3-facial edge-coloring of plane graphs

An $\ell$-facial edge-coloring of a plane graph is a coloring of its edges such that any two edges at distance at most $\ell$ on a boundary walk of any face receive distinct colors. It is the edge-coloring variant of the $\ell$-facial vertex coloring, which arose as a generalization of the well-known cyclic coloring. It is conjectured that at most $3\ell + 1$ colors suffice for an $\ell$-facial edge-coloring of any plane graph. The conjecture has only been confirmed for $\ell \le 2$, and in this paper, we prove its validity for $\ell = 3$.