IoT Meets AI: Driving the Next Generation of Technology

Dear Colleagues,

The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the way interconnected devices collect, process, and act on data, enabling transformative applications across industries such as smart cities, healthcare, agriculture, and Industry 4.0. As IoT ecosystems grow exponentially, they face challenges in scalability, data privacy, interoperability, and real-time decision making. Emerging paradigms like federated learning (FL) and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), including generative AI and large language models (LLMs), are now reshaping the capabilities of IoT by enhancing data collaboration, improving autonomy, and enabling adaptive intelligence at the edge.

This Special Issue seeks to explore the convergence of IoT with cutting-edge AI technologies, focusing on how innovations like federated learning and generative AI can address the limitations of IoT while unlocking novel applications. We welcome interdisciplinary contributions that bridge IoT architectures, distributed intelligence, and modern AI frameworks, emphasizing practical use cases, theoretical advancements, and ethical considerations.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• IoT Architectures and Systems: Edge/fog/cloud integration, lightweight protocols, energy-efficient devices, IoT cloud platforms, BLE, and LoRaWAN-enabled applications.
• AI-Driven Intelligence: Machine Learning for resource-constrained devices, generative AI for synthetic data generation, computational intelligence for anomaly detection, and predictive maintenance.
• Federated Learning and Decentralized AI: Privacy-preserving data collaboration, decentralized model training, FL-optimized networks, and blockchain-integrated frameworks for secure IoT-cloud systems.
• Large Language Models (LLMs) in IoT: Natural language interfaces for IoT automation, LLM-enhanced context-aware reasoning, and human-centric AI interactions.
• Security, Trust, and Privacy: Adversarial robustness, secure FL frameworks, blockchain for IoT authentication, and privacy-preserving data processing.
• Reliability and Performance: Fault tolerance in IoT networks, IoT network protocols (e.g., MQTT, CoAP), performance evaluation/modeling, and low-latency edge computing.
• Scalability and Sustainability: Green IoT, AI-optimized resource management, energy-efficient data processing, and Industry 4.0 applications (smart factories, digital twins).
• Emerging Trends: IoT for metaverse integration, ethical AI governance, AI-augmented industrial IoT, and smart manufacturing autonomy.

We invite original research, comprehensive reviews, and case studies that highlight innovative methodologies, tools, or real-world implementations. Submissions should emphasize the synergy between IoT and modern AI techniques while addressing practical challenges and opportunities.

Dr. Grigorios E. Koulouras
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. IoT is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Internet of Things (IoT)
• federated learning (FL)
• decentralized AI
• machine learning for resource-constrained devices
• generative AI
• blockchain for IoT
• leveraging LLMs for IoT
• edge/fog/cloud computing
• BLE
• LoRa
• LoRaWAN
• IoT protocols
• security
• trust
• privacy
• IoT platforms
• Industry 4.0
• ethical AI