As computing and communication capabilities become both faster and cheaper, we can expect to find them embedded in diverse objects and structures in the physical environment, providing the basis for applications which link the “cyber-world” of computing and communications with the physical world and have the potential for enormous social and economic impact. These applications, which are the foundation of cyber-physical systems (CPS), are necessarily enabled by “internet of things” (IoT) architectures and protocols. This combination of IoT and CPS facilitates the collection, management and processing of large datasets, and the support of complex processes to manage and control physical systems at different scales.

In particular, mobile IoT/CPS is concerned with the provision of IoT-enabled CPS for mobile objects and devices. Mobile internet devices, such as the iPhone and Android phones, with their increasing processing power, range of sensors, and pervasive cellular connections, already provide ubiquitous platforms for building robust, reliable, and secure mobile IoT/CPS applications. The objective of this special issue is to contribute to the direction of research on mobile IoT/CPS by addressing issues critical to mobility, from advances in the underlying science to the challenges of development and implementation.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Enabling location-based services (LBS) in IoT/CPS
• Customized wireless, mobile, and IoT technologies for CPS
• Mobile devices and embedded software platforms for cyber-physical computing
• Physical sensing, cyber computation and decision, and mobile actuation in CPS
• Examining the state-of-the-art analytical techniques for performance evaluation of mobile IoT/CPS
• Energy-efficient design for green IT
• Real-time control, computing and cloud-based mobile IoT/CPS
• Emerging mobile applications of IoT/CPS: mobile healthcare, transportation, automation, smart grid, location intelligence, smart cities, ubiquitous information systems, and data ontologies
• Empirical case studies in mobile IoT/CPS for demonstrating their potentials
• Exploring authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and privacy issues in mobile IoT/CPS
• Architecture issues and design tools for mobile IoT/CPS