%0 Journal Article
%T Guest Editorial
%A Sudhanshu Gaur
%A Geoffrey Ye Li
%A Li-Chun Wang
%A Neelesh B. Mehta
%J Journal of Communications
%D 2011
%I Engineering and Technology Publishing
%R 10.4304/jcm.6.4.271-273
%X If one looks at the last thirty years and measures the rate at which technological innovation is impacting human life, then it can be safely concluded that we are living in extremely exciting times. Wide-spread adoption of Internet triggered an information revolution that has changed the human society in fundamental ways. Subsequent development of cellular communication systems and the resulting ubiquity of cellphones enabled people to communicate while on the go, and within a decade, ¡°anytime-anywhere¡± communications has become a normal service for majority of people in both developed and developing nations. Ever increasing penetration of smart phones, tablets etc. in mass markets has given users a taste of ¡°anywhere-ubiquitous¡± access to information & entertainment, and this too will soon become a must have, commodity service for everyone. Meeting these growing user demands requires next generation cellular networks to have vastly improved spectral efficiencies and coverage. Thus there is a constant need for fundamental as well as applied research on the components and algorithms for forthcoming 4G systems and beyond. The aim of this special issue is to collect and present a set of cutting edge research contributions that would hopefully be representative of the wide spectrum of on-going activities on the Physical layer front for these next generation cellular systems. To this end, we have identified nine high-quality publications after a thorough peer-review process. The papers can broadly be divided into three categories. The first category groups contributions that present system level performance analysis of PHY techniques that have been recently proposed in the research literature. This category is quite important from a practical point of view because it tries to vet theoretically promising techniques by quantifying their real impact on a deployed system through simulations. Any research idea that aspires to be part of a 4G standard has to pass through such system level evaluations.  The second category focuses on resource management algorithms and mechanisms for LTE/OFDMA systems. The selected papers either present algorithms extending state of the art, or provide a better understanding of existing interference coordination mechanisms in LTE.  The third category consists of papers aiming to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks. The accepted contributions range from a paper proposing new power efficient PHY coding techniques, to a forward looking article comparing the efficiency or relay assisted networks versus user cooperation, and
%K Special Issue
%K Practical Physical Layer Techniques
%K 4G Systems & Beyond
%U http://ojs.academypublisher.com/index.php/jcm/article/view/5386