IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society
Special Issue: Machine Learning for Optical Communications and Networking

Call for Papers
Machine Learning (ML) has become a main hot topic in the current years, since it covers an extremely vast area of human knowledge, from technology to economics, marketing, physics, weather forecasting, speech/image recognition, gaming, etc. In each of these applications, when an optimal decision has to be made in complex problems, ML stands out as a powerful and alternative method to solve or even to formulate such problems. In particular, in the general field of networking, and more specifically in optical networking, ML has become a dominant area of research, and scientific studies, projects and publications that are adopting this technique are rapidly increasing.
All forms of ML (supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement) have been usefully applied in various contexts, from photonic transmission in the physical layer, to the control plane and IT-TLC integration, in the application layer.

Submissions are open for the Special Issue on Machine Learning for Optical Communications and Networking (https://www.comsoc.org/publications/journals/ieee-ojcoms/cfp/machine-learning-optical-communications-and-networking).
This special issue aims at hosting original, unpublished, and breakthrough concepts on optical communications and networking, that make use of ML as a tool to solve complex problems.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Photonic transmission and physical layer impairments
• Monitoring, fault detection and restoration
• Predictive maintenance
• Traffic prediction
• Network planning and optimization
• Traffic prediction and classification
• Quantum cryptography
• Optimal resource allocation in SDN/NFV optical networks
• Edge and fog computing
• Optical wide and metro -area network management
• C-RAN optimization
• Optical front-haul and back-haul supporting 5G /6G
• ML in wireless optical communications

This SI will host contributed papers and one invited paper. All papers have to be novel and present unpublished results. Extended papers derived from previously-published conference papers will be accepted. A limited number of survey-type papers will be accepted.
The special issue’s paper submission page is available at:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/oj-coms
When submitting the manuscript for this special issue, please follow the instructions reported at:
https://www.comsoc.org/publications/journals/ieee-ojcoms/ieee-open-journal-communications-society-submit-manuscript.

• Manuscript due: September 30th, 2020
• Publication Date: Fourth Quarter 2020

Guest Editors
Prof. Guido Maier (guido.maier@polimi.it); Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
Prof. José Alberto Hernández (jahgutie@it.uc3m.es), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Prof. Zuqing Zhu (zqzhu@ieee.org), University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China
Prof. Jason Jue (jjue@utdallas.edu), The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA