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AI-Empowered Smart Sensor Networks: Enabling Dynamic Perception and Data Analytics in IoT

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2027 | Viewed by 1258

Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
Interests: mobile communications; Internet of Things; reconfigurable circuit design; wireless networking

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Guest Editor
School of Communications and Information Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China
Interests: artificial intelligence of things; multimodal data analysis; affective computing; semantic communication
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing Information Science & Technology University, Beijing 102206, China
Interests: Internet of Things; deep reinforcement learning; adaptive design of GAI circuits and devices; reconfigurable circuit design; wireless networking

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has generated massive volumes of sensor data. Smart sensor networks (SSNs), as a crucial bridge connecting the physical and digital worlds, are becoming increasingly important. However, efficiently processing this heterogeneous, spatio-temporally dynamic data to extract valuable insights for online tracking, situational awareness, and intelligent decision-making remains a significant challenge.

The deep integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with sensing technologies offers unprecedented opportunities to address these issues. This convergence is not only driving the evolution from simple data collection to complex environmental perception and inference but also placing higher demands on the intelligence of sensor circuits, network adaptability, and the depth of data analytics.

This Special Issue, therefore, aims to bring together original research and review articles on the latest advances, innovative technologies, solutions, and new challenges in smart sensor networks, AI-enabled data analytics, and their applications in IoT. We are particularly interested in contributions that integrate advanced AI methods (such as deep learning and reinforcement learning) with sensing technologies to achieve efficient data processing, precise dynamic perception, and intelligent adaptive system design.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Intelligent Sensor Data Processing: Smart processing, fusion, and analytics for heterogeneous sensor data in IoT.
  • AI for Sensor Time Series: AI-based time-series analysis, forecasting, and anomaly detection for sensor data.
  • Dynamic Spatio-Temporal Perception: Inference, perception, and modeling of dynamic spatio-temporal data from sensor networks.
  • Sparse Sensing and Compressive Sampling: Efficient data acquisition, sparse representation, and reconstruction techniques in large-scale sensor networks.
  • Adaptive and Mobile Sensing: Adaptive intelligent environmental sampling strategies and routing for mobile sensors and robotic networks.
  • Electromagnetic Environment Awareness: AI-driven situational awareness, spectrum sensing, and analysis of the electromagnetic environment.
  • Intelligent and Adaptive Circuits for Sensing: Intelligent adaptive circuit and hardware design for smart sensors and low-power IoT devices.
  • AI-Enabled Tracking and Localization: Advanced algorithms for online tracking, positioning, and navigation in IoT-enabled environments.
  • AI in Sensor Network Management: AI methods (e.g., reinforcement learning and federated learning) for sensor network optimization, resource allocation, and security.

Prof. Dr. Fan Wu
Prof. Dr. Puning Zhang
Dr. Cong Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors 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 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

  • smart sensor networks
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • artificial intelligence (AI)
  • data analytics
  • spatio-temporal data
  • time-series forecasting
  • sparse sensing
  • adaptive sampling
  • situational awareness
  • intelligent circuits

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 3100 KB  
Article
Design and Efficacy of a Speaker Verification Method Combining CNN and Transformer for Secure Access Control
by Xiao Li, Xiao Hu, Kun Niu and Ling Tuo
Sensors 2026, 26(16), 5101; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26165101 - 12 Aug 2026
Viewed by 260
Abstract
In the rapidly evolving landscape of computer and mobile applications, the demand for secure access control has become increasingly pivotal. This paper introduces a speaker verification method aimed at remotely verifying an individual’s claimed identity, so as to achieve access authorization. The primary [...] Read more.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of computer and mobile applications, the demand for secure access control has become increasingly pivotal. This paper introduces a speaker verification method aimed at remotely verifying an individual’s claimed identity, so as to achieve access authorization. The primary objective is to develop a deep learning network capable of eliminating redundant and irrelevant information while learning robust deep speaker embedding descriptors that capture speaker-specific idiosyncrasies. This paper presents an AI framework combining convolutional neural network and transformer architectures, enhanced by (1) a stereoscopic attention mechanism that computes fine-grained attention weights across frequency, time, and channel dimensions with fewer parameters than existing CBAM or SE modules, and (2) a multi-feature aggregation mechanism that fuses supervised and unsupervised features at the utterance level to maximize complementary speaker information. These innovations introduce a new perspective for integrating acoustic and articulatory features, effectively addressing the challenges related to short-segment speech and cross-domain scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that the AI framework achieves competitive performance under domain mismatch conditions. The methodology acts as a catalyst for advancing application authorization, highlighting the transformative potential of AI-driven innovations in the software engineering field. Full article
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14 pages, 1776 KB  
Article
Neuro-Symbolic Class-Contrast Evidence Audit for Reliable Cross-Subject Wearable Activity Recognition
by Qiang Li, Zhirong Qu, Meng Yan and Xiaohong Zhang
Sensors 2026, 26(14), 4390; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26144390 - 10 Jul 2026
Viewed by 393
Abstract
Reliable wearable activity recognition requires not only a class label but also an auditable indication of whether that label is supported by historical sensor evidence. We present CC-NSIEA, a label-preserving neural-plus-rule-based class-contrast evidence audit for cross-subject wearable activity recognition. A Temporal Residual Perception [...] Read more.
Reliable wearable activity recognition requires not only a class label but also an auditable indication of whether that label is supported by historical sensor evidence. We present CC-NSIEA, a label-preserving neural-plus-rule-based class-contrast evidence audit for cross-subject wearable activity recognition. A Temporal Residual Perception Network supplies the sole activity label, posterior probabilities, and a normalized temporal embedding. A read-only Training-Subject Evidence Memory retrieves global, predicted-class, and competing-class records. A rule-based Evidence Consistency Audit combines data validity, dynamic/static motion coherence, retrieval support, and class separation. When first-round evidence is insufficient, Class-Contrast Evidence Refinement performs one deterministic contrast between the predicted class and the strongest posterior competitor; the audit cannot change the neural label. The term neuro-symbolic is used only in this restricted architectural sense: a neural predictor is coupled to explicitly represent deterministic predicates and a finite rule-based controller; the method does not perform symbolic inference, theorem proving, or knowledge-graph reasoning. On five subject-disjoint outer folds of the UCI HAR official training partition, the shared perception model achieved 90.13% accuracy and 90.55% macro-F1 across 7352 out-of-fold windows from 21 subjects. Relative to a matched dynamic deterministic controller, CC-NSIEA increased Error AUPRC from 0.423802 to 0.433057 and reduced AURC from 0.035941 to 0.035913. The 10,000-resample subject-cluster bootstrap interval for the AUPRC difference was [0.001595, 0.019547]. CC-NSIEA provides an evidence-centered complement to confidence-based reliability estimation. Full article
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