This Special Issue of Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (ALOG) is devoted to analog, digital and mixed-signal topics from the IEEE International NEWCAS conference, held in Paris (France) on June 16–19, 2013. It gathers extended versions of selected papers covering a wide variety of subjects including analog & RF circuit design, digital and mixed-signal integrated circuits, computer architecture, signal processing, sensors, encompassing a broad range of applications such as telecommunications, imaging and vision, safety, energy and biomedical.

The major areas of circuits and systems covered by NEWCAS 2013 drew 247 submissions from 35 countries spanning the globe. After a rigorous review process involving 803 submitted reviews, 115 contributions were accepted for presentation. For the second time, the low acceptance rate of 43 % was fulfilled at NEWCAS. This accomplishment fits well the general trend of high and yet increasing quality of the conference, which has been inspired this year by the vision of the NEWCAS2013 General Chairs, Prof. Patrick Loumeau and Prof. Mohamad Sawan.

Among the published contributions in the NEWCAS2013 proceedings, a pre-selection of the 21 papers with the best reviews was made and the authors were invited for submission to this Special Issue. We received 12 extended manuscripts and after the review process, eight papers have been accepted for publication. Selecting eight papers among 247 submissions was a critical task and can’t be all-perfect. We are aware that we probably missed many excellent contributions; still, we did our best to put together a Special Issue as complete and representative as possible.

The technical program of NEWCAS 2013 is the result of a truly international cooperation of experts. We feel very much indebted to the Technical Program Committee for its invaluable work and for giving us the opportunity to organize this prestigious IEEE conference in Paris. We would like to thank the authors for their scientific contributions, and the numerous reviewers for their constructive evaluations. We really enjoyed interacting with them; they really made this journey exciting. We are grateful to Professor Mohammed Ismail, Editor-in-chief of Springer ALOG, for his invitation to guest edit this Special issue. We also express our deep appreciation of the efforts by the Springer personnel to make this Special issue possible, thanks to their expert help.