brycewang-stanford MobiCom Workflow
MobiCom's calendar is the part authors from single-deadline venues mis-plan most. There are two rounds a year, each feeds a different edition, and inside each round the review runs in two stages with a rebuttal. Plan the campaign around those facts, not around a single "the deadline."
Which round, which edition
Before scheduling anything, pin two facts on the live CFP / HotCRP /deadlines page:
- Which edition does this round feed? The summer/fall round opening after MobiCom 2026 competes for MobiCom 2027. Submitting to it is a bet on next year's program, not this year's.
- What is the AoE cutoff in local time? MobiCom prints an Eastern clock time for an
AoE deadline; convert once, for every coauthor (
mobicom-submission).
Picking the round is a research-readiness decision: the earlier round gets your work in front of reviewers sooner, but only if the over-the-air evaluation is actually done.
Backward schedule from the paper cutoff
Radio experiments do not compress the way a proof or an ablation does — testbeds break, channels drift, and volunteers for mobility runs have to be scheduled. Work backward:
| Weeks before paper cutoff | Milestone |
|---|---|
| T-12 | Fit and round locked (mobicom-topic-selection); testbed reserved; IRB/site access if human mobility |
| T-8 | Core mechanism frozen; headline over-the-air experiment running, not just designed |
| T-5 | Baselines on tuned hardware; energy and channel measurement complete (mobicom-experiments) |
| T-3 | Full draft; provenance ledger closed (mobicom-reproducibility) |
| T-2 | Writing-style and related-work passes; supplementary/appendix split |
| T-1 (abstract cutoff) | Abstract registered on HotCRP; author list and conflicts entered |
| T-0 (paper cutoff, AoE) | Submission audit and upload (mobicom-submission) |
The rule of thumb from wireless deadline archaeology: the mobility and failure-condition experiments are always the ones cut when the schedule slips, and they are the ones reviewers value most. Protect them by running them before the final scale sweeps.
Inside the round: two stages plus rebuttal
Round opens -> submission
Stage 1 review -> either EARLY REJECT (with reviews) or advance
Stage 2 review -> reviews released -> REBUTTAL window -> decision
Decision space: accept / one-shot revision / reject
- An early reject after stage 1 returns reviews you can use for the next round — treat
it as data, not just a loss (
mobicom-review-process). - The rebuttal is short and bounded; plan the coauthor time for it now, because it lands
on a fixed clock you do not control (
mobicom-author-response). - A one-shot revision is a months-long commitment to a required-changes list, often with the same reviewers — budget the experiments it will demand before accepting the plan.
Which edition a slip costs
Because rounds feed editions, missing the summer round does not just delay a few weeks — it pushes the work to the winter round of the same edition or, if that slips too, to the next edition entirely. Map the cost explicitly:
- On track for the summer round → decision months earlier.
- Slip to the winter round → same edition, later PC meeting.
- Slip again → next edition; a full year of program calendar.
State which of these the current plan is really on, in machine-days of remaining testbed work, so "we'll make summer" is a claim with arithmetic behind it, not optimism.
During the long review silence
MobiCom reviews take weeks. Do not stall: extend the evaluation you already have (more mobility traces, a deployment week, an energy sweep) so that whatever the letter says — rebuttal, revision, or the next round — you are answering from a stronger position than the submitted version.
Output format
[Round] which round + which edition it feeds + AoE cutoff (local)
[Readiness] over-the-air evaluation done? y/n — gating experiments named
[Backward schedule] milestones with dates; slip risks flagged
[Slip cost] which edition a miss pushes the work to
[Post-decision plan] rebuttal / revision / next-round readiness