Years ago, the simple need for goods (food, clothes, tools, and medicines) was the main concern for the majority of people, and the quality of such goods was a minor issue. However, as economic growth provides ever more people with the surplus income to choose and, more importantly, improved communications technology provides supporting information supporting that choice, traceability of these goods becomes a must. Assuring the traceability sequence, and its veracity, represents a key factor in the competitiveness of many industries in developed countries: it is a way to compete against low-cost products with less origin guarantee and processing information.

Traceability processes traditionally required manual checking each item of a product and taking notes about its production processes. Radio technologies could be a solution to systematize the capture of traceability data, its management, and, importantly, its sharing amongst partners in a value chain. Sensors, wireless networks (WiFi, WiMAX), radiofrequency identification (RFID), near field communications (NFCs), personal area networks (PANs), and so on are only some examples of possible radio technologies involved in improving traceability methods.

We invite authors to contribute original research papers as well as review papers that seek to analyze the different aspects related to the application of radio systems on traceability tasks. We are interested in papers that theoretically or empirically characterize the use of such systems in traceability applications, propose new antenna designs, introduce applications to different productive sectors, evaluate the impact on the supervised processes, and describe or develop techniques to improve the track of the products during their processing. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical modeling and empirical characterization of radio channel in production centers
• Design and test of antennas and sensors
• Description and impact evaluation of actual traceability systems based on radio technologies
• Wireless sensor networks issues
• RFID-based tracking of goods/animals
• Temperature and ambient conditions control
• Evaluation of the return of investment generated by automatic traceability proposals
• Security trends in traceability implementations
• Tracking of cold chain and other food conservation conditions

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ijap/goods/ according to the following timetable: