Welcome to the 47th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN). After organizing it virtually in the last two years due to the pandemic, we are excited to organize it this year as a hybrid conference in Edmonton, Canada. While attendees are strongly encouraged to participate and present their work in person, virtual attendance and remote presentations are also accommodated to support authors during the transition to pre-Covid normalcy. The conference program and sessions are planned to blend the experience of both in-person and remote attendees, mandating a "live" presentation from all authors, and dedicating time and resources to prolonged Q&A sessions.

This year we also continue our tradition in supporting doctoral students, both in extensive reviewer feedback, dedicated Q&A panels, and inaugurating a dedicated session for pairing them with experts in their domains for guidance and feedback. Our plan is to build on this trajectory in the following years to establish a supportive environment for budding researchers in this domain.

IEEE LCN 2022 received 99 full paper submissions, spanning many active domains and novel directions in networking, such as Quantum networks, AI/ML assisted network operation and provisioning, and battery-less IoT systems. Each paper received a minimum of three reviews. In addition, a senior TPC member was assigned to each paper, who moderated the meta-review process and ensuing discussions to provide a final recommendation. Out of the 99 full paper submissions, 26 papers have been accepted in the regular track, yielding an acceptance ratio of 26.2%. The authors were allowed one extra page to address reviewer concerns in the final camera-ready version.

Besides the main track, there are also papers accepted in different tracks of LCN 2022. These include:

• 35 Short papers (4 pages)
• 5 Symposium papers (6+1 pages)
• 9 Doctoral track – Full papers (8+1 pages)
• 1 Doctoral track – Promising Ideas papers (4+1 pages)

Four candidates for the best paper award have been selected based on reviews and recommendations of senior TPC members. These papers will be presented in a special plenary session. This year, we also identified two candidates for the best doctoral track paper award considering the quality of the work done and reviews received for the papers in this track. These papers will also be presented in a separate special session after which voting will take place to decide the winner.

We would like to thank the many people who have contributed to this year's LCN program. Foremost, we wish to thank the paper authors for choosing IEEE LCN as the channel to present their quality research. We are grateful to the 120 members of the Technical Program Committee for providing quality reviews, and in many cases participating in discussions among reviewers to help in the final paper selection process. We wish to thank our senior TPC members for leading these discussions and delivering consensus on recommendations. The program of the conference would not have been possible without their generous work and efforts.

We would, of course, like to thank the LCN 2022 Organizing Committee as well as the LCN 2022 Steering Committee for their help and support. Finally, we would like to welcome the attendees to the conference and thank them for participating in LCN 2022. We hope that you will enjoy reading the IEEE LCN 2022 papers as much as we did and will find the program interesting and stimulating. Finally, for those who attend in person, we wish you a pleasant stay in Edmonton, Canada, and look forward to personally welcoming you on the evening of September 25th.

Enjoy LCN 2022!

Sharief Oteafy, DePaul University, USA
Eyuphan Bulut, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
Kanchana Thilakarathna, University of Sydney, Australia