As the wireless data traffic has been increased explosively, the future mobile communication system that can accommodate the traffic demand in a cost-effective and optimal manner attracts more and more attention in both academia and industry. Many standards bodies, countries, and major companies have proposed visions for the future mobile communication system and there have been a lot of proposals from the architectural changes to specific algorithms. For example, ITU specified the key performance requirements of 5G networks and 3GPP presented the roadmap for 5G standard deployment. NGNM presented use cases of 5G applications.

Future mobile communication systems will need to interconnect heterogeneous mobile communication systems and technologies and get them to work together so as to optimize services requirements and operational conditions. For example, software defined network is supposed to be deployed for core and access networks, machine-type communications will prevail, and self-organized mechanisms are introduced to increase network performance and reduce operational costs under highly variable and unpredictable network conditions. Even though a significant number of studies taking evolutionary approaches and revolutionary approaches are in progress to give shape to the vision of the future mobile communication system, much effort is still required to crystallize the future mobile communication system.

Therefore, in this special issue, we solicit contributions from academia and industry on the recent activities that tackle the technical challenges to concretize the future mobile communication system. Particularly, we solicit original research articles that model architecture, solve problems, provide functionality, optimize tasks, and stimulate the continuing efforts to new activities in designing future mobile communication systems.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Architecture and framework for future mobile communication system
• Physical layer algorithms for future mobile communication system
• Medium access controls for future mobile communication system
• Resource managements for future mobile communication system
• Autonomous algorithms for self-organizing networks in future mobile communication system
• Seamless integration of heterogeneous mobile communication systems
• Performance evaluation using simulation and experimental studies for future mobile communication system
• Applications for future mobile communication system