IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Future Networks: Architectures, Protocols, and Applications

Wireless communications and networking have been continually evolving to improve and be a part of our lifestyle. This uninterrupted development is due to many research projects and practices that are being carried out to improve the quality of services and applications supported by networking technologies. Initially, the plethora of computer networks research was designed to allow users to share the thoughts and facts using textual data through addressing devices. Meanwhile, we have witnessed that users play the role of both producers and consumers at the same time. These new emerging requirements gave birth to Cloud Computing (CC), Data Centric Networking (DCN), and other advancements in IEEE standards. Moreover, researchers also intended to redesign the networking architectures and protocols with the focus on content rather than the host. The resulting new architectures are Information Centric Networks (ICN) with various extensions like Content Centric Networks (CCN), Named Data Networks (NDN), Data-Oriented Network Architecture, etc.