AI-Driven IoT: Beyond Connectivity, Toward Intelligence

Dear Colleagues,

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized how devices perceive, analyze, and interact with the physical world, enabling unprecedented levels of automation, efficiency, and intelligence in diverse domains such as smart cities, industrial automation, healthcare, and environmental monitoring. As this Special Issue, we aim to capture the rapid advancements in this interdisciplinary field, where AI techniques—including machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing—are increasingly empowering IoT systems to handle massive data streams, adapt to dynamic environments, and make autonomous, context-aware decisions. However, critical challenges persist, such as optimizing AI model deployment on resource-constrained IoT devices, ensuring real-time responsiveness, addressing privacy and security risks in interconnected systems, and enhancing scalability for large-scale IoT networks.

This Special Issue seeks to provide a comprehensive platform for researchers and practitioners to showcase cutting-edge innovations at the intersection of AI and IoT. We particularly encourage contributions that explore novel methodologies, system architectures, and practical applications that overcome the key limitations in current AI-enabled IoT solutions. Emphasis is placed on emerging trends such as edge AI for IoT, federated learning in distributed IoT networks, AI-driven predictive maintenance for industrial IoT, and ethical AI frameworks for privacy-preserving IoT systems. Interdisciplinary works integrating AI and IoT with fields like 5G/6G communications, digital twins, blockchain, and renewable energy systems are also highly welcome.

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

• AI-driven data analytics and decision-making in IoT systems;
• Edge and fog computing for AI-enabled IoT applications;
• Machine learning and deep learning algorithms for sensor design and optimization;
• Privacy, security, and trust in AI-empowered IoT networks;
• AI-based predictive maintenance and anomaly detection in industrial IoT;
• Smart city and smart home applications leveraging AI and IoT integration;
• 5G/6G-enabled AI-IoT systems for real-time communication and control.

Dr. Gaoya Dong
Dr. Haoqiang Liu
Dr. Meijun Qu
Guest Editors

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