging research directions to drive AI and networking innovations forward.

Topics of Interest (but not limited to):

    AI for Networks
        AI modeling, methods, and evaluations for edge networks, cloud computing, embedded systems, vehicular networks,airborne networks, satellite networks, and NextG cellular networks;
        AI-powered cyber-security for edge networks, cloud computing, embedded systems, vehicular networks,airborne networks, satellite networks, and NextG cellular networks
        Explainable AI solutions on and for communications and networking.
        AI-assisted network management method design
        AI-driven network resource allocation, adaptive modulation, interference management, access control, spectrum auction and sharing, energy efficiency, mobile offloading, and mobile system management.
    AI on Networks
        Decentralized learning, distributed training and inference, federated learning over device-edge-cloud continuum
        Trustworthy and privacy-preserving AI over a wide spectrum of networks
        Large foundation model pre-training, fine-tuning and inference over large-scale networks
        Robust adversarial machine learning over wired and wireless networks
        Resource-constrained and edge deployable AI solutions, experiments and testbeds for ML-driven wireless systems. 

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts following the IEEE/ACM ToN guidelines. The authors should choose Article Type of “IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking Special Issue on AI and Networking” in IEEE Author Portal ( the regular TON submission portal), with a cover letter saying the submission is for the special issue according to the following schedule.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: January 15, 2025
First-round Decision Notification: April 30, 2025
Revised Manuscript Submission: June 30, 2025
Final Decision Notification: August 30, 2025
Final Manuscript Due: September 20, 2025
Planned Publication: December Issue, 2025

Guest Editors

Jia (Kevin) Liu (Lead Guest Editor) 
The Ohio State University

Ness B. Shroff
The Ohio State University

Yingbin Liang
The Ohio State University

Elisa Bertino Purdue University
Kaushik Chowdhury University of Texas Austin

Lei Ying
University of Michigan

Kannan Srinivasan
The Ohio State University

Sen Lin
University of Houston