A heartbeat. That is what multimedia represents for any mobile system. Text, audio, images and videos are of a paramount importance for all kinds of users, and are hugely transmitted over mobile networks. Also, transition from 3rd generation (3G) to 4th generation (4G) and eminently to 5th generation (5G) raises hopes for better multimedia content transmission in terms of quality, bandwidth, delay and error rate. However, fulfilling these requirements not depends only on the mobile communication infrastructure, but also on the media content itself. Encoding, compression, modeling and, more generally, representation of the multimedia content is a milestone and key component of a successful user experience.

The aim of MICARE (MultImedia Content Analysis, and REpresentation) special session is to highlight the problems and challenges of multimedia content analysis, and to bring together researchers in the field of signal (image, audio, video, ...) processing along with researchers in the fields of mobile communication and wireless networks to discuss, exchange ideas and broaden their respective scopes.