Low Power Consumption and Reliable Wireless Communications for Harsh Environments

Dear Colleagues,

Wireless communication technologies play an important role in today’s society. For that reason, wireless systems are almost ubiquitous and can now be found in many application areas, such as the industrial environment.

Today it is still possible to find many industrial systems of considerable age, but the dynamics of the market calls for their replacement by intelligent and low-cost systems that improve productivity and efficiency. Traditionally, the automation of industrial systems was carried out through wired communications. However, wired systems require enormous expense for wiring installation as well as constant maintenance, and are not always suitable when a high degree of mobility is required. Therefore, there is a growing trend towards the use of wireless systems in industrial applications with mobile devices or with moving parts, as they can benefit greatly from wireless communications.

In addition, recent advances in wireless sensor networks have allowed the realization of embedded industrial systems with low cost and low energy consumption. In these systems, small wireless sensors are installed on the industrial equipment which can monitor the critical parameters of each piece of equipment based on a combination of measurements such as vibration, temperature, pressure, power, etc. The measurements provided by these sensors allow the optimization of processes, increasing quality and safety.

The nature of wireless industrial sensor networks provides several advantages over the monitoring and control of traditional wired systems. These include self-organization, rapid deployment, flexibility, and inherent intelligence in the processing. In this sense, wireless sensor networks play an important role in the industrial environment, offering high reliability and making it possible to resolve operation issues in real time. Unfortunately, some drawbacks still prevent wireless networks from being widely used in industrial settings, despite the progress in research toward overcoming these problems.

In this Special Issue, we would like to invite domain experts to share the recent progress and original work in the research and implementation of wireless communication and networking systems in harsh environments. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Wireless signals: acoustics, optics, magnetic induction, electromagnetic wave, and so on;
• Channel modeling, estimation, and characterization in harsh environments (underground, underwater, metallic environments, high temperature and/or humidity, and so on);
• Wireless communication physical-layer solutions: synchronization, signal processing, modulation, transceiver and modem designs, link budget, and so on;
• Wireless networking solutions: medium access control, routing/forwarding, reliable data transfer, congestion control, security, self-organized networking, and so on;
• Wireless network and system architecture design: prototype, testbed, and platform;
• Wireless communication traffic engineering: traffic modeling, packet/circuit call management, quality of service (QoS), and so on;
• Wireless communication supported by emerging IT technologies such as IoT, machine learning, cloud computing, big data, and so on;
• Demonstration of experiment results: field trial, measurement, and case study;
• Applications of wireless communication and networking systems: environment data collection, video/image streaming, remote monitoring and control, structural health monitoring, human operator interaction, disaster detection and early warning, and so on

Dr. Ainhoa Cortés
Dr. Roque José Berenguer
Dr. Paul Bustamante
Dr. Markos Losada
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Wireless signals: acoustics, optics, magnetic induction, electromagnetic wave, and so on
• Channel modeling, estimation, and characterization in harsh environments (underground, underwater, metallic environments, high temperature and/or humidity, and so on)
• Wireless communication physical-layer solutions: synchronization, signal processing, modulation, transceiver and modem designs, link budget, and so on
• Wireless networking solutions: medium access control, routing/forwarding, reliable data transfer, congestion control, security, self-organized networking, and so on
• Wireless network and system architecture design: prototype, testbed, and platform
• Wireless communication traffic engineering: traffic modeling, packet/circuit call management, quality of service (QoS), and so on
• Wireless communication supported by emerging IT technologies such as IoT, machine learning, cloud computing, big data, and so on
• Demonstration of experiment results: field trial, measurement, and case study
• Applications of wireless communication and networking systems: environment data collection, video/image streaming, remote monitoring and control, structural health monitoring, human operator interaction, disaster detection and early warning, and so on.