In the vision of the incoming 5G era， billions of people as well as trillions of machines are expected to be connected by the next generation mobile network， as predicted by the standardisation body 5G?PPP （http：//5g?ppp.eu/）. Functions of massive communication devices have been substantially limited by insufficient power supply. As an efficient solution， dedicated radio?frequency （RF） signals are capable of carrying well?controlled energy towards the rechargeable devices in order to achieve the on?demand energy transfer. However， enabling the wireless charging capability of RF signals may significantly influence the data transfer of the communication network. Although the RF signals are capable of simultaneously carrying both the data and energy， the diverse requirements of data and energy transfers pose huge challenges in their effective integration. For example， the energy receiver and the data receiver have diverse sensitivity to the received power. The received power as low as -80 dBm is sufficient for recovering the contaminated packet， thanks to the?state?of?the?art channel encoding/decoding techniques. However， only when the received power is higher than -20 dBm， the energy reception circuit can be effectively activated for converting a fraction of the energy carried by the RF signals to the direct current （DC）.
　　As a result， the integration of the wireless data and energy transfer is worth deep exploration. For the practical implementation of RF?based energy transfers， we have to make the energy receiver adapt to a wider range of the received power， while increasing the RF?DC conversion efficiency. The advanced transceiver for the integrated data and energy transfer/reception is also required in the physical layer. The coexistence of the multiple energy and data transmitters/receivers calls for deep exploration on the interference management schemes， the medium access control （MAC） algorithms as well as the data/energy routing protocols， which systematically yield data and energy integrated communication networks （DEINs）.
　　This special issue will also serve as a stimulus to educate about， promote and accelerate technical evolution towards the promising and exciting research area of DEINs. Specifically， the special issue will present tutorials， surveys and original research articles that cover the following subjects （but are not limited to）：
　　·Design of highly?efficient RF?DC converter and the novel energy storage units. 　　·Information theoretic aspects of the integrated data and energy transfer.
　　·Highly?efficient transceiver design of integrated data and energy transfers， including the joint channel coding and modulation schemes， the waveform design and the antenna design.
　　·Optimal resource allocation and interference management among energy users， data users and integrated users while ensuring their quality of experiences （QoEs）.
　　·Modelling and optimisation of the medium access control protocols in DEINs.
　　·Protocols and algorithms for joint energy and data routing in DEINs.
　　·Economic aspects and billing issues in operating DEINs.
　　·Practical applications， management and adaptation of DEINs.
　　·Prototype and practical deployment solutions as well as standardisation of DEINs.
　　Submission Guidance
　　Please directly submit your paper to [email protected]， using the email subject “ZTE?DEIN?Paper?Submission”. The draft of manuscript can be written in either PDF format or MS Word format. However， the final manuscript after the acceptance MUST BE written in MS Word format.