Mission-critical systems—those whose failure could result in loss of life, significant property damage, or catastrophic disruption—are foundational to modern society. These include domains such as healthcare, emergency response, industrial automation, aerospace, defense, and critical infrastructure. The reliability, responsiveness, and resilience of such systems are paramount, and their evolution increasingly depends on intelligent sensing, real-time decision-making, and context-aware operation. Pervasive computing, with its emphasis on embedded intelligence, contextual responsiveness, and seamless integration with physical environments, offers compelling opportunities to strengthen the capabilities and robustness of mission-critical systems. Through distributed sensing, edge computing, secure communication, and adaptive interfaces, pervasive systems can support continuous monitoring, predictive maintenance, situational awareness, and rapid human-machine collaboration under high-stakes conditions. At the same time, introducing pervasive computing into mission-critical environments raises new challenges in system dependability, real-time performance, safety certification, and trust. The integration of these technologies must contend with constraints such as latency, security, fault tolerance, and operational autonomy—often under extreme environmental or regulatory conditions.
This special issue invites contributions that examine the intersection of pervasive computing and mission-critical systems—including both technical innovations and critical evaluations. We seek work that explores how pervasive approaches can enhance the performance, resilience, and safety of mission-critical operations, while also confronting the unique constraints they impose.
We invite original and high-quality submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:
We also welcome papers addressing any aspect of this field, provided that the connection to pervasive computing is central and clear. Review or summary articles offering critical evaluations of the state of the art or in-depth analyses of emerging technologies will also be considered if they demonstrate academic rigor and relevance.
Articles submitted to IEEE Pervasive Computing should not exceed 6,000 words, including all text, the abstract, keywords, bibliography, biographies, and table text. The word count must include 250 words for each table and figure. References should be limited to at most 20 citations (40 for survey papers). Authors are encouraged, but not required, to use a template for submission (accepted articles will ultimately be typeset by magazine staff for publication).
For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, please visit the Author Information Page. Please submit papers through the IEEE Author Portal, and be sure to select the special-issue name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal. Abstracts should be sent by email to the guest editors directly.
In addition to submitting your paper to IEEE Pervasive Computing, you are also encouraged to upload the data related to your paper to IEEE DataPort. IEEE DataPort is IEEE’s data platform that supports the storage and publishing of datasets while also providing access to thousands of research datasets. Uploading your dataset to IEEE DataPort will strengthen your paper and will support research reproducibility. Your paper and the dataset can be linked, providing a good opportunity for you to increase the number of citations you receive. Data can be uploaded to IEEE DataPort prior to submitting your paper or concurrent with the paper submission. Thank you!
Contact the guest editors at pvc4-2026@computer.org
IEEE Pervasive Computing always welcomes submissions into its regular queue that cover the role of computing in the physical world – as characterized by visions such as the Internet of Things and ubiquitous computing. Topics of interest include hardware design, sensor networks, mobile systems, human-computer interaction, industrial design, machine learning, and data science, as well as societal issues including privacy and ethics. Please read the Author Information page before submitting. Simply select the “Regular” option when submitting at the submission site (submissions are possible at any time; no need for prior abstract by email).
