Challenges in the Design and Analysis of Integrated Circuits for Data-Intensive 5G Communications and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

Integrated circuits (ICs) and devices will face many novel and tough challenges in the forthcoming technologies for 5G communications and beyond. ICs for 5G will be required to process vast quantities of data and do so with extremely low latencies. Low power considerations will be more crucial than ever due to the integration of greatly increased functionality to handle the amounts of data, as well as the operation in frequencies that approach the Terahertz range. Reliability assessment of ICs will be absolutely essential to ensure that they operate as intended and exhibit the predicted performance. Of particular importance for future systems will be the long-term reliability of ICs (for a span of 10 years or more), which may be hindered by aging mechanisms such as electromigration, dielectric breakdown and charge trapping, as well as the susceptibility of ICs to temperature, stress, and radiation effects which are prominent in adverse environments. Hardware security of ICs aimed at 5G communications will also grow into a topic of extreme importance. Hardware Trojans stealthily incorporated in a wireless IC can leak security-sensitive information such as cryptographic keys over a radio connection, and their detection and counteracting will be paramount in the implementation of secure communication systems.

The goal of this Special Issue is to bring together advances in the design and analysis of integrated circuits targeting 5G communication systems and beyond. Authors are invited to submit original research articles or comprehensive reviews on topics including (but not limited to):

• Integrated circuits (ICs) and systems-on-chip (SoCs) for 5G communications;’
• 5G baseband processors;
• Application processors for 5G consumer devices (e.g., mobile phones, AR/VR headsets, drones, cameras, wearable devices);
• ICs for cloud/local data centers and edge computing;
• Big data and cloud technologies for 5G communications;
• Large-scale data systems for cloud-to-edge communication;
• Distributed stream processing systems for edge-to-cloud communication;
• AI accelerator processors for data centers and mobile devices;
• Electronic design automation (EDA) tools for 5G ICs;
• Simulation and virtual prototyping of 5G ICs and systems;
• Semiconductor devices and characterization for millimeter-wave band;
• High-electron-mobility transistors (HEMT) and Gallium nitride (GaN) devices;
• Low-power wireless IC design;
• ICs for low-power/narrow-band IoT and machine-to-machine communications (e.g., asset tracking, push-to-talk services, autonomous vehicle connectivity, cable TV);
• ICs for green data centers;
• Integrated circuit reliability and device aging;
• Thermal and radiation effects for ICs in adverse environments;
• Noise and interference in the millimeter-wave band;
• Testing and verification for 5G ICs;
• ICs for ultrareliable low-latency communication (URLLC) applications (e.g., factory automation, autonomous vehicles, industrial internet, smart grids, robotic surgery);
• Integrated circuit security and hardware Trojans;
• Security co-processors.

Prof. Nestor Evmorfopoulos
Prof. Ioannis Konstantinou
Guest Editors

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