Comm Lit Review

1. Classify the request

Decide whether the request is primarily about:

• Wireless PHY/MAC
• Networking / transport / congestion control
• Satellite / NTN / integrated space-air-ground systems
• Cross-layer optimization / scheduling / resource allocation
• Sensing / MEC / edge intelligence within communications systems

If the request is not clearly in communications systems research, fall back to a more general literature skill.

2. Lock the search policy

Apply these defaults unless the user overrides them:

• Databases first: IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, then ACM Digital Library, then broader web
• Publication bias: formal publications first, preprints second
• Time window: cover both foundational and recent work
  • Default split: foundational before 2022, recent from 2022 onward
• Output goal: research note, related-work summary, or comparison table rather than a raw search dump

If the user explicitly narrows scope, obey the narrower scope:

• only journals
• only IEEE / only ScienceDirect
• only top venues
• only LEO / only Wi-Fi / only transport
• exclude arXiv
• only papers after a certain year

3. Search primary sources first

Use a layered search strategy. For communications topics, do not build the review from random blog posts or derivative summaries.

Database ladder

Search in this order by default:

1. ieeexplore.ieee.org
2. sciencedirect.com
3. dl.acm.org
4. broader web using primary publisher pages, official conference sites, DOI pages, and author-hosted copies of already-identified formal papers

Only move to the next database tier when one of these is true:

• the higher-priority tiers are too sparse for the topic
• the topic is known to publish heavily outside the higher tier
• the user explicitly asks for broader coverage

Venue ladder

Within each database tier, search venue tiers in this order:

1. top communications and networking journals / top conferences
2. mainstream strong journals / flagship broader conferences
3. all remaining relevant formal venues

Follow the concrete tier lists in references/venue-tiering.md.

By default this venue tiering is a soft priority, not a hard whitelist.

• Default behavior: start from Tier A, then widen if needed
• If the user says only top venues, top journals only, top conferences only, or equivalent, switch to hard constraint mode and do not auto-expand beyond Tier A unless the user later relaxes the constraint

Use preprints only when:

• the user explicitly asks for them
• the area is very recent and formal versions are missing
• a paper is clearly influential but only publicly accessible as a preprint

When a preprint is used, label it clearly as preprint.

4. Extract paper-level facts

For each relevant paper, capture:

• Title
• Authors
• Year
• Venue
• Layer or system scope
• Scenario and assumptions
• Core method
• Main result or claim
• Limitation
• Relevance to the user's topic
• Source URL

Favor numbers, assumptions, and actual problem statements over generic summaries.

5. Synthesize as a communications review

Group papers by technical axis, not by search order. Common groupings:

• PHY/MAC adaptation
• Transport / congestion control
• NTN / satellite resource management
• Cross-layer or learning-based control
• Measurement / empirical studies

Explicitly separate:

• foundational vs recent papers
• formal publications vs preprints
• top-tier vs lower-tier venues when that distinction matters
• single-link vs multi-user / network-wide formulations
• simulation-only vs measurement / deployment-backed work

6. Produce a research-useful output

Follow the templates in references/output-template.md.

The default output should include:

• a compact literature table
• a short narrative on where the field stands
• disagreements or unresolved assumptions
• likely research gaps

Rules

• Prefer primary sources over summaries or tertiary commentary.
• Prefer IEEE and ScienceDirect first, ACM second, and only then broader web search unless the user asks otherwise.
• Search venue tiers from top to broad within each database tier.
• Treat venue tiers as soft ranking by default and hard constraint only when the user explicitly asks for top-only search.
• Do not pretend a preprint is peer reviewed.
• Do not collapse transport-layer rate control and PHY/MAC rate adaptation into one bucket without saying so explicitly.
• If the topic spans multiple layers, say that the literature itself is split across layers.
• If evidence is weak, say so instead of smoothing it over.