21st Annual Real-Time Communications Conference & Expo
An IEEE International Conference at Illinois Tech
RTC Conference October 7 – 8, 2025
The 21st annual Real-Time Communications (RTC) Conference and Expo at Illinois Tech will take place October 7-8, 2025 at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Mies campus in Chicago. You will not want to miss this event, a multi-tracked technical conference with talks, juried papers, a poster competition, and time for networking and social activities.
Each Conference track will focus on one of seven broad areas of interest. The descriptions of the tracks can be found on the Program page of the RTC Conference website.
As an added feature of this year’s conference, we are delighted to host the IEEE Communications Society’s Communications Quality and Reliability Technical Committee annual Workshop. The Workshop will be open to all conference registrants, allowing all attendees the benefit of the Workshop’s 39 years of experience, speakers and patrons.
Call for Papers vs. Call for Speakers
The RTC Conference hosts two types of talks: (1) Technical talks that describe or demonstrate interesting applications and technologies related to real time communications, and (2) Research papers that are peer-reviewed and, after being presented in the Research Track of the RTC conference, will be presented for publication on the IEEE Xplore online archive.
This email contains the Call for Research Papers which will be presented in the Research Track. The call for speakers in the other six tracks will be available soon.
Call for Papers
The functions and scope of real-time mixed media applications are expanding as these applications are integrated with Data, ML/AI, Blockchain, Voice- and Financial Technologies, Quantum Computing, IoT, and more. While there are conferences devoted to each of these technologies separately, and to the underlying networks and platforms that support them, the RTC Conference Research Track is specifically interested in exploring the issues, opportunities and challenges associated with the integration of these disparate technologies. Here is the link to the Call for Papers to be presented in the Research Track.
We are pleased to announce a unified Call for Papers (CfP) for the 2025 RTC Conference & the IEEE Communications Quality and Reliability (CQR) Workshop. The CQR workshop will be co-located with the RTC conference this year, bringing together researchers and practitioners from both communities to discuss advancements in communications quality, reliability, and real-time multimedia communications.
The joint Research Track invites paper submissions in interactive multimedia communications describing architectures, design, theoretical results, experiments, innovative systems, prototyping efforts, and case studies. Papers that are accepted and presented at the conference will be submitted for publication in IEEE Xplore.
We are interested in works at the intersection of multimedia interactive communications with technologies as diverse as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Quantum Computing, Internet of Things, Vehicular Networking and Communications, Confidential Computing, Network Management, Programmable Network Services, Security, Privacy, Voice Technologies, Blockchain, Gaming, and Robotics. The Technical Program inherits the 17-year legacy of the IPTComm Conference (http://iptcomm.org/archive.html) as well as the over 30-year history of the CQR workshop (https://cqr2024.ieee-cqr.org/about/past-workshops).
Topics of interest
We invite submissions on a wide range of topics related to real-time communications and communications quality & reliability, including but not limited to:
Real-Time and Multimedia Communications
- WebRTC applications and protocols
- Interactive multimedia systems (video, audio, AR/VR, gaming, robotics)
- Cloud-based and distributed communications
- Time-sensitive networking and ultra-low latency applications
- Real-time streaming protocols and media transport optimizations
- Synchronization and jitter management
Network Technologies and Architectures for RTC applications
- 5G/6G networks and beyond
- Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV)
- Edge computing, fog computing, and cloud-native applications
- Internet of Things (IoT) networks and industrial communications
- Vehicular networking (V2X)
- Programmable networks and service orchestration
AI and Machine Learning in RTC Applications and Services
- Explainable AI: Sparse Autoencoders, Visualization Techniques, Contrastive Explanations, SHAP/LIME/Permutation Importance
- AI/ML applications in real-time network automation and optimization
- Large language models and conversational AI
- Speech recognition, synthesis, and natural language processing
- AI-driven network security for detecting and mitigating threats in RTC environments
- Predictive maintenance and anomaly detection for real-time network reliability
Security, Privacy, and Resilience in communication networks
- Identity management, authentication, and encryption
- Intrusion detection and mitigation techniques
- Blockchain applications for secure and trustworthy communications
- Privacy-aware computation and data protection
- Network reliability, resilience, and disaster recovery
- Secure routing, access control, and zero-trust architectures
Quality, Performance, Reliability and Experience
- Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) assessment
- Performance metrics, measurement, and benchmarking
- Network survivability, fault tolerance, and self-healing mechanisms
- AI-driven predictive analytics for quality optimization
- Service level agreements (SLAs) and compliance monitoring
- Network congestion control and traffic engineering for improved communication quality
- User experience and Customer Experience
- Quantum Computing for Real Time Communications
Submission Guidelines
Paper submissions must describe original research, not published nor currently under review for another conference or journal. The program committee will referee all papers. At least one author of each paper must be registered and present their paper at the conference.
- All paper submissions must be done through EDAS (https://edas.info/N33703)
- Regular paper submissions should follow the guidelines and use the formatting tools available at the IEEE Manuscript Templates page.
- Regular papers must be in between 4 to 8 pages, double-column IEEE format, including figures, references and appendices.
- Work-in-progress papers should have no more than 4 pages in IEEE double-column format, including figures, references and appendices. Work-in-progress papers must include “Work in Progress” in the title.
Important Dates
- Paper submission deadline: Monday, July 7, 2025 – 1200 CDT (no extension!)
- Notification of acceptance: Monday, August 4, 2025 – 1200 CDT
- Final camera-ready submission: Monday, September 1, 2025 – 1200 CDT
- Conference Dates: October 7-8, 2025 (at Hermann Hall, IIT Main Campus, Chicago, IL, USA)
Conference Chair
- Carol Davids (Illinois Institute of Technology & School of Applied Technology, USA)
Technical Program Committee Chairs
- Ronald Marx (Getronics GmbH, Germany)
- José Aguerre (Evercast & University of the Republic, Uruguay)
- Eiji Oki (Kyoto University, Japan)
- Vijay K Gurbani (Vail Systems, Inc. & Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
Technical Program Committee
tbc
