Editors Foreword to the Special Issue on Principles of Mobile Communications and Computing

Abstract

This special issue collects seven papers presented at “ACM Dial M–POMC 2004,” officially The Joint Workshop on the Foundations of Mobile Computing. This is a satellite workshop of MobiCom, one of the major ACM conferences on mobile computing and communications. DIAL M–POMC is traditionally devoted to discrete algorithms, protocols, and modeling for mobile and wireless computing and communications. DIAL M–POMC 2004 was the first joint conference resulting from the merging of two workshops: “Dial M for Mobility” and “Principles of Mobile Computing (POMC).” The new Dial M–POMC inherited its focus on algorithmic and theoretical aspects of mobility for computing and communications from these parent meetings. The seven papers in this special issue offer a broad overview of the different areas where mobile computing has recently expanded, emphasizing new achievements and perspectives in the field of mobile ad hoc and wireless sensor networks. The first three papers give results primarily for mobile ad hoc networks, the last three give results for sensor networks, and the middle paper applies to both types of networks. These networks have no support from a fixed infrastructure. They are highly dynamic, with topologies changing due to mobility, node failures, etc. Furthermore, nodes must function with constrained resources, especially limited battery power. Some research is this area, such as the first paper in this special issue, does consider ad hoc networking in its most powerful form. These multi-hop networks have