Real Time Communications Conference & Expo at Illinois Tech

The RTC Conference and Expo at Illinois Tech – October 7– 8 is a venue for connecting the future to today in real-time where thought leaders from industry and academia gather to discuss, debate and shape the future of the rapidly changing real-time communications field. Check out our Conference Prospectus and make plans to join us as a conference sponsor for this unique event taking place at Hermann Hall on IIT’s Mies Campus in Chicago!

As an International Conference of the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology, we feature an especially wide audience of technical professionals who are eager to contribute and to learn from the talks and demonstrations that will be presented, ensuring It will serve as an outstanding platform for knowledge exchange, networking opportunities, and exploring the latest advancements in real-time communications. By becoming a sponsor of the RTC Conference & Expo at Illinois Tech, your organization will gain exceptional exposure and access to a highly influential audience.

Here are some compelling reasons why you should consider joining us as a sponsor:

• Outstanding Brand Visibility: The RTC Conference& Expo at Illinois Tech expects a significant turnout of industry and academic experts, thought leaders, and innovators from around the globe. You will receive extensive exposure throughout the conference, including prominent logo placement, branding opportunities in marketing materials, event signage, and online platforms, ensuring maximum visibility.

• Thought Leadership Positioning: Demonstrate your expertise and thought leadership by participating in panel discussions and delivering presentations. Share your insights and experiences with a diverse audience, positioning your company as a go-to resource within the real-time communications community.

• Talent Acquisition: The RTC Conference & Expo at Illinois Tech will attract top-tier talent from academia, startups, and established organizations. Engage with talented students and professionals, and showcase your company’s culture and career prospects, creating a powerful recruitment platform.

• Showcase Your Company: Use the conference as a platform to exhibit your latest technological advancements. This will enable you to capture the attention of potential customers and partners and receive valuable feedback from industry experts.

• Help Shape Future Industry Research Initiatives: Partner with the RTC Lab to identify, develop and execute R&D projects that are mutually beneficial to industry and academia.

• Help Build the Applications Development Ecosystem: Educate developers and explain the power of programmable real-time communications face to face with students and young professionals who participate in our dynamic, highly interactive poster sessions, presentations and social events.

We offer various sponsorship packages designed to suit your organization’s goals, ranging from Platinum, Gold, and Silver conference levels, Each package includes an array of benefits and privileges tailored to meet your specific objectives.

Please join us in shaping the future of real-time communications. Your sponsorship will play a pivotal role in making this event a resounding success and will position your brand as a key player within the industry.

Our dedicated sponsorship team is ready to assist you in exploring sponsorship opportunities and discussing available packages. We are eager to provide you with further details, answer any questions you may have, and work together to create a mutually beneficial partnership. For more information, and to secure your conference sponsorship, please contact Tom Costello at [email protected] or (847) 890-5061.

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