Embedded and ubiquitous computing is an exciting new paradigm that provides computing and communication services all the time and everywhere. Its systems are now affecting every aspect of our life to the point that they are hidden inside various appliances. This emergence is a natural outcome of research and technological advances in embedded systems, pervasive computing and communications, wireless networks, mobile computing, distributed computing and agent technologies, etc.

This special issue has collected best papers presented in the 2007 IFIP International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC 2007), held in Taipei, Taiwan, ROC. These papers present state of the art in the areas of real-time and embedded software, power-aware hardware management, network security, embedded compiler techniques, mobility and security in advanced wireless networks, and data crawling.

Best papers in the EUC 2007 conference were invited for submission. All the invited papers had undergone an intensive review process. The Editor-in-Chief agreed with our recommendation of the acceptance of eleven high quality papers.

The first four papers focus on software techniques in embedded and ubiquitous systems. The first paper, entitled “Task Scheduling for Context Minimization in Dynamically Reconfigurable Platforms”, by Nei-Chiung Perng et al. describes a real-time approach to reducing the number of FPGA configuration contexts in dynamic reconfigurable systems. The second paper, entitled “Real-Time Embedded Software Design for Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems” by Pao-Ann Hsiung et al., describes a component-based software architecture that supports automatic synthesis and verification, aiming at high software design productivity. The third paper, entitled “SIGMA system: A Multi-OS Environment for Embedded Systems”, by Wataru Kanda et al., introduces a virtualization technique to support multiple operating systems for multi-processor embedded architectures. The fourth paper, entitled “Compiling for Reduced Bit-Width Queue Processors” by Arquimedes Canedo et al., presents a compiler technique for generating compact codes for embedded processors.

The next three papers are on hardware management for embedded and ubiquitous computing. The fifth paper in this special issue, entitled “Energy-Efficient Considerations on a Variable-Bitrate PCI-Express Device”, by Jian-Jia Chen et al., presents a dynamic power management (DPM) algorithm for variable-bitrate PCI devices for power saving. The sixth paper, entitled “Design and Synthesis of An Multiprocessor System-on-Chip Architecture for Real-Time Biomedical Signal Processing in Gamma Cameras”, by Kai Sun et al., discusses communication synthesis and area-cost reduction for an MPSOC Gamma Camera. The seventh paper, entitled “Variable Length Pattern Matching for Hardware Network Intrusion Detection System”, by Chun Xue et al., presents a high-performance hardware-based network intrusion detection system.

The last four papers are related to wireless-network applications. The eighth paper in this special issue, entitled “A Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Low-Cost RFID” by Hung-Yu Chien et al., proposes a lightweight authentication protocol for low-cost RFID devices, aiming at reducing time of search the authentication database. The ninth paper, entitled “Analyze the Performance of the Cyclic Indexing Schemes for the Wireless Data Broadcast” by Long-Sheng Li et al., proposes a tuning-time measurement method and a indexing algorithm for wireless broadcast subject to the reduction of network-device power consumption. The tenth paper, entitled “An Evaluation Study of Mobility Support in ZigBee Networks”, by Ling-Jyh Chen, investigates the inadequacies of existing mobility-handling methods for ZigBee networks. The eleventh paper, entitled “Finding and Extracting Data Records from Web Pages” by Manuel Álvarez et al., presents a crawling algorithm for structured HTML pages.