Pervasive computing, often synonymously called ubiquitous computing, is an emerging field of research that brings in revolutionary paradigms for computing models in the 21st century. Tremendous developments in such technologies as wireless communications and networking, mobile computing and handheld devices, embedded systems, wearable computers, sensors, RFID tags, smart spaces, middleware, software agents, and the like, have led to the evolution of pervasive computing platforms as natural successor of mobile computing systems. The goal of pervasive computing is to create ambient intelligence where network devices embedded in the environment provide unobtrusive connectivity and services all the time, thus improving human experience and quality of life without explicit awareness of the underlying communications and computing technologies. In this environment, the world around us (e.g., key chains, coffee mugs, computers, appliances, cars, homes, offices, cities, and the human body) is interconnected as pervasive network of intelligent devices that cooperatively and autonomously collect, process and transport information, in order to adapt to the associated context and activity.

The Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal (PMC) is a professional, peer-reviewed journal that publishes high-quality scientific articles (both theory and practice) covering all aspects of pervasive computing and communications. Topics include, but not limited to:

• Pervasive/Ubiquitous computing and communications architectures and protocols
• Autonomic computing and communications
• Mobile computing systems and services
• Ambient, invisible, implicit, and adaptive computing
• Mobile grid and peer-to-peer computing
• Algorithmic paradigms, models and analysis of pervasive computing systems
• Smart spaces and intelligent environments
• Enabling technologies (e.g., Bluetooth, BANs, PANs, 802.11 wireless LANs)
• Embedded systems and wearable computers
• Wireless sensors networks and RFID technologies
• Virtual immersion communications
• Multiple inter-connected networking technologies (e.g., cellular, ad hoc, hybrid)
• Positioning and tracking technologies
• Auto-configuration and authentication
• Context-aware computing and location-based services and applications
• Service creation, discovery, management, and delivery mechanisms
• Middleware and agent technologies
• Application layer protocols and services
• Programming paradigms for pervasive and ubiquitous computing applications
• User interfaces and interaction models
• Runtime support for intelligent, adaptive agents
• (Innovative) applications requirements, performance, and benchmarking
• Security, privacy, fault-tolerance and resiliency issues.

Special Issue on Edge Computing in Pervasive Systems
Submission Date: 2020-05-01

Edge computing is the utilization of computation / storage / connectivity resources available at the “edge” of the Internet: mobile user terminals (e.g., smart phones, tablets), smart objects (e.g., IoT sensors and actuators), access network devices (e.g., WiFi routers, cellular base stations). Calling back from remote datacenter cloud functions and deploying them on edge devices create a new world of opportunities for pervasive and mobile computing applications and services, which may benefit from very low latency, increased bandwidth, and immediate availability of user context (e.g., geographical position, radio network information, local network topology). This new network calls for novel control and data forwarding mechanisms to account for its intrinsic characteristics such as volatility, its distributed nature, and the decoupling of functions among heterogeneous hardware infrastructures.

This special issue invites technical papers that focus on both theoretical and applied research contributions and that present original ideas, analytical and simulation results, and real-world experiences in the context of smart edge computing.

This special issue will focus on (but will not be limited to) the following topics:

Integration of edge computing in 5G (and beyond) technologies
Analytics, streaming, and real-time processing at the edge
Data storage, distribution, and management in edge systems
Edge computing for Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT applications
Distributed Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning solutions for edge systems
Security, privacy, and trustworthiness at the edge
Edge for the realization of cyber-physical pervasive systems
Distributed consensus and ledger technologies for edge computing
Communication protocols and technologies for edge networking
Programming languages and computation abstractions for edge computing
Modeling and performance evaluation of pervasive edge computing systems
Integration of edge computing in fog / (multi-)cloud scenarios
Lightweight virtualization at the edge to enable pervasive applications
New network architectures for cellular deployments in distributed infrastructures