Special Issue on AI-Driven Real-Time Distributed Computing for the Edge-Cloud Continuum Submission Date: 2025-10-30 Guest editors:

Daniel Casini, PhD

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy

Pascal Berthou, PhD

University of Toulouse III, UPS, CNRS-LAAS Toulouse, France

Mustafa Al Lail, PhD

Texas A&M International University, Laredo, TX, USA

AKRAM HAKIRI, PhD

University of Pau & Pays de l’Adour, France

Aniruddha S Gokhale, PhD

Vanderbilt University, USA

Thierry Gayraud, PhD

LAAS-CNRS, University of Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, France

Special issue information:

The widespread evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as autonomous systems, smart cities, and industrial automation, have significantly altered the landscape of real-time distributed computing. These advancements lay the foundation for future innovations toward ensuring system performance, dependability, testability, reliability, flexibility, scalability, and autonomous computing. These ilities are particularly important as we move toward 2030, where themes such as AI-driven networks, 6G connectivity, massive twining, metaverse, self-autonomous robots, and smart autonomous systems demand robust, real-time processing and intelligent decision-making across a distributed network infrastructure.

This special issue solicits high-quality papers pertaining to all aspects of objects, components, service-oriented real-time and distributed computing technology that address the growing challenges of real-time distributed computing, particularly through case studies and applications that demonstrate the efficacy of proposed methods in real-world distributed systems, to meet the demands of next-generation edge AI-enabled IoT applications such as autonomous vehicles, smart cities, intelligent transportation systems, industrial automation systems and industry 4.0, smart grids, avionics, spatial, under-water, autonomous vehicles, consumer electronics, multimedia processing, etc. with an emphasis on scalability, security, and integration with modern technologies. The specific SI focus areas include, but are not limited to:

Distributed and/or Real-Time Image, video, and Stream Processing

Emerging Next-Gen Software-Defined Embedded Systems and Networks

Federated Learning, TinyML, Edge ML, Generative AI, and Fog Computing

Real-Time Data Analytics, Management, and Monitoring

Middleware, Cloud Connectivity, and Microservices

DevOps for Distributed Real-time Computing

Optimization Algorithms, metaheuristics, and graphs for Edge-Cloud continuum

Sustainable and Green Computing Transformation

Formal Methods, Verification, and Model Checking

Ontology-based Knowledge Modeling

Dependability, Fault tolerance, and Resilience

AI/ML Algorithms for Real-Time Analytics

Operating Systems, Middleware, and System software and Software architectures

Blockchain and Security Enhancements

Digital Twins for Distributed and/or Real-Time IoT Systems and Applications

Manuscript submission information:

Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts following The Journal of Systems Architecture (JSA) guidelines. Details can be found at: Guide for authors - Journal of Systems Architecture.

Solicited original submissions must not be currently under consideration for publication in other venues. All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted through the Submission site for Journal of Systems Architecture. Please select the “VSI:AI4ORC” option as article type of the paper.

All submissions deemed suitable by the editors to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Once your manuscript is accepted, it will go into production to be published in the special issue.

The special issue anticipates receiving extended papers from the IEEE ISORC 2025 conference.

Manuscript Submission Deadline: October 30, 2025