Hardware-Enabled Security and Trust for IoT Sensors

Dear Colleagues,

Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies have transformed modern sensing systems and driven the widespread deployment of IoT sensors. These advancements, however, also bring significant challenges in ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of sensors that operate in unprotected environments, handle privacy-sensitive data, or support decision-making in mission-critical applications. Given the strict constraints on cost, computational resources, and power consumption inherent to IoT sensors, traditional software-only security solutions developed for modern computer systems are often insufficient. This Special Issue will focus on emerging research and innovations in hardware-based security techniques, which complement software approaches and enable more secure and trusted IoT sensors. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Lightweight hardware root of trust.
   • Hardware-assisted identity and authentication (e.g., PUFs);
   • Novel SE and TPM architecture;
   • Anti-tamper hardware primitives and hardware-assisted abnormality detection;
   • Side-channel resistance circuits and architecture.
2. Sensor data integrity and privacy protection.
   • Lightweight data encryption and feature extraction for privacy protection and data minimization;
   • Hardware-enabled embedding of digital watermarking, secure timestamping, or power signature into sensor data;
   • Hardware-enforced access control to raw sensor signals;
   • Built-in sensor calibration and drift detection.
3. Hardware-enhanced connectivity security.
   • RF fingerprinting;
   • Jamming-resistant and spoofing-resistant sensor interfaces.
4. AI/ML for secure and trustworthy sensors.
   • On-sensor AI/ML accelerators for attack/abnormality detection;
   • Trusted execution of AI inference on sensors.
5. Design of application-specific secure and trusted IoT sensors.
   • Healthcare and biomedical sensors;
   • Mission-critical sensors in industrial, automotive, and aerospace systems;
   • Hardware-hardened sensors for extreme or adversarial environments.

Dr. Haibo Wang
Guest Editor

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