Embedded systems for mobile crowd sensing networks

Rapid developments in mobile intelligent terminal chip system and embedded sensor technology in the recent years have led academia and industry to invest in the research and study of Mobile Crowd Sensing Networks (MCSN). The mobile crowd sensing paradigm has emerged as mobile devices are integrated with more and more embedded sensors and are becoming ever more pervasive, introducing a human- and mobility-centric approach to fine-grained sensing. This new paradigm takes advantage of mobile devices to collect data in a distributed and crowd-sourced manner, enabling numerous largescale applications. From sensing cellular network coverage to carbon-dioxide monitoring in cities, from traffic monitoring to the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile crowd sensing offers unprecedented opportunities. In this regard, MCSN is a key technology in future generation networks and plays an important role in the advancement of embedded system technology. However, the integration of embedded systems into mobile crowd sensing networks should be well orchestrated to address the many technical challenges such as: the design of the embedded devices on mobile terminals, also taking into consideration the competition, mobile data collection algorithms (with respect to crowdsourcing models), incentive mechanisms and modes of cooperation, processing of data for embedded systems applications, and the intelligent crowd sensing platforms. This special issue focuses on recent advances in theory and key technologies of embedded systems for Mobile Crowd Sensing Networks. Original, unpublished contributions and invited articles, reflecting various aspects of mobile multimedia cloud computing are encouraged.