Promoting emerging technologies within COMSOC

It is my great pleasure to write this first annual article showcasing the Emerging Technologies Committee (ETC) within ComSoc. The ETC was formed in 2006 to identify and promote new technology directions in the broad field of communications and related areas. Indeed, as communications becomes more interdisciplinary and its applications more diverse, the ETC's goal is to bring these cutting edge technologies under the purview of ComSoc through a wide range of activities. ETC's primary activity is the formation of and support for subcommittees in emerging technology areas. Members with a common interest in a new technology area are strongly encouraged to form an Emerging Technical Subcommittee. These subcommittees may form for just a few years around a " hot'' short-lived topic or may evolve into a ComSoc Technical Committee for areas with a long time-horizon of interest and development. Unlike Technical Committees, subcommittees within the ETC are meant to be nimble and dynamic: on an annual basis several new ones may form while some existing ones may disband or merge into another subcommittee or Technical Committee with related interests. The subcommittees organize a range of activities to promote their technical area and may also serve as technical co-sponsors for ComSoc conferences and publications. The ETC organizes a special e-issue of JSAC annually to show-case emerging technologies. This journal is meant to serve as a unique publication for research that does not quite " fit'' into other journals due to its cutting edge nature and/or interdisciplinary focus. Articles for this journal are by invitation only and primarily come from within the subcommittees under the ETC's purview. The 14 subcommittees within the ETC span a very broad range of areas which I will describe briefly here. Autonomic Communications: Communication networks today operate in complex, dynamic, and heterogeneous environments. Moreover, the applications and services running over the top of such networks are also increasing in complexity as well as performance demands. The Autonomic Communications subcommittee focuses on research and development of self-configuring, self-organizing, self-optimizing, and self-healing network control to meet these challenges in next-generation networks. These auto-nomic techniques will allow networks to learn and adapt to their environment as well as to the demands of evolving applications and services, thereby providing significantly greater flexibility and robust-ness in network control and management than exists in networks today. Cable Networks and Services: The mission of this subcommittee is to develop next-generation cable network technology …