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Call for Papers

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Based on the success of its predecessors, the First International Workshop on CN and FTTx, held in Dallas, 2003, and the 2nd Workshop on Deployment Models and First/Last Mile Networking Technologies for Broadband Community networks, held in Boston, 2005, COMNETS 2008 is planned to focus on wireless community networks and will integrate the main aspects of planning, design, implementation and operation of community networks as well as the related socio-technical issues.

Community networks have evolved during the last decade in North America and, more recently, in Europe, from the concept of freenets or civic nets, and represent a dramatic shift from the classical telecom infrastructures, service provisioning methods and business models. Current related terms are wireless cities or regions, digital cities, digital communities. CNs are often created, owned and operated with the participation of local or regional governments.

The objective of this workshop is to cover the inter-related issues of planning, deployment and operation of wireless community networks. As opposed to telco networks, there is a specific set of services that the cities or regions want to implement, the definition of services and technologies is often done by participation of the community, suitable wireless technologies have to be selected, the applications and services have to be made accessible by a wide range of geographically diverse users, no matter where the user is located. And last but not least, suitable business models have to be defined with clever constructions of involving both the public and private sectors, while satisfying legal and regulatory requirements.

The workshop will have a strong inter-disciplinary character, topics of interests concentrate around the intersection of communication technologies, computer science, economic and social aspects.

Topics

Original unpublished papers are solicited in areas including but not restricted to the following:
  • Guidelines for network design and technology selection
  • QoS support and service differentiation
  • Implementation/operation experience
  • New technology testing experience
  • Wi-Fi Mesh networks
  • Fixed and mobile WiMAX
  • Legal frameworks: experiences and new challenges
  • Testbeds of wireless community networks
  • Public-private ownership structures
  • Key applications for community networks (e-gov, e-health applications, e-learning)
  • Society-related issues
  • Governance models
  • Case studies and experience

Submission Instructions

Papers will be submitted by electronic submission through COCUS system: http://cocus.eu. The page limit is 6 pages in IEEE double column format with fonts not smaller than 10 points. All papers accepted for publication will be published together with CHINACOM 2008 proceedings and available on IEEE eXplore database and indexed by Engineering Information (EI).

Important Dates

Extended Submission Deadline: May 15 (CET 11:59 p.m.), 2008 CLOSED
Notification of Acceptance: June 15, 2008
Camera Ready Due: June 30, 2008
Workshop Date: August 28, 2008

Organizing Committee

General Chair:
Károly Farkas, University of West Hungary, Hungary

TPC Chairs:
Jayanta Chatterjee, IIT Kanpur, India
Shu Wang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

Steering Committee:
Imrich Chlamtac, President, Create-Net, Italy (Chair)
Csaba A. Szabo, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary (Co-Chair)

Technical Program Committee:
Jayanta Chatterjee, IIT Kanpur, India
György Dán, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Károly Farkas, University of West Hungary, Hungary
Bertalan Forstner, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Zhu Guangxi, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
Ashwin Gumaste, IIT Bombay, India
David Hausheer, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Farookh Khadeer Hussain, Curtin University of Technology, Australia
Franck Legendre, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Pavan Nuggehalli, Bose Inc., USA
Luigi Telesca, Create-Net, Italy
Shu Wang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
Xudong Wang, Kiyon Inc., USA
Gergely Záruba, UT Arlington, USA
Honggang Zhang, Zhejiang University, China
Liqiang Zhang, Indiana University South Bend, USA

Publication Chair:
Francesco Botto, Create-Net, Italy

Publicity and Web Chair:
Zoltán Horváth, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary