IEEE Wireless Communications

About IEEE Wireless Communications

Overview: A Flagship Magazine, Not the Transactions

IEEE Wireless Communications is a bimonthly peer-reviewed magazine published by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). It is one of the leading tutorial-style publications in the field, covering the full breadth of wireless communications and networking — from technical advances and standards to spectrum policy and industry practice.

Important distinction: this profile covers the magazine — IEEE Wireless Communications (ISSN 1536-1284, ISO abbreviation IEEE Wirel. Commun.). It is not IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (ISSN 1536-1276), a separate, monthly ComSoc journal that publishes original research papers rather than tutorial and feature articles. The two publications share a field and a society, but they have different ISSNs, different editorial boards, different formats, and different editors-in-chief. Confusing them is one of the most common mistakes in bibliographies — check the journal name on any citation carefully.

The magazine is designed for individuals working in the communications and networking communities: researchers, engineers, spectrum regulators, and industry strategists who need technically deep but readable articles rather than primary research papers. Each issue features tutorial-style articles that delve into technological advances in wireless communications, published through open calls and special issues, and complemented by standing columns including Book Reviews, Scanning the Literature, Industry Perspectives, and Spectrum Policy and Regulatory Issues.

History and Evolution

The magazine's lineage begins in 1994, when IEEE ComSoc launched IEEE Personal Communications Magazine — "the magazine of nomadic communications and computing," as its masthead read. The new title arrived at the height of the second-generation cellular era: GSM and IS-95 networks were being deployed worldwide, personal communications services were becoming a household concept, and engineers needed a venue that could treat technical and policy questions together. From the start, the magazine covered not only radio engineering but also spectrum allocation, industry structure, and technology evolution — themes it retains to this day.

In February 2002, the magazine was relaunched under its current name, IEEE Wireless Communications, beginning with Volume 9, Number 1. The renaming reflected how the field had outgrown the "personal communications" label: personal devices, general wireless networking, mobile computing, and broadband access had converged into a single technical landscape. The new title was a direct successor — not a new publication — carrying forward the same editorial mission of tutorial-level coverage for a broad engineering audience. Bibliographic records note that IEEE Computer and Vehicular Technology Societies cooperate in the publication.

Over the 2000s and 2010s, the magazine tracked each generational transition: 3G and HSPA deployment, the rise of Wi-Fi and mesh networking, LTE and the smartphone explosion, network densification, 5G standardization, and — in recent special issues — 6G research, holographic and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, integrated sensing and communication, and AI/ML for wireless networks. Its citation impact rose sharply through this period: the journal's impact factor climbed from around 4.1 in 2015 to roughly 12–13 by the early 2020s, placing it among the highest-impact publications in its field. In 2012, ComSoc added a sibling title, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, for short rapid research articles — a separate publication with its own editorial board.

Leadership and Editorial Team

The editorial board of IEEE Wireless Communications is headed by an Editor-in-Chief (EiC), appointed by the IEEE Communications Society for a two-year term, renewable once for an additional two years. The EiC may appoint Associate Editors-in-Chief and delegate tasks to them, operating under the IEEE Publications Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

As listed on the ComSoc Magazines Board roster for 2026–2027, the current Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Wireless Communications is Prof. Nirwan Ansari (New Jersey Institute of Technology). He succeeded Prof. Yi Qian (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), who completed his term as EiC and now serves as the ComSoc Director of Magazines. (Note: some third-party databases still list Professor Qian as the editor; ComSoc's own board roster is the authoritative source for the current appointment.)

ComSoc's published editorial policies describe a layered editorial structure:

• Steering Committee of Senior Editors — handles high-level strategy, quality control, and long-term planning.
• Associate Editors-in-Chief (AEiCs) — appointed by the EiC to manage defined portions of the magazine's business.
• Special Topic Development Editors — build individual feature issues from the ground up.
• Special Issue Lead Guest Editors (SI-LGEs) — oversee themed collections, enforcing a strict maximum 30% acceptance rate and a target of 6 to 12 articles per issue.
• Column Editors — curate and commission recurring sections such as Industry Perspectives and Spectrum Policy and Regulatory Issues.
• Associate Technical Editors (ATEs) and Guest Editors — handle frontline manuscript review, tracking submissions, following up with reviewers, and delivering justified decision recommendations within a maximum turnaround of 35 to 40 days.

Editors serve a standard three-year term (extendable by two years), must clear a six-month probationary period, and — as a best practice — are not permitted to submit papers to the magazine during their tenure, since they have full visibility of the review process. (Associate Technical Editors may submit their own articles.) Researchers interested in joining the board can apply through the magazine's editorial application system on the ComSoc website.

Aims and Scope

According to the IEEE Communications Society, the magazine is designed for individuals working in the communications and networking communities and addresses a wide range of technical and policy issues pertaining to wireless communications across all media types (and their combinations) and at all protocol layers. It covers the full spectrum of wireless communications, networking, computing, and related services.

Specifically, the published scope encompasses:

• Technical topics: wireless access technologies, cellular and mobile networks (4G, 5G, and beyond), Wi-Fi and local wireless, sensor networks and the Internet of Things, satellite and non-terrestrial networks, propagation and antennas, modulation, coding and signal processing, resource management, mobility management, security, and energy efficiency.
• Systems and services: network architectures, densification, edge computing, network slicing, service provisioning, and the mobility of people, devices, and personal services.
• Policy and standards: spectrum allocation and management, regulatory issues, industry structure, standardization activity, and technology evolution.
• Emerging frontiers: recent special issues have addressed 6G visions, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, AI/ML-driven networks, integrated sensing and communication, and UAV-assisted communications.

Unlike a transactions journal, articles are tutorial-style: they provide practical and timely insights on emerging topics, implementations, and industry best practices, written to be accessible to the broad communications engineering community rather than only to specialists in a narrow subfield. Survey and overview articles dominate the citation landscape of the magazine — a deliberate editorial choice that underpins its high impact factor.

Editorial Process and Peer Review

IEEE Wireless Communications is a peer-reviewed publication. Manuscripts are submitted electronically through the magazine's submission system (ComSoc directs authors to its Manuscript Central-based submission portal), and the editorial workflow follows IEEE publication guidelines.

Key features of the review process, as documented in ComSoc's official editorial policies for the magazine:

• Review turnaround: Associate Technical Editors and Guest Editors are required to track manuscripts, personally follow up with reviewers, and deliver fully justified decision recommendations within a maximum of 35 to 40 days.
• Special-issue selectivity: Special Issue Lead Guest Editors must enforce a strict 30% maximum acceptance rate for their collections, with a target of 6 to 12 articles per special issue.
• Conflict-of-interest rules: as a best practice, serving editors (other than Associate Technical Editors) may not submit papers to the magazine during their tenure; special-issue editors may not submit to their own issues.
• Article types: contributions arrive through Open Calls (regular unsolicited submissions) and Special Issues (themed collections organized by guest editors), plus the magazine's invited columns.

IEEE does not publish an overall acceptance rate for the magazine. Third-party sites report varying figures, but none are official — the only official selectivity figure is the 30% cap applied to special issues. Similarly, average review durations vary by submission type; the 35–40 day window described in ComSoc's policy applies to the editors' internal decision turnaround rather than the full author-to-decision timeline.

Impact and Metrics

IEEE Wireless Communications is consistently one of the most-cited publications in its field. In its official call for editor-in-chief nominations, ComSoc states that according to the 2025 Web of Science Journal Citation Reports, the magazine ranks among the highest-impact publications in the "Engineering, Electrical & Electronic" category. An earlier ComSoc announcement (2022) noted that the 2020 Journal Citation Reports ranked it 7th among all publications in that category.

Publicly reported impact-factor figures (from third-party trackers; exact JCR values require a Clarivate subscription):

The magazine has held JCR Q1 standing across all of its assigned categories — Computer Science (Hardware & Architecture; Information Systems), Engineering (Electrical & Electronic), and Telecommunications — and its five-year impact factor and article influence scores have likewise placed it at the top of the telecommunications literature. Third-party databases report a Scopus-based impact score of roughly 11–14 and a journal h-index in the high 190s to low 200s (trackers disagree on the exact figure; IEEE does not publish an official h-index), with total citations in the five figures per year.

Why is a magazine's impact factor so high? The tutorial and survey format is central: articles such as the magazine's landmark surveys synthesize fast-moving subfields and become standard reference points, accumulating citations for many years. This is the same mechanism behind the very high impact factors of other review-oriented ComSoc publications.

Submission Guidelines

Authors submit through the magazine's online submission portal linked from the ComSoc publication page (a Manuscript Central-based system). Because the magazine publishes both regular open-call articles and themed special issues, authors should first decide which route fits their manuscript:

• Open Call submissions: tutorial-style articles on timely wireless communications topics, written for a broad audience. Manuscripts should emphasize clarity, practical insight, and tutorial value — not the dense presentation style of a transactions paper.
• Special Issues: each issue announces a call for papers with a scope statement, guest editors, and a submission deadline. Special-issue articles go through the same peer review and are held to the 30% acceptance cap.
• Columns: the recurring columns (Book Reviews, Scanning the Literature, Industry Perspectives, Spectrum Policy and Regulatory Issues) are generally commissioned by the column editors; prospective contributors should contact the relevant editor before preparing a submission.

All submissions must follow the IEEE author guidelines for manuscript preparation (formatting, reference style, and ethics requirements, including originality and prior-publication rules). Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors should consult the current call-for-papers pages on the ComSoc site for page limits and template requirements, as these are updated periodically. Because IEEE does not publish a single static acceptance rate for the magazine, authors should treat the special-issue 30% cap as the best available indicator of selectivity.

Open Access and Article Charges

IEEE Wireless Communications is published as a subscription-based title. IEEE's official title list does not classify the magazine as an open-access publication, and the magazine carries no published journal-level article processing charge (APC): there is no official APC figure for this magazine, so any dollar amount quoted by third-party sites should be treated as unverified.

That said, IEEE offers open-access pathways across its portfolio. Authors who need their article to be openly available can typically select IEEE's hybrid "open access" option at acceptance (paying the standard IEEE hybrid APC) or use the green open-access route by depositing an accepted manuscript in an institutional repository after the applicable embargo period, subject to IEEE's posting policy. Institutional open-access agreements (such as IEEE's read-and-publish deals) may also cover the fee for eligible corresponding authors. Because exact fees and eligibility change over time, authors should confirm the current options through IEEE's open-access pages or the magazine's submission system rather than relying on third-party APC listings.

Indexing and Abstracting

IEEE Wireless Communications is abstracted and indexed in the major bibliographic databases. According to journal indexing trackers and ComSoc, coverage includes:

• Web of Science: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) — the index behind the Journal Citation Reports impact factor.
• Scopus (Elsevier) — the basis for CiteScore and the Scopus impact score.
• Ei Compendex (Engineering Index).
• INSPEC (IET).
• MIAR and other journal databases.

Full text is available through IEEE Xplore Digital Library, where each issue is published with DOI-assigned articles. The magazine's bibliographic identifiers are: print ISSN 1536-1284, online ISSN 1558-0687, CODEN IWCEAS, and ISO 4 abbreviation IEEE Wirel. Commun.

Landmark Papers and Influential Articles

The magazine's citation record is dominated by surveys and tutorials that became standard references in their subfields. The following are among the most-cited articles ever published in IEEE Wireless Communications (citation counts below are approximate figures reported by public citation trackers circa 2026 and will have grown since):

• "Routing techniques in wireless sensor networks: a survey" (Al-Karaki & Kamal, 2004) — a foundational taxonomy of WSN routing protocols; among the most-cited papers in the sensor-networks literature (~1,300+ citations).
• "Holographic MIMO Surfaces for 6G Wireless Networks: Opportunities, Challenges, and Trends" (Huang et al., 2020) — an early landmark in the reconfigurable intelligent surfaces wave (~890 citations).
• "Modulation, coding and signal processing for wireless communications — An overview of peak-to-average power ratio reduction techniques for multicarrier transmission" (Jiang & Wu, 2005) — a classic reference on PAPR in OFDM (~775 citations).
• "How much energy is needed to run a wireless network?" (Auer et al., 2011) — the paper that quantified network energy consumption and helped launch the green-communications research agenda (~740 citations).
• "A survey on 3GPP heterogeneous networks" (2011) — a definitive guide to HetNets at the height of LTE-Advanced standardization (~690 citations).
• "5G Ultra-Dense Cellular Networks" (Kamran et al., 2016) — a key early exposition of ultra-densification, one of the pillars of 5G (~610 citations).
• "Machine Learning Paradigms for Next-Generation Wireless Networks" (Alsheikh et al., 2017) — one of the first comprehensive treatments of ML in wireless (~585 citations).
• "A Speculative Study on 6G" (Tariq et al., 2020) — a widely read early vision paper for the 6G era (~570 citations).
• "Long-range communications in unlicensed bands: the rising stars in the IoT and smart city scenarios" (2016) — a landmark LPWAN survey (~515 citations).
• "A survey of quality of service in IEEE 802.11 networks" (2004) — a long-lived reference on Wi-Fi QoS (~510 citations).
• "Physical layer security in wireless networks: a tutorial" (2011) — a widely used tutorial on physical-layer security (~460 citations).
• "Vision, Requirements, and Technology Trend of 6G" (Chen et al., 2020) — an influential 6G vision and technology roadmap (~470 citations).

Taken together, these articles illustrate the magazine's editorial strategy: identify a fast-moving topic early, commission a definitive tutorial or survey, and let the article become the entry point for the next wave of researchers.

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

Is IEEE Wireless Communications the same as IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications?
No. IEEE Wireless Communications is a bimonthly tutorial magazine (ISSN 1536-1284); the Transactions is a separate monthly journal publishing original research papers (ISSN 1536-1276). They have different editorial boards, formats, and editors-in-chief. There is also a third sibling, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (2012), for short rapid articles.

What is the impact factor of IEEE Wireless Communications?
Publicly reported figures place the 2024 Journal Citation Reports impact factor at approximately 11.3–11.5, with Q1 standing in all its categories (Telecommunications; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic; Computer Science). ComSoc states the magazine ranks among the highest-impact publications in its field. Exact JCR figures require a Clarivate subscription.

Who is the current editor-in-chief?
According to the ComSoc Magazines Board roster for 2026–2027, the Editor-in-Chief is Prof. Nirwan Ansari. The previous EiC was Prof. Yi Qian, who now serves as ComSoc's Director of Magazines. Third-party databases may lag behind this transition.

How often is it published?
Bimonthly — six issues per year.

What is the acceptance rate?
IEEE does not publish an overall acceptance rate for the magazine. The one official selectivity figure is ComSoc's policy that special issues must hold to a maximum 30% acceptance rate.

Is it open access? What is the APC?
The magazine is subscription-based; IEEE does not list it as a gold open-access title and does not publish a magazine-specific APC. Authors can typically use IEEE's hybrid open-access option or green self-archiving; exact current fees should be confirmed with IEEE.

Where is it indexed?
Web of Science (SCIE), Scopus, Ei Compendex, and INSPEC, with full text on IEEE Xplore.

When was it founded?
It began in 1994 as IEEE Personal Communications Magazine and was renamed IEEE Wireless Communications in February 2002 (Vol. 9, No. 1) — a direct continuation, not a new journal.

This Journals World deep-dive profile of IEEE Wireless Communications magazine was compiled in October 2026 from official IEEE and ComSoc sources. Impact metrics and editorial appointments change over time; consult the ComSoc publication page and the Journal Citation Reports for the latest figures.