Editorial

Citation

Khalil, I. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Vol. 8 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpcc.2012.36108daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Volume 8, Issue 4

Five papers are included in this issue. The first paper “QoS-aware and autonomic-oriented multi-path TCP extensions for mobile and multimedia applications” by Diop et al. applies autonomic computing technologies in order to provide a high QoS in mobile and multimedia applications. Different QoS-aware mechanisms were introduced and the results were evaluated. The semantic ontology-based model, which is proposed in this article, allows the classification and clear definition of the semantics of the different QoS-oriented mechanisms that have been proposed for MPTCP. This ontology is to be used by the autonomic manager during the decision process step.

The second paper “Empirical analysis of query-based data aggregation within WSN through Monte Carlo simulation” by Habib and Marimuthu suggests a query-based aggregation within Monte Carlo simulator to explore the best and worst possible query orders to aggregate the sensors’ data at the base stations of WSN. The proposed query-based aggregation model will help the network administrator to envisage the best query orders in improving the performance of the base stations under uncertain query ordering. The results of this research demonstrated that the query-based aggregation scheme shows a better trade-off in maximizing the aggregating efficiency and also reducing the average idle-time experienced by the individual sensor. The query-based aggregation model has been tested for a WSN containing 25 sensors with single sensing parameter, transmitting data to a base station; moreover, the simulation results show continuous improvement in best-case performances from 56 to 96 per cent in the time interval of 80-200 time units.

The third paper “Towards mobile cloud applications: offloading resource-intensive tasks to hybrid clouds” by Flores et al. addresses the problem of using cloud services in mobile applications. The paper proposed a generic middleware framework for providing hybrid mobile cloud services. The architecture of the MCM is explained along with the asynchronous mechanisms, using third party push notification services (AC2DM and APNS) and the mobile host. A detailed analysis of the framework is provided with the study of two application scenarios. From the performance analysis of the applications, it is clear that MCM shows reasonable performance levels of interaction with users, thus validating the proof of concept. To demonstrate the horizontal scaling of the MCM, a scalability analysis is presented. The results show that MCM is horizontally scalable and can be used to handle reasonable loads with significant ease.

The fourth paper “Unstructured queries based on mobile user context” by Xue et al. deals with context-based query systems by proposing an unstructured context query processing framework for mobile services that is used to allow users to issue context-based queries to find content that was previously accessed on his mobile device, in which context refers to the various types of mobile context data available on the device, and to provide elegant form-based and single-box search interfaces for the user specification of unstructured context queries.

The last paper “Quality-centric soft admission control for video delivery over cognitive radio networks” by Goudarzi introduces a quality-centric soft admission control scheme for video delivery over cognitive radio networks based on fuzzy logic which takes users’ perception into account for admitting newly arrived users. The simulation results performs better than traditional methods like I-SMIRA and S-SIAC and proves to be very useful in QoE scalable applications such as mobile TV.

This issue concludes the eighth year of IJPCC which has served a large community of researchers and academics around the world with the highest quality articles in the timely and important field of pervasive computing which represents the new era of computing every time, every where, by all means.

Taking this opportunity, we would like to thank all the authors, referees, and the journal new editorial board for their contributions and valuable comments on this issue. We would like to also thank the publishers Wendy Lynch and Catriona Gelder for their continuous support, advice, and hard work.

Ismail KhalilEditor-in-Chief