Advanced Applications of WSNs and the IoT—2nd Edition
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 April 2025 | Viewed by 4681
Special Issue Editors
Interests: wireless sensor networks; RF energy-harvesting; nanoscale communications; specifically biomedical applications of nanoscale communications
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: bio-inspired communication and networking techniques for wireless networks; wireless sensor and actor networks; delay tolerant networks; cognitive radio networks; molecular communications and nanoscale electromagnetic communications; nanonetworks, specifically body-area nanonetworks for nanomedicine applications; mobile ad hoc nanonetworks and graphene-based nanonetworks
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Around three decades ago, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) emerged as a new ICT paradigm connecting the physical and the digital world. In fact, some authors called this disruptive technology the “digital retina”. Many applications in a broad set of fields were envisioned, which have nowadays become a reality. More recently, the idea of a wireless sensor network has been extended to a wider, higher-level and more ambitious concept, namely the Internet of Things (IoT). WSNs and the IoT have since merged together, with some members of the research community viewing WSNs as part of the IoT and others pointing to the fact that WSNs constitute the supporting technology for the IoT. Although none of these views is wrong, a deeper consideration that highlights the similarities and differences (and definitely the relationship) between both technologies is needed.
- Nodes in WSNs are specialized devices that have limited sensing, actuating, computing, and communicating capabilities, as well as scarce energy resources. Conversely, nodes in the IoT are objects (things) of daily life to which those capabilities have been embedded, thus making them “smart”.
- Usually, nodes in WSNs do not have an IP address, whereas every “thing” in the IoT does. Precisely, this gives rise to the expression “Internet of Things”.
There are also differences regarding their implementation, such as the fact that nodes in WSNs are obviously wireless, as the name implies. On the other hand, in the case of the IoT, they can be wired or wireless. Alternatively, from a topological point of view, WSNs typically obey a star or tree–star topology, which is rooted at one or several gateways that do have Internet connectivity, while IoT devices form a mesh network—in the same way that conventional computers, laptops, and servers are interconnected through the Internet.
Apart from these differences, a relevant feature common to both technologies is the limited amount of energy available at each node, which prioritizes low energy consumption among other design factors. This explains that routing strategies, topology control methods, medium-access control mechanisms, and other techniques already designed for WSNs have been extended to IoT systems, a fact that underlines the view of WSNs as the supporting technology for the IoT. However, from the explanation above, a complete WSN can be a single node of an IoT system.
Nowadays, the spectacular number of nodes predicted for WSNs, and especially for IoT systems, has attracted other technological fields, without which the implementation of the former would not be possible. In effect, the pairing of expressions such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, 5G (and beyond) communications, and energy-harvesting techniques with WSNs and the IoT is inevitable.
On the basis of these preliminary considerations, this Special Issue welcomes papers describing sophisticated applications of WSNs and the IoT, which stand out because of their large scale and/or involved technologies. Detailed descriptions are expected, which highlight all design aspects in an organized way. Any application field can be considered, either in the WSN or the IoT context. The relevance and sophistication of the application, the structure of the paper, and the quality of descriptions and illustrations are essential aspects in the evaluation of manuscripts.
Dr. Sebastia Galmes
Dr. Baris Atakan
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- wireless sensor networks
- Internet of Things
- wireless communications standards (BLE, ZigBee, LoRaWAN, SigFox, 5G/6G)
- energy harvesting
- big data
- artificial intelligence
- cloud computing
- security
- smart environment
- ambient intelligence
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Related Special Issue
- Advanced Applications of WSNs and the IoT in Sensors (11 articles)
