Intelligent Governance for Sustainable Communication Networks: Architectures, Incentives, and Trust in Decentralized Infrastructures

Scope of the papers

Communication networks are rapidly evolving into intelligent, programmable, and economically coordinated infrastructures. As 5G advances toward 6G and edge-native architectures, communication systems increasingly integrate artificial intelligence (AI)- driven orchestration, decentralized resource allocation, and blockchain-enabled coordination. In these environments, connectivity alone is no longer sufficient; networks must also provide verifiable trust, accountability, incentive alignment, and sustainability. Emerging paradigms such as AI-native network slicing and blockchain-coordinated edge services introduce new architectural challenges. Practical deployments must address adversarial manipulation, governance capture, privacy-preserving coordination, energy efficiency, regulatory compliance, and the robust coupling of digital network states with physical communication infrastructure. This Special Session aims to provide a focused technical forum to advance the architectural foundations, protocol mechanisms, and empirical evaluation of intelligent and sustainable communication networks. We seek contributions that integrate communication systems engineering with distributed coordination, trust mechanisms, and AI-driven network intelligence.

We invite submissions in the form of original research papers and invited talks presenting novel algorithms, architectures, empirical evaluations, deployment experiences, and applied case studies. Vision papers and contributions identifying open research challenges or proposing new evaluation frameworks for intelligent network governance are also welcome.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Intelligent governance in communication networks
• AI-driven orchestration and autonomous policy enforcement in 5G/6G systems
• Mechanism design for decentralized spectrum and bandwidth allocation
• Governance of network slicing and service-level agreements
• Distributed control and coordination architectures for large-scale communication systems
• Blockchain-enabled coordination in decentralized physical infrastructure networks
• Incentive-aligned routing, bandwidth provisioning, and resource markets
• Secure peer-to-peer communication protocols with economic governance layers
• Hybrid on-chain/off-chain architectures for network management
• Carbon-aware routing and energy-efficient communication protocols
• Energy-conscious consensus and distributed coordination mechanisms
• Incentive-compatible green networking strategies
• Lifecycle energy analysis of intelligent communication infrastructures
• Robust governance mechanisms resistant to bribery, collusion, and manipulation
• Privacy-preserving coordination in IoT, edge, and wireless systems
• Verifiable computation for network control
• Identity and authorization frameworks for regulated communication infrastructures
• Governance architectures for IoT and smart city networks
• Decentralized wireless infrastructure and community networks
• AI-enhanced network management under adversarial or unreliable conditions
• Cross-border or multi-stakeholder communication infrastructure coordination