Editorial

Citation

Khalil, I. (2011), "Editorial", International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Vol. 7 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpcc.2011.36107caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Volume 7, Issue 3

In recent issues of International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, we have embarked on a program to have survey papers in the form of state-of-the-art review, general review or a conceptual paper on the latest developments of pervasive computing and communication by experts in the field.

The survey paper in this issue, by Franco Zambonelli and Mirko Viroli (Italy), is on nature-inspired metaphors for pervasive service ecosystems. It introduces and critically analyzes a number of natural metaphors that can be adopted to realize adopting a nature-inspired approach, where pervasive services are modeled and deployed as autonomous entities in an ecosystem of other services, data sources, and pervasive devices. This survey, along with the proposed reference architecture, can be effective starting points towards the definition and implementation of general-purpose nature-inspired pervasive service ecosystems.

The regular paper section contains four papers. The first paper, by Sami J. Habib, and Paulvanna N. Marimuthu (Kuwait), addresses the problem of the exposure and over-utilized sensors in harsh environment, which led some wireless sensors to fail to cover the service area effectively and efficiently, by proposing a novel framework to restore the coverage of the failed sensors by doubling the sensing area of the neighbourhood sensors, and it utilizes an optimization scheme to search for neighbourhood sensors with maximal energy to improve the life span of the network.

The second paper, by Harald Wahl, Werner Winiwarter and Gerald Quirchmayr (Austria), focuses on developing an integrated e-learning environment that allows improving language skills in specific contexts – a web-based solution that performs language-learning tasks using common working environments like, for instance, web browsers or e-mail clients. It should be accessible on different platforms, even on mobile devices. Natural language processing forms the technological basis for developing such a learning framework. The paper also gives an overview of the state-of-the-art in this area.

The third paper, by Marco Picone, Michele Amoretti, and Francesco Zanichelli (Italy), introduces a general framework called distributed geographic table (DGT), which defines a peer-to-peer strategy for mobile node localization, and supports applications in which every node requires to be constantly updated about the location of its neighbors.

The performance analysis of DGT simulates several 1,000 users that move across an urban area according to realistic mobility models. The results show that the solution is effective, robust, scalable, and highly adaptable to different application scenarios.

The final paper in this issue, by Ronan Fox, James Cooley, and Manfred Hauswirth (Ireland), describes how Sqwelch, a semantically enabled mashup maker, enables the composition of mashups based on the concept of trust explicitly specified by users through a visual interface. Taxonomies are used to enable lightweight mediation of payloads delivered through a publish/subscribe mechanism.

The prototype enables users to discover, compose, share, and collaborate in the day-to-day use of systems that match personalized requirements.

I would like to thank the authors who contributed their papers to this issue and the external reviewers who actively reviewed and provided constructive comments to the authors.

Ismail KhalilEditor-in-Chief