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Special Issue on
Integration of Cloud Computing and Body Sensor Networks
Future Generation Computer Systems
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Scope and Objective
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A specific class of wireless sensor networks is Body Sensor Networks (BSN) that represents an emerging platform for many human-centered applications, spanning from medical to sports performance monitoring, gaming, and social networking. As a result of the advancements of ubiquitous and increasingly powerful wearable devices, to support the wide variety of application contexts, there exists a growing number of health monitoring systems with sophisticated capabilities. Moreover, there is enormous public interest in products that allow individuals, ranging from children to elders, to monitor and improve their own health and lifestyle.

In the coming years, BSNs are likely to be exploited to allow for implicit social interaction among people who can exchange private/public information through their worn BSN nodes when they come into contact. BSNs of co-located people can be also utilized as a mobile sensor infrastructure to support other context-aware applications such as disaster, medical emergency and mass event management. In such contexts, management of a large number of disparate BSNs as well as cooperative BSNs to support various applications will be a crucial issue to deal with. Moreover, the huge amount of data that a BSN is able to deliver, demands a powerful, scalable storage and processing infrastructure to perform both online and offline analysis of BSN data streams.

The combination of BSN, with their huge amount of gathered sensor data and their limited processing power can be tackled by exploiting a Cloud computing infrastructure to offer an integrated platform that provides: (a) the ability to utilize heterogeneous sensors; (b) scalability of data storage; (c) scalability of processing power for different kinds of analysis; (d) global access to the processing and storage infrastructure; (e) easy sharing of results; and (f) pay-as-you-go pricing for using BSN services.

The aim of this special issue is to provide a comprehensive guide on new ideas and results in the BSN domain. In particular, it will focus on the state of the art, architecture, and associated techniques for BSN-Cloud integration, allowing collection and dissemination of health data from BSN to a storage Cloud repository, and processing and analysis of the stored data using software services hosted in the Cloud. It will also identify potential research directions and technologies that will drive innovations within this domain. We expect the papers of the special issue to serve as a valuable reference for larger audience such as systems architects, practitioners, developers, researchers, academics and students.

Topics of Interest
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The topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to:
• From physical to virtual wearable sensors
• Novel software frameworks and platforms for BSN development
• Open Grid/Web-based architectures for wireless sensor networks
• Management of data streams from BSNs
• Process management in large-scale systems based on wireless body sensor networks
• Integration techniques between Clouds and BSNs
• BSN and Cloud computing for e-Health, sport and leisure applications
• Sensor technology and biocompatibility
• Home monitoring and assisted living applications
• Debugging, and testing of BSN platforms and applications
• Clinical trials and experiences of BSN platforms
• BSN for disaster/emergency management and social interaction

Important Dates
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Deadline for paper submission: December 30, 2012
Completion of first review: March 15, 2013
Revision due: April 30, 2013
Final decision notification: May 31, 2013
Final manuscript due: June 30, 2013
Publication date: Fourth Quarter of 2013/First Quarter of 2014

Submission Instructions
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All submitted papers must be clearly written in excellent English and should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Substantially revised (minimum 30% of new content) versions of papers published in conference proceedings can be submitted. In this case, the original paper should also be enclosed. Authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary copyright releases for all copyrighted material.
All papers will be peer-reviewed. Papers must not exceed 25 pages (one column, at least 11pt fonts) including figures, tables, and references. All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted through Elsevier Editorial System (EES), located at: http://ees.elsevier.com/fgcs/. Authors must select “SI_Body Cloud – Fortino, Pathan” when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process.

A guide for authors, templates and samples for submitting papers for FGCS journal is available on: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505611/authorinstructions

Guest Editors
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Prof. Giancarlo Fortino
Associate Professor of Computer Engineering
Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems
University of Calabria, Via P. Bucci, cubo 41C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy

Dr. Mukaddim Pathan
Technology Specialist - Content Delivery Network
Media Distribution, Telstra Corporation Limited
21/35 Collins St, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia