Mobile and Wireless Computing towards Sustainable and Ubiquitous Clouds Services

Abstract

The ever-growing cloud computing and services provide dynamic intelligence and play an increasingly critical role in all aspects of our lives. By taking advantage of virtualized resources, cloud computing services presents an attractive means to address the challenges while realizing the potential of Mobile and Wireless Computing (MWC). The MWC paradigm can be generalized to include mobile devices, which not only incorporate sophisticated methods for users to interact with the online world through numerous applications in their devices, but are endowed with multiple sensors that enable them to contribute data as nodes in the IoT. In this context, mobile cloud services that enable widespread data collection through mobile devices and collaborative use of mobile devices to enhance existing and realize new applications are very much of interest. As such, the MWC has come to the picture seeking solutions for computing and IT infrastructures to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly. This special issue is in response to the increasing convergence between MWC and cloud services, while different approaches exist, challenges and opportunities are numerous in this context. The research papers selected for this special issue represent recent progresses in the field, including works on services computing and modeling, mobile cloud, U-Care cloud, vehicle networks, energy-aware architectures, and wireless sensor network technologies and applications. This special issue includes four extended version of the selected paper originally presented at the 17th Mobile Computing Workshop (MC 2012) and the 8th Workshop on Wireless, Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks (WASN 2012), held at Taipei, Taiwan; one extended version of the selected paper originally presented at the 4th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (IEEE CloudCom 2012), held at Taipei, Taiwan; and one regular submission with 20% average acceptance rate for 2012 submissions in IJGHPC. The papers selected for this issue not only contribute valuable insights and results but also have particular relevance to the mobile, wireless and cloud computing community. All of them present high quality results for tackling problems arising from the ever-growing mobile and cloud services. We believe that this special issue provides novel ideas and state-of-the-art techniques in the field, and stimulates future research in the mobile and wireless services in clouds.