IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS,
VOL. 13,
NO. 9,
SEPTEMBER 2002
865
Guest Editors’ Introduction to Special Section on Mobile Computing and Wireless Networks Stephan Olariu and Koji Nakano
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recent years, the areas of mobile computing and wireless networks have seen explosive growth both in terms of the number of services provided and the types of technologies that have become available. Indeed, cellular telephony, radio paging, cellular data, and even rudimentary cellular multimedia services have become commonplace and the demand for enhanced capabilities will continue to grow into the foreseeable future. It is anticipated that, in the not-so-distant future, mobile users will be able to access their data and other services, such as electronic mail, video telephony, stock market news, map services, electronic banking, while on the move. Already today, there are more portable phones than computers connected to the Internet. However, the trend toward the Internet with its protocols around IP as the common basis for all communication applications seems to be quite clear. The stated goal of this special section was to provide a forum for the most recent results on a broad range of topics of relevance to mobile computing and wireless networks. The intention was to offer both researchers and practitioners working in this area an opportunity to express their views on the current trends, challenges, and state-of-art solutions to various problems in this important area. In response to the Call for Papers, we received 59 submissions from all over the world, leading to a truly international competition. The manuscripts underwent a very rigorous, peer review process. Each paper was sent to at least five referees. Based on the referee reports, a total of eight papers were selected for inclusion in the special section. The final result is truly remarkable: The special section of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems on Mobile Computing and Wireless Networks is an outstanding collection of papers on various aspects of mobile computing, wireless networks, and their applications. We take this opportunity to thank all the authors for their submissions. We are indebted to all the referees who have put in the hard work and the long hours to review each paper in a timely and professional way. N
Stephan Olariu received the MSc and PhD degrees in computer science from McGill University, Montreal, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. In 1986, he joined the Computer Science Department at Old Dominion University, where he is now a full professor. He has published extensively in various journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His research interests include wireless networks and mobile computing, parallel and distributed systems, performance evaluation, and medical image processing. Dr. Olariu serves on the editorial boards of several archival journals including the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, Journal of Supercomputing, International Journal of Computer Mathematics, VLSI Design, and Parallel Algorithms and Applications. Koji Nakano received the BE, ME, and PhD degrees from Osaka University, Japan, in 1987, 1989, and 1992, respectively. In 1992-1995, he was a research scientist at the Advanced Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd. He worked in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology until 2001. He is currently an associate professor with the School of Information Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He has published papers in the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Theoretical Computer Science, Theory of Computing Systems, Parallel Algorithms and Applications, and IEICE Transactions. He has served as an editor of the Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, and International Journal of Foundations on Computer Science. He has served as a program chair and committee member of conferences and workshops including the International Conference on Parallel Processing, Workshop on Advances in Parallel and Distributed Computational Models, Workshop on Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, and Reconfigurable Architecture Workshop. His research interests include mobile computing, hardware algorithms, reconfigurable computing, parallel algorithms and architectures, computational complexity, and graph theory.
Stephan Olariu Koji Nakano Guest Editors . S. Olariu is with the Department of Computer Science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529-0162. E-mail:
[email protected]. . K. Nakano is with the School of Information Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Tatsunokuchi, Ishikawa, 923-1292, Japan. E-mail:
[email protected]. For information on obtaining reprints of this article, please send e-mail to:
[email protected], and reference IEEECS Log Number 116304. 1045-9219/02/$17.00 ß 2002 IEEE
