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Energy-Efficient Wireless Communication and Networking for Intelligent IoT Systems

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 235

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering, Universidad San Pablo-CEU, 28003 Madrid, Spain
Interests: IoT; energy harvesting and RF communication technologies; embedded AI; edge and cloud software and hardware architectures
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The next generation of IoT devices will require seamless integration of energy-efficient communication, intelligent sensing, and adaptive networking to meet the growing demand for ubiquitous, reliable, and sustainable connectivity. Unlike traditional IoT deployments that rely on power-hungry architectures and centralized data processing, future IoT systems must combine advances in wireless sensor networks, energy harvesting, and embedded artificial intelligence (AI) with optimized protocols for edge and cloud integration.

This Special Issue invites original research, reviews, and applications focusing on novel solutions for energy-aware wireless communication and networking in the IoT. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, ultra-low-power RF transceivers, ambient backscatter communication, energy harvesting-assisted networking, machine learning-driven adaptive protocols, AI-enhanced edge intelligence, and secure, scalable architectures for large-scale IoT deployments.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together contributions that bridge the gap between energy-efficient wireless hardware, intelligent sensing devices, and innovative communication protocols, ultimately fostering sustainable, high-performance IoT systems. This focus differentiates this Special Issue from existing IoT sensing-oriented collections, concentrating instead on communication, networking, and system-level intelligence as enablers of the future IoT

Alignment with journal aims and scope:

This Special Issue is fully aligned with the scope of Sensors, as it will emphasize the essential role of communication and networking technologies in enabling sensor-rich IoT systems. Modern IoT deployments are no longer limited to isolated sensing devices; they rely on energy-efficient wireless links, intelligent networking protocols, and distributed AI capabilities to extract actionable insights from vast sensor data streams. By focusing on energy-aware wireless communication and networking, this SI will complement the journal’s mission to advance research on sensors and their ecosystems, highlighting the integration of novel sensing hardware with low-power transceivers, energy harvesting modules, and adaptive network protocols. Contributions to this SI will not only expand the state-of-the-art in sensor and IoT connectivity but also demonstrate how sustainable communication infrastructures can unlock new applications in healthcare, environmental monitoring, smart cities, and beyond. In this sense, this Special Issue will reinforce the journal’s interdisciplinary position at the intersection of sensor technologies, embedded systems, and networked intelligence.

Dr. Gianluca Cornetta
Prof. Dr. Abdellah Touhafi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 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.

Keywords

  • energy-efficient IoT communications
  • wireless sensor networks
  • energy harvesting and RF technologies
  • ambient backscatter and low-power radios
  • edge- and cloud-assisted networking
  • embedded and distributed AI
  • adaptive and intelligent protocols
  • secure and scalable IoT architectures

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

33 pages, 3714 KB  
Article
SADQN-Based Residual Energy-Aware Beamforming for LoRa-Enabled RF Energy Harvesting for Disaster-Tolerant Underground Mining Networks
by Hilary Kelechi Anabi, Samuel Frimpong and Sanjay Madria
Sensors 2026, 26(2), 730; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26020730 - 21 Jan 2026
Viewed by 86
Abstract
The end-to-end efficiency of radio-frequency (RF)-powered wireless communication networks (WPCNs) in post-disaster underground mine environments can be enhanced through adaptive beamforming. The primary challenges in such scenarios include (i) identifying the most energy-constrained nodes, i.e., nodes with the lowest residual energy to prevent [...] Read more.
The end-to-end efficiency of radio-frequency (RF)-powered wireless communication networks (WPCNs) in post-disaster underground mine environments can be enhanced through adaptive beamforming. The primary challenges in such scenarios include (i) identifying the most energy-constrained nodes, i.e., nodes with the lowest residual energy to prevent the loss of tracking and localization functionality; (ii) avoiding reliance on the computationally intensive channel state information (CSI) acquisition process; and (iii) ensuring long-range RF wireless power transfer (LoRa-RFWPT). To address these issues, this paper introduces an adaptive and safety-aware deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework for energy beamforming in LoRa-enabled underground disaster networks. Specifically, we develop a Safe Adaptive Deep Q-Network (SADQN) that incorporates residual energy awareness to enhance energy harvesting under mobility, while also formulating a SADQN approach with dual-variable updates to mitigate constraint violations associated with fairness, minimum energy thresholds, duty cycle, and uplink utilization. A mathematical model is proposed to capture the dynamics of post-disaster underground mine environments, and the problem is formulated as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP). To address the inherent NP hardness of this constrained reinforcement learning (CRL) formulation, we employ a Lagrangian relaxation technique to reduce complexity and derive near-optimal solutions. Comprehensive simulation results demonstrate that SADQN significantly outperforms all baseline algorithms: increasing cumulative harvested energy by approximately 11% versus DQN, 15% versus Safe-DQN, and 40% versus PSO, and achieving substantial gains over random beamforming and non-beamforming approaches. The proposed SADQN framework maintains fairness indices above 0.90, converges 27% faster than Safe-DQN and 43% faster than standard DQN in terms of episodes, and demonstrates superior stability, with 33% lower performance variance than Safe-DQN and 66% lower than DQN after convergence, making it particularly suitable for safety-critical underground mining disaster scenarios where reliable energy delivery and operational stability are paramount. Full article
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