Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks for Smart Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Our lives are being transformed by the interplay between mobile networks, wireless communications and artificial intelligence. This transformation is an outcome of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) concept, and the advancements in computer architectures that translate into high computing power, high performance processing and huge memory capacities. In addition to the IoT, as a very close concept, cyber-physical systems target seamless integration of physical systems with computing and communication resources. Furthermore, in the urban areas, the integration of the “software-defined sensor networks” and “sensing as a service” concepts with the legacy WSN-based systems is leading to the transformation of the conventional city services towards smart cities. 

Smart energy, smart driving, smart homes, smart living, smart governance and smart health are just a few services that can be offered by smart cities. Furthermore, while these concepts are the major application areas, smart citizens close the loop by participating in sensing, actuating and decision making processes. In the smart cities, legacy WSN-based services are extended by having citizens act as sensors. Opportunistic or participatory sensing models enable groups of individuals to collaboratively work towards the same goal with strong interaction links even though this does not always require strong social links between them. Thus, dedicated and non-dedicated wireless sensors form communities; collaborating communities form social networks where interaction can occur in the form of software-defined sensing. This transformation in WSNs introduces unique solutions for the communication plane of smart cities.

In addition to the communication plane challenges, the smart environments require the IoT and WSN sensors to report massive amount of unstructured data in heterogeneous format, which in turn leads to the big sensed data phenomenon. Additionally, addressing the high volume by effective machine learning or data mining techniques, novel data acquisition and processing methodologies for big sensed data are emergent in order to address the high velocity, high variety and high veracity aspects. Moreover, in order to offer smart city services effectively, it is viable to envision massive amount of connected wireless/wired sensors/IoT devices. Thus, scalability remains an open issue in integration the components of a smart city that are mentioned above. While ensuring scalability and connectivity of this infrastructure remains an open issue, battery-limitation of wireless sensors is a grand challenge especially in time sensitive services in smart cities.

In this Special Issue, we are seeking submissions that focus on novel solutions for wireless sensor and actuator networks in smart cities. This Special Issue invites academic and industry researchers in computer science and engineering, electrical engineering and communication engineering, as well as ICT industry engineers and practitioners, to contribute with original articles in all aspects of wireless sensor network and actuator systems for smart cities.

Contributions may include, but are not limited to:

• Physical layer challenges in WSNs in smart city applications
• Cross-layer solutions for WSNs and IoT to support smart city services
• WSN and Internet of Things (IoT) architectures, protocols, platforms and algorithms
• Device-to-Device networks for smart  cities.
• Application-layer protocols for WSNs to enable efficient smart city applications
• Planning of sensor networks in smart cities
• The interplay between dedicated and non-dedicated sensing
• Opportunistic and participatory sensing in smart cities
• Design and Management of Mobile Crowd-Sensing Systems in smart cities
• Energy harvesting solutions for WSNs in smart cities
• Vehicular sensing solutions for smart city applications
• Novel sensory data acquisition techniques
• Real time and near-real time data analytics on sensory data
• Software Defined Sensor Networks and Sensing as a Service in smart cities
• Security, Privacy and Trust in Smart City Sensing
• Smart city big data and open data
• Standards for IoT and WSNs in smart city applications
• Application, deployment, testbed,  experiment experiences and innovative applications for WSN-enabled smart cities
• IoT-driven smart Governance, smart economy and smart environment

Dr. Burak Kantarci
Prof. Dr. Sema Oktug
Guest Editors

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2000 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.