Artificial Intelligence for Distributed Networks

Dear Colleagues,

With the rapid expansion of distributed systems across cloud, fog, and edge layers, artifical intelligence has transformed modern digital infrastructures into highly decentralized networks composed of heterogeneous, resource-constrained devices. In distributed networks, particularly large-scale IoT deployments, unprecedented data volumes, fluctuating connectivity, and constantly changing network structures challenge conventional centralized management approaches, which struggle to maintain latency, reliability, and scalability under such conditions. Achieving real-time, resilient operation in these environments requires intelligent, autonomous coordination embedded into the distributed network. Artificial intelligence empowers distributed networks to be intelligent, adaptive, and autonomous by integrating learning and decision-making into network nodes. This enables collaborative data processing, real-time routing, predictive network analytics, dynamic resource allocation, and proactive fault management without relying on centralized control. Such AI-driven capabilities are essential for 5G and upcoming 6G networks, which introduce ultra-low latency, massive device connectivity, network slicing, dynamic spectrum allocation, and multi-access edge computing. By leveraging AI, distributed networks across cloud, fog, and edge layers can self-optimize, self-heal, and adapt continuously to fluctuating conditions, ensuring resilient, efficient, and high-performance operation at scale.

We invite contributions exploring AI as a core enabler of distributed network management, including intelligent routing, resource allocation, service orchestration, load balancing, traffic engineering, congestion prediction, and fault diagnosis. As distributed networks become more dynamic and application-driven, AI-powered systems must make decentralized decisions, continuously learn network patterns, and adapt to fluctuating conditions in real time.

Dr. Satish Kumar
Dr. Nawar Jawad
Dr. Amirhossein Mohajerzadeh
Guest Editors

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