Guest editorial

Citation

Fu, X., Guo, J. and Cao, J. (2010), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Vol. 6 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpcc.2010.36106baa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Volume 6, Issue 2.

Ubiquitous computing integrates computing technology into the environment so that invisible computers are connected together to support our everyday lives. Embedding computation into the environment and everyday objects enables people to move around and interact with information and computing more naturally and casually than they currently do. This emergent technology is the natural result of research and technological advances in wireless and sensor networks, embedded systems, mobile computing, distributed computing, agent technologies, autonomic computing and communication.

Efficient and effective ubiquitous networking will ultimately lead to ubiquitous intelligence, the computational intelligence pervasion in both the physical world and cyber world. For this goal, we are concerned with using ubiquitous intelligence in the right place, at the right time and by right means. This vision of ubiquitous intelligence will greatly reform our world to create a smart world filled with a variety of real and virtual things ranging from software to hardware, man-made artifacts to natural objects, everyday appliances to sophisticated systems, small rooms to large buildings, enclosed sites to open spaces, stationary places to moveable vehicles, etc.

This is a special issue on Advances in ubiquitous networking and intelligent systems; 20 submissions were received in total. All the submissions were carefully reviewed again and five papers were finally selected, based on their quality and suitability to the special issue as well as the journal. The selected papers address various aspects of ubiquitous networking and ubiquitous intelligence.

The first paper in this special issue, titled “Intelligent learning agent for collaborative virtual workspace” is presented by Shakshuki and Rafey Matin. The authors describe the learning agent that has the ability to monitor a user's actions and predicts the future actions of the user using genetic algorithms (GA) and the reinforcement learning algorithm (RA). To show the feasibility of this agent, a prototype of the agent is implemented and demonstrated. Furthermore, a comparison of performance is made based on the accuracy of predictions, processing time and memory utilized. The experimental results show that the combination of GA and RA provides the agent with a better learning capability resulting in better predictions for the user.

The second paper “A simple probabilistic analysis of sensor data fluctuations in the real world” by Hiramatsu et al. focuses on sensor data fluctuations in the real world and examines the change and co-change probabilities and entropy with the aim of improving the behavior of context-aware applications. These measurements can help find previously unnoticed real-world situations in an environment and to reconsider envisioned situations that are not well captured.

Wu et al. in the paper “An improved method of task context switching in OSEK operating system” present an improved method of the task context switching in the OSEK real time operating system. By dividing the ready state of task into intermediate state and initial state, the authors optimize the process of task context switching. The time cost of context switching is decreased and the efficiency of real time operating system is enhanced.

Takahashi and Kinoshita focus on the quality of service (QoS) issue in component-based systems. In the paper “A behavioral characteristics model for a flexible distributed system,” they propose the flexible distributed system (FDS) Model and its behavioral characteristic model (BCM) as new models for observing and controlling the behavior of a QoS-aware multiagent system in a domain of multimedia communication services. Using these two models, a multiagent system was created with flexible QoS control capabilities that can process the changes of the system's operational situations correctly to maintain the required QoS as well as its behavioral characteristics. Moreover, to evaluate the effects of the proposed scheme, they apply these models to a network middleware constructed as a QoS-aware agent organization. Experimental results show that the proposed models provide an effective scheme for the designers of multimedia communication services.

The last paper, by Durresi et al., is titled “Ubiquitous QoS communications using scalable satellite networking.” The authors focus on enabling QoS and scalable solutions offered by satellite networks to various applications and traffics, especially those of remote aggregated sensor networks. They propose a new Diffserv-based scheme of IP bandwidth allocation during congestion, called proportional allocation of bandwidth (PAB). In the PAB scheme, the bandwidth is allocated in proportion to the subscribed information rate (SIR) of the competing flows. Without per-flow state maintenance, they implement PAB using multiple token buckets to label the packets at the edge of the network and multilevel threshold queue at the satellite routers to discard packets during congestion. The labels are associated with fractions and each label corresponds to a fraction of the SIR of a flow.

Taking this opportunity, we would like to thank all authors for submitting papers to the special issue, and the referees for giving valuable comments, which are very important for authors to further revise their papers and keep them in good quality. Finally, we would like to thank the Editor in Chief, Dr Laurence T. Yang, for giving us the opportunity to publish this special issue and for his continued support and helpful guidance throughout the stages of preparing this special issue.

Xinwen Fu, Jinhua Guo and Jiannong CaoGuest Editors