## Welcome Message from the General Chair of WiMob'2021

# Welcome Message from the General Chair

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 17th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob'2021). I would have liked to have host you as initially planned in the city of Bologna, the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. But, unfortunately, with the Covid-19 outbreak, IEEE ComSoc and WiMob 2021 Organizing Committee decided to have it as you know virtually. So, I hope it will be for next time! Since the 1st WiMob in 2005, the IEEE International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications has been the key forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience among researchers, developers and practitioners of wireless and mobile technology. For fifteen years, the International IEEE WiMob conference has provided unique opportunities for researchers and developers to interact, share new results, show live demonstrations, and discuss emerging directions in Wireless Communications, Mobile Networking and Ubiquitous Computing. Putting together WiMob 2021 has been a team effort. First of all, we would like to thank the authors of all submitted papers. Furthermore, we would like to express our gratitude to the program committee and to all external reviewers, who worked very hard on reviewing papers and providing suggestions for their improvements. The technical program of the main conference consists of 36 full-papers constituting 35% of acceptance ratio and 6 short papers and 1 invited paper. Moreover, we are proud and thankful of having 2 renowned keynote speakers at the 2021 edition of WiMob: - Professor Xavier Costa-Pérez from NEC Laboratories Europe and - Professor Mohamed-Slim Alouini from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). We would also like to thank the organizers of all workshops organized jointly with WiMob 2021:

- 8th International Workshop on Cooperative Wireless Networks (CWN'21): Cristina López Bravo (Universidade de Vigo, Spain) leading the workshop with Pablo Fondo Ferreiro (Universidade de Vigo, Spain), David Candal Ventureira, Universidade de Vigo, Spain) and Antonio Javier García Sánchez (Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Spain).
- 9th international workshop on e-Health Pervasive Wireless Applications and Services (eHPWAS'21): Tayeb Lemlouma (IRISA Lab and Rennes 1 University, France) leading the workshop with Sébastien Laborie (Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, France), Abderrezak Rachedi (University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France) and Yevgeniya Kovalchuk (Birmingham City University, United Kingdom).
- 14th International Workshop on Selected Topics in Wireless and Mobile computing (STWiMob 2021): Anna Maria Vegni (Roma Tre University, Italy) and Abderrahim Benslimane (University of Avignon, France). We would like to thank our General co-chair Laurence T. Yang (St Francis Xavier University, Canada) for his support. Also, we would like to thank as well as our Executive chair Anna Maria Vegni (Roma Tre University, Italy) for the strong help in the management of the entire conference. Our thanks also go to the Symposium chairs: Pietro Manzoni (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain), Hassan Artail (American University of Beirut, Lebanon), Kuan Zhang (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA), Hongwei Li (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China), Valeria Loscri (INRIA, France) and Simone Silvestri (University of Kentucky, USA). Without the help of the publicity co-chairs WiMob will not have had such a success; so, many thanks to Marica Amadeo (Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy), Zhangyu Guan (University at Buffalo, USA), Aman Singh (Lovely Professional University, India), Kamal Singh (University of Saint-Etienne, France), Wen Sun (Northwestern Polytechnical University, China) and De-Nian Yang (Academia Sinica, Taiwan). Also, we would like to thank Laura Galluccio (University of Catania, Italy) and Kurz Marc (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria) for handling all aspects of the workshops start-up. We present a great thanks to Nguyen Minh Huong (University of Science and Technology of Hanoi, Vietnam) as a publication chair. Even if the conference is being held virtually, we would like to present our sincere thanks to Armir Bujari from University of Bologna, Italy where the conference could have taken place after he negotiated with the hotel all the logistics. Finally, we would like to thank our technical sponsors IEEE and IEEE Communications Society for endorsing the conference. We hope that you will find this program interesting and thought-provoking and that it will provide you with a valuable opportunity to share ideas with other researchers and practitioners from institutions around the world.

Abderrahim Benslimane WiMob 2021 General Chair University of Avignon, France