IEEE Software
Special Issue on Next Generation Mobile Computing

Submission Deadline: 30 June 2013
Publication: March/April 2014

Ubiquitous, pervasive mobile computing is all around us. We use mobile computing not only when we interact with our smartphones to connect with friends and family across states and countries, but also when we use ticketing systems on a bus or train to work or home, purchase food from a mobile vendor at a park, watch videos and listen to music on our phones and portable music playing devices. In other words, mobile computing is not only the interaction of smart phones with each other. Any computation system that is expected to move and interact with end users or other computational systems despite potential changes in network connectivity—including loss of connectivity or changes in type of connectivity or access point—participates in mobile computing infrastructure, and the number of such systems is expected to grow significantly each year over the coming decades.

Many of these systems in urban areas take advantage of robust networking infrastructure, gigabit bandwidth backbones, high-speed relays, and unlimited power and recharging capabilities. However, many of these systems operate within degraded network, power, or computing environments, such as for first-responders in a catastrophe, mobile phone users in remote regions or in countries where communication infrastructure is degraded or even millions of people watching fireworks along a river and overwhelming the local networking infrastructure in a major metropolitan area. In each of these scenarios, the desires and needs of the mobile computing customers are likely to outstrip the capacities of the supporting infrastructure, and the result can be degraded performance to the point that no customers receive useful service (e.g., priority inversion that causes important information to be lost or delayed over frequent unimportant messages, complete loss of network links from a mobile customer to a communication control center, or dropped calls or even text messages from a smartphone).

In addition to these current use-cases for mobile computing, businesses and governments are facing new challenges that extend to emerging mobile platforms or connect existing platforms with mobile computing environments. For example, the emergence of inexpensive remote-controlled aircraft (e.g., commercial quadcopters like the Parrot AR.Drone) in the market place for hobbyists and businesses has created new use cases and challenges in surveillance and security, property surveying, home and car showcasing, search-and-rescue operations, and entertainment. Such remote-controlled aircraft use cases are likely to operate in both urban and rural environments and will face degraded communication infrastructure and power management concerns while maintaining and respecting quality-of-service properties for information, especially in gaming and coordinated tasks in support of search-and-rescue crews, law enforcement, or other support needs. Other next generation mobile computing initiatives like the DARPA F6 program for fractionated satellites in space showcase extreme scenarios (e.g., the remoteness of space) where government, business, and commercial applications must operate on a robust, distributed mobile cloud infrastructure that functions and enforces security between application layers despite line-of-sight and power management issues and competition between priority-differentiated applications, data sources, and users of the system. These new systems complement and augment existing computing infrastructure, technologies and practices with new ways of interacting with users and mobile computing despite potential connectivity, power, and computing challenges.

In all of the described scenarios, hardware modifications may aid in increasing mobile computing efficiency under many conditions, but the software that manages the mobile computing infrastructure is just as important, if not more so, for moderating and controlling not only energy usage but also the management of priority inversion, security, privacy, task management, scheduling, and a host of other properties that are key to operating in reduced capacity environments or mission-critical scenarios. This issue of IEEE Software will be beneficial to all application developers and not just mobile computing engineers or users because 1) many of the problems and solutions in the mobile space are applicable to all software engineering, 2) smartphone sales have already eclipsed personal computer sales per quarter and mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablets will continue to gain market dominance, 3) it is becoming increasingly difficult for any service, device, or infrastructure to not interact with mobile computing infrastructure or devices.

IEEE Software seeks submission of articles that explore the next generation of mobile computing within the contexts of mission-critical scenarios, quality-of-service differentiation, and resource constraints. Specifically, we are particularly interested in the following topics:

- Tools and middleware that aid in the development of quality-of-service enabled or mission-critical applications—especially those that are readily extendable to mobile computing platforms
- Methodologies and foundations that enhance the state-of-the-art in mobile platforms and are targeted toward mission-critical or reduced capacity environments or quality-of-service
- Tools and techniques that bridge mobile computing to cloud computing in order to better service mobile application or infrastructure needs when connectivity becomes available
- Tools and techniques that connect disparate mobile computing platforms which require differentiation, prioritization, or other quality-of-service between them
- Real-time applications that showcase the next-generation of mobile computing needs for businesses, governmental agencies, first-responders, or other users with mission-critical needs
- Insights into the future of mobile computing that are backed up by current research or practice

Guest Editors

For more information about the focus, contact the guest editors:

James Edmondson, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute -- jredmondson@sei.cmu.edu
William Anderson, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
Joe Loyall, BBN
Jeff Gray, University of Alabama
Jules White, Virginia Tech
Klaus Schmid, University of Hildesheim

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts must not exceed 4,700 words including figures and tables, which count for 200 words each. Submissions in excess of these limits may be rejected without review. The articles deemed within the theme and scope of the special edition will be peer-reviewed and are subject to editing for magazine style, clarity, organization, and space. We reserve the right to edit the title of all submissions. Upon submitting your paper, be sure to include the name of the theme, or special issue, you are submitting to.

Articles should have a practical orientation and be written in a style accessible to practitioners. Overly complex, purely research-oriented or theoretical treatments are not appropriate. Articles should be novel and appropriate for a general viewing audience. If at all possible, please include general purpose motivations in your work and do not include more controversial ones such as military scenarios. IEEE Software does not republish material published previously in other venues, including other periodicals and formal conference/workshop proceedings, whether previous publication was in print or electronic form.

For full author guidelines: www.computer.org/software/author.htm

For submission details: software@computer.org

To submit an article: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sw-cs