Embedded Software Design

The Journal of Systems Architecture: Embedded Software Design (JSA) is a journal covering all design and architectural aspects related to embedded systems and software. It ranges from the microarchitecture level via the system software level up to the application-specific architecture level. Aspects such as real-time systems, operating systems, programming languages, communications (limited to analysis and the software stack), mobile systems, parallel and distributed architectures as well as additional subjects in the computer and system architecture area will fall within the scope of this journal. Technology will not be a main focus, but its use and relevance to particular designs will be. Case studies are welcome but must contribute more than just a design for a particular piece of software.

Design automation of such systems including methodologies, techniques and tools for their design as well as novel designs of software components fall within the scope of this journal. Novel applications that use embedded systems are also central in this journal. While JSA does not focus on hardware design, hardware/software co-design techniques with an emphasis on software are also relevant here.

Reproducibility Badge Initiative and Software Publication

Reproducibility Badge Initiative (RBI) is a collaboration with Code Ocean (CO), a cloud based computational reproducibility platform that helps the community by enabling sharing of code and data as a resource for non-commercial use. CO verifies the submitted code (and data) and certifies its reproducibility. Code submission will be verified by the Code Ocean team for computational reproducibility by making sure it runs, delivers results and it is self-contained. For more information please visit this help article . Note that an accepted paper will be published independently of the CO application outcome. However, if the paper receives the Reproducibility badge, it will be given additional exposure by having an attached R Badge, and by being citable at the CO website with a DOI.

Special Issue on Security and Privacy in AIoT-enabled Smart Society
Submission Date: 2025-04-01

Guest editors:

Associate Prof. Qin Liu 
Hunan University, Changsha, China

Prof. Kouichi Sakurai
Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

Prof. Richard Hill 
University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK

Associate Prof. Wenjia Li
UK New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, USA

Special issue information:

In a smart society, numerous artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) communicate and collaborate to improve our quality of life. Both artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of things (IoT) are foundational technologies that have been interacting with each other to realize a smart life. As massive amounts of sensitive data are generated, processed, and exchanged through IoT devices and AI technologies, one of the fundamental problems is how to provide intelligent services in smart society without compromising security and privacy.

This special issue aims to bring together researchers and practitioners in IoT, AI, and network security, to share their novel ideas and latest findings in relation to security and privacy in AIoT-enabled smart society. The scope and interestsfor the special issue include, but are not limited to, the following list:

    Secure IoT infrastructure for smart society​
    Secure smart society applications, including secure AI-driven IoT applications
    Authentication and access control in IoT-enabled smart society
    Intrusion detection for IoT-enabled smart society
    Architectures and standards for secure IoT systems
    AI and big data techniques for IoT-enabled secure smart society
    Blockchain technology for IoT-enabled secure smart society
    Secure multi-party computation techniques for ML
    Security optimization in heterogeneous environments
    AI-driven mechanisms and models to perform attacks
    Security and privacy issues in AI-enabled IoT communications and systems
    Privacy-preserving ML
    Privacy-preserving data mining
    Privacy and anonymity techniques for IoT and AI
    Data privacy in AIoT-enabled smart society
    Privacy preserving techniques for IoT-enabled smart society
    Privacy modeling and analysis for IoT-enabled smart society
    Miscellaneous privacy issues in AIoT-enabled smart society

Manuscript submission information:

Important Dates

Submissions Deadline: April 1, 2025
First-round pass notification: April 15, 2025
Review result notification: June 1, 2025
Acceptance/rejection: August 30, 2025
Publication: 2nd Quarter 2025

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