CfP: IEEE TETC special issue on "Backscattering-based Computing with Battery-Free Units"

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IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing
Special Issue on "Backscattering-based Computing with Battery-Free Units"

The number of Internet-of-Thing units is expected to surpass the world population by 2018.
However, the growth of smart units is limited by a fundamental factor, namely, battery.
The reasons are primarily twofold: First, battery energy density only increased by three times
over the past 22 years, which is much slower than many other areas of computation technology
(e.g., transistors in an ASIC, data rates, etc.). Second, used batteries contain harmful chemicals
and generate dangerous toxic waste that has to be properly processed.
For many years, researchers have been working on reducing computation and communication
power consumption. Despite the remarkable advancements in energy efficient computation
and networking, we are still facing poor battery life, which challenges usage of many mobile
applications and makes customers unhappy.

A promising idea to address the problem of battery life is backscattering-based computation
and transmissions, which concerns harvesting RF energy to power a backscatter unit's
operation: The backscatter unit compute data and transmits them via reflecting the RF signal.
Ambient and RFID backscattering are two techniques that enable data computation and
transmission on battery-free units. Traditional RFID is a widely used technology that harvests
power from RF signals emitted by an RFID reader. Sensor-augmented RFID tags can be
deployed in smart environments to get real-time information about the state of tagged objects.
Ambient backscattering harvests power from ambient signals such as TV, cellular, and
Wi-Fi transmissions, enabling the design of battery-free units that can operate outdoor.
Although backscattering enables battery-free operation, mobile units can operate with
a relatively small power budget, posing significant constraints regarding operation and
communication solutions. The bottleneck in terms of power consumption has shifted
away from communication to computation, requiring a redesign at the unit level of data
acquisition, data processing, buffering, packetizing, to achieve ultra-low power
computation, and at the networking level to realize efficient backscatter-based architectures.

This special issue (SI) aims at inviting works from leading researchers and developers
from industry and academia to present recent and trending views on all aspects of
backscattering-based computation and transmission. In light of the increasing interest
in these topics, this SI will focus on, but will not be limited to, the following topics of interest:

* Ultra-low power computation
* Backscattering-based battery free units
* Architectures, protocols, and technologies for backscattering communication
* MAC and routing protocols for backscattering networks
* Information collection in sensor-augmented RFID systems
* RFID/ambient backscattering technologies and architecture
* Performance evaluation of backscattering networks
* Experiments and prototypes
* Applications of backscattering (e.g., sensing, imaging, localization, etc.)
* Interference management and coexistence
* RF energy harvesting


*** SUBMISSION GUIDELINES ***
-----------------------------------------------
Submitted articles must not have been previously published or being currently
under submission at any other venue. As authors, you are responsible for
understanding and adhering to the journal submission guidelines, which are available
at the IEEE Computer Society website:
https://www.computer.org/web/publications/authors/.
Submission are due by the indicated deadline though Manuscript Central:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tetc-cs


*** IMPORTANT DATES ***
-------------------------------------
Submission Deadline: July 1, 2018
Reviews Completed: October 1, 2018
Major Revisions Due (if Needed): November 1, 2018
Reviews of Revisions Completed (if Needed): Dec. 1, 2018
Minor Revisions Due (if Needed): January 1, 2018
Notification of Final Acceptance: March 1, 2019
Final Publication Materials Due: April 1, 2019
On-Line publication date: Second Issue of 2019


*** GUEST EDITORS ***
-------------------------------------
Stefano Basagni, Northeastern University
Gaia Maselli, Sapienza University fo Rome
Pengyu Zhang, Stanford University