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Special Issue "Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems"

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2020).

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Weiming Shen
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
National Research Council of Canada and University of Western Ontario, Ottawa, Canada
Interests: Computer-supported collaborative work; modeling and implementation of decision support systems; agent-based systems; disaster management; distributed computing; wireless sensor networks; internet of things; smart cities; supply chain; manufacturing systems; process optimization and scheduling
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Tie Qiu
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin University No.135 Yaguan Road, Haihe Education Park, Tianjin 300050, China
Interests: internet of things; embedded systems; wireless sensor networks
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Antonio Liotta
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
University of Derby, Derby, United Kingdom
Prof. Dr. Wenfeng Li
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Logistics Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, China
Interests: body area networks; internet of things; logistics
Dr. Yanjun Shi
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
Interests: connected and automated vehicles; V2X; industrial IoT; digital twins; big data; intelligent machines; cooperative connected technologies
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been widely accepted as a novel paradigm that can radically transform industry and society. It can achieve the seamless integration of various devices equipped with sensing, identification, processing, communication, actuation, and networking capabilities. Along these lines, Big Data is considered technology and has become a very active research area, primarily involving topics related to machine learning, database, and distributed computing. The fast development of IoT and Big Data technologies, together with 5G Communication, Edge/Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence, provides great opportunities for novel smart systems and applications, including smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart transportation and logistics, smart building, smart homes, and smart healthcare.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Collaborative wireless sensor networks;
  • IoT architectures, protocols, and algorithms;
  • Positioning and localization in IoT;
  • Data and information management in IoT-based smart systems, including distributed storage, collaborative processing, query, manipulation, data cleaning, data fusion, and data mining;
  • Big Data analytics (including machine learning and deep learning) in IoT-based smart systems;
  • Edge/Fog/Cloud collaboration in IoT-based smart systems;
  • Intelligent decision making and control in IoT-based smart systems;
  • Reliability, security, and privacy in IoT-based smart systems;
  • Smart systems and applications (smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart transportation and logistics, smart building, smart homes, and smart healthcare).
Dr. Weiming Shen
Prof. Dr. Giancarlo Fortino
Dr. Tie Qiu
Prof. Dr. Antonio Liotta
Prof. Wenfeng Li
Dr. Yanjun Shi
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 papers will be 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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. 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 2200 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.

Published Papers (13 papers)

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Research

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Article
Quantitative Study on the Impact of Energy Consumption Based Dynamic Selfishness in MANETs
Sensors 2021, 21(3), 716; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21030716 - 21 Jan 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 575
Abstract
Cooperative communication and resource limitation are two main characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). On one hand, communication among the nodes in MANETs highly depends on the cooperation among nodes because of the limited transmission range of the nodes, and multi-hop communications [...] Read more.
Cooperative communication and resource limitation are two main characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). On one hand, communication among the nodes in MANETs highly depends on the cooperation among nodes because of the limited transmission range of the nodes, and multi-hop communications are needed in most cases. On the other hand, every node in MANETs has stringent resource constraints on computations, communications, memory, and energy. These two characteristics lead to the existence of selfish nodes in MANETs, which affects the network performance in various aspects. In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the impacts of node selfishness caused by energy depletion in MANETs in terms of packet loss rate, round-trip delay, and throughput. We conducted extensive measurements on a proper simulation platform incorporating an OMNeT++ and INET Framework. Our experimental results quantitatively indicate the impact of node selfishness on the network performance in MANETs. The results also imply that it is important to evaluate the impact of node selfishness by jointly considering selfish nodes’ mobility models, densities, proportions, and combinations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
An AI-Application-Oriented In-Class Teaching Evaluation Model by Using Statistical Modeling and Ensemble Learning
Sensors 2021, 21(1), 241; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21010241 - 01 Jan 2021
Viewed by 829
Abstract
In-class teaching evaluation, which is utilized to assess the process and effect of both teachers’ teaching and students’ learning in a classroom environment, plays an increasingly crucial role in supervising and promoting education quality. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, [...] Read more.
In-class teaching evaluation, which is utilized to assess the process and effect of both teachers’ teaching and students’ learning in a classroom environment, plays an increasingly crucial role in supervising and promoting education quality. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the concept of smart education has been constantly improved and gradually penetrated into all aspects of education application. Considering the dominant position of classroom teaching in elementary and undergraduate education, the introduction of AI technology into in-class teaching evaluation has become a research hotspot. In this paper, we propose a statistical modeling and ensemble learning-based comprehensive model, which is oriented towards in-class teaching evaluation by using AI technologies such as computer vision (CV) and intelligent speech recognition (ISR). Firstly, we present an index system including a set of teaching evaluation indicators combining traditional assessment scales with new values derived from CV and ISR-based AI analysis. Next, we design a comprehensive in-class teaching evaluation model by using both the analytic hierarchy process-entropy weight (AHP-EW) and AdaBoost-based ensemble learning (AdaBoost-EL) methods. Experiments not only demonstrate that the two modules in the model are respectively applicable to the calculation of indicators with different characteristics, but also verify the performance of the proposed model for AI-based in-class teaching evaluation. In this comprehensive in-class evaluation model, for students’ concentration and participation, ensemble learning module is chosen with less root mean square error (RMSE) of 8.318 and 9.375. In addition, teachers’ media usage and teachers’ type evaluated by statistical modeling module approach higher accuracy with 0.905 and 0.815. Instead, the ensemble learning approaches the accuracy of 0.73 in evaluating teachers’ style, which performs better than the statistical modeling module with the accuracy of 0.69. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
An Ultra-Short Baseline Underwater Positioning System with Kalman Filtering
Sensors 2021, 21(1), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21010143 - 28 Dec 2020
Viewed by 722
Abstract
The ultra-short baseline underwater positioning is one of the most widely applied methods in underwater positioning and navigation due to its simplicity, efficiency, low cost, and accuracy. However, there exists environmental noise, which has negative impacts on the positioning accuracy during the ultra-short [...] Read more.
The ultra-short baseline underwater positioning is one of the most widely applied methods in underwater positioning and navigation due to its simplicity, efficiency, low cost, and accuracy. However, there exists environmental noise, which has negative impacts on the positioning accuracy during the ultra-short baseline (USBL) positioning process, which results in a large positioning error. The positioning result may lead to wrong decision-making in the latter processing. So, it is necessary to consider the error sources, and take effective measurements to minimize the negative impact of the noise. In our work, we propose a USBL positioning system with Kalman filtering to improve the positioning accuracy. In this system, we first explore a new kind of element array to accurately capture the acoustic signals from the object. We then organically combine the Kalman filters with the array elements to filter the acoustic signals, using the minimum mean-square error rule to obtain accurate acoustic signals. We got the high-precision phase difference information based on the non-equidistant quaternary original array and the phase difference acquisition mechanism. Finally, on account of the obtained accurate phase difference information and position calculation, we determined the coordinates of the underwater target. Comprehensive evaluation results demonstrate that our proposed USBL positioning method based on the Kalman filter algorithm can effectively enhance the positioning accuracy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
Understanding Data-Driven Cyber-Physical-Social System (D-CPSS) Using a 7C Framework in Social Manufacturing Context
Sensors 2020, 20(18), 5319; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20185319 - 17 Sep 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 783
Abstract
The trend towards socialization, personalization and servitization in smart manufacturing has attracted the attention of researchers, practitioners and governments. Social manufacturing is a novel manufacturing paradigm responding to this trend. However, the current cyber–physical system (CPS) merges only cyber and physical space; social [...] Read more.
The trend towards socialization, personalization and servitization in smart manufacturing has attracted the attention of researchers, practitioners and governments. Social manufacturing is a novel manufacturing paradigm responding to this trend. However, the current cyber–physical system (CPS) merges only cyber and physical space; social space is missing. A cyber–physical–social system (CPSS)-based smart manufacturing is in demand, which incorporates cyber space, physical space and social space. With the development of the Internet of Things and social networks, a large volume of data is generated. A data-driven view is necessary to link tri-space. However, there is a lack of systematical investigation on the integration of CPSS and the data-driven view in the context of social manufacturing. This article proposes a seven-layered framework for a data-driven CPSS (D-CPSS) along the data–information–knowledge–wisdom (DIKW) pyramid under a social manufacturing environment. The evolution, components, general model and framework of D-CPSS are illustrated. An illustrative example is provided to explain the proposed framework. Detailed discussion and future perspectives on implementation are also presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
A Novel Method about the Representation and Discrimination of Traffic State
Sensors 2020, 20(18), 5039; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20185039 - 04 Sep 2020
Viewed by 687
Abstract
The representation and discrimination of various traffic states play an essential role in solving traffic accidents and congestion as the foundation of traffic state prediction. However, the existing representation of the traffic state usually only considers the road congestion layer and divides the [...] Read more.
The representation and discrimination of various traffic states play an essential role in solving traffic accidents and congestion as the foundation of traffic state prediction. However, the existing representation of the traffic state usually only considers the road congestion layer and divides the traffic state into congested and unblocked. Representation only at the congestion layer is difficult to reflect the road traffic state comprehensively. Therefore, we select three indicators from the layers of road congestion, road safety, and road stability, respectively, then utilizing K-means to cluster the traffic state. The clustering results can be regarded as a new type for the representation of a traffic state. As a result, the traffic states are divided into four classes, which comprehensively reflects the level of road congestion, safety, and stability. Using the four traffic states obtained from the clustering results as class labels, we applied a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) to classify the different traffic states, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is assessed to verify the superiority of the classification results. Finally, a visual display of the real-time traffic state in a city’s central area was given. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
Probe Request Based Device Identification Attack and Defense
Sensors 2020, 20(16), 4620; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20164620 - 17 Aug 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 833
Abstract
Wi-Fi network has an open nature so that it needs to face greater security risks compared to wired network. The MAC address represents the unique identifier of the device, and is easily obtained by an attacker. Therefore MAC address randomization is proposed to [...] Read more.
Wi-Fi network has an open nature so that it needs to face greater security risks compared to wired network. The MAC address represents the unique identifier of the device, and is easily obtained by an attacker. Therefore MAC address randomization is proposed to protect the privacy of devices in a Wi-Fi network. However, implicit identifiers are used by attackers to identify user’s device, which can cause the leakage of user’s privacy. We propose device identification based on 802.11ac probe request frames. Here, a detailed analysis on the effectiveness of 802.11ac fields is given and a novel device identification method based on deep learning whose average f1-score exceeds 99% is presented. With a purpose of preventing attackers from obtaining relevant information by the device identification method above, we design a novel defense mechanism based on stream cipher. In that case, the original content of probe request frame is hidden by encrypting probe request frames and construction of probe request is reserved to avoid the finding of attackers. This defense mechanism can effectively reduce the performance of the proposed device identification method whose average f1-score is below 30%. In general, our research on attack and defense mechanism can preserve device privacy better. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
Real-Time Production and Logistics Self-Adaption Scheduling Based on Information Entropy Theory
Sensors 2020, 20(16), 4507; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20164507 - 12 Aug 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 743
Abstract
In recent years, the individualized demand of customers brings small batches and diversification of orders towards enterprises. The application of enabling technologies in the factory, such as the industrial Internet of things (IIoT) and cloud manufacturing (CMfg), enhances the ability of customer requirement [...] Read more.
In recent years, the individualized demand of customers brings small batches and diversification of orders towards enterprises. The application of enabling technologies in the factory, such as the industrial Internet of things (IIoT) and cloud manufacturing (CMfg), enhances the ability of customer requirement automatic elicitation and the manufacturing process control. The job shop scheduling problem with a random job arrival time dramatically increases the difficulty in process management. Thus, how to collaboratively schedule the production and logistics resources in the shop floor is very challenging, and it has a fundamental and practical significance of achieving the competitiveness for an enterprise. To address this issue, the real-time model of production and logistics resources is built firstly. Then, the task entropy model is built based on the task information. Finally, the real-time self-adaption collaboration of production and logistics resources is realized. The proposed algorithm is carried out based on a practical case to evaluate its effectiveness. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms three existing algorithms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
An Edge Based Multi-Agent Auto Communication Method for Traffic Light Control
Sensors 2020, 20(15), 4291; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20154291 - 31 Jul 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1311
Abstract
With smart city infrastructures growing, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been widely used in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The traditional adaptive traffic signal control method based on reinforcement learning (RL) has expanded from one intersection to multiple intersections. In this paper, [...] Read more.
With smart city infrastructures growing, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been widely used in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The traditional adaptive traffic signal control method based on reinforcement learning (RL) has expanded from one intersection to multiple intersections. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent auto communication (MAAC) algorithm, which is an innovative adaptive global traffic light control method based on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) and an auto communication protocol in edge computing architecture. The MAAC algorithm combines multi-agent auto communication protocol with MARL, allowing an agent to communicate the learned strategies with others for achieving global optimization in traffic signal control. In addition, we present a practicable edge computing architecture for industrial deployment on IoT, considering the limitations of the capabilities of network transmission bandwidth. We demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms other methods over 17% in experiments in a real traffic simulation environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
Secure Route-Obfuscation Mechanism with Information-Theoretic Security for Internet of Things
Sensors 2020, 20(15), 4221; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20154221 - 29 Jul 2020
Viewed by 719
Abstract
As accessibility of networked devices becomes more and more ubiquitous, groundbreaking applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) find their place in many aspects of our society. The exploitation of these devices is the main reason for the cyberattacks in IoT networks. Security [...] Read more.
As accessibility of networked devices becomes more and more ubiquitous, groundbreaking applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) find their place in many aspects of our society. The exploitation of these devices is the main reason for the cyberattacks in IoT networks. Security design is still an open problem and a crucial step in making IoT applications successful. In dicey environments, such as e-health, smart grid, and smart cities, real-time commands must reach the end devices in the scale of milliseconds. Traditional public-key cryptosystem, albeit necessary in the context of general Internet security, falls short in establishing new session keys in the scale of milliseconds for critical messages. In this paper, a systematic perspective for securing IoT communication, specifically satisfying the real-time constraint against certain adversaries in realistic settings. First, at the network layer, we propose a secret random route computation scheme using the software-defined network (SDN) based on a capability scheme using the network actions. The computed routes are random in the eyes of the eavesdropper. Second, at the application layer, the source breaks command messages into secret shares and sends them through the network to the destination. Only the legitimate destination device can reconstruct the command. The secret sharing scheme is efficient compared to PKI and comes with information-theoretic security against adversaries. Our proof formalizes the notion of security of the proposed scheme, and our simulations validate our design. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
Towards Attention-Based Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory for Travel Time Prediction of Bus Journeys
Sensors 2020, 20(12), 3354; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20123354 - 12 Jun 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1099
Abstract
Travel time prediction is critical for advanced traveler information systems (ATISs), which provides valuable information for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the urban transportation systems. However, in the area of bus trips, existing studies have focused on directly using the structured data [...] Read more.
Travel time prediction is critical for advanced traveler information systems (ATISs), which provides valuable information for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the urban transportation systems. However, in the area of bus trips, existing studies have focused on directly using the structured data to predict travel time for a single bus trip. For state-of-the-art public transportation information systems, a bus journey generally has multiple bus trips. Additionally, due to the lack of study on data fusion, it is even inadequate for the development of underlying intelligent transportation systems. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for a hybrid data-driven travel time prediction model for bus journeys based on open data. We explore a convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) model with a self-attention mechanism that accurately predicts the running time of each segment of the trips and the waiting time at each station. The model is more robust to capture long-range dependence in time series data as well. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
A Two-Stage Service Migration Algorithm in Parked Vehicle Edge Computing for Internet of Things
Sensors 2020, 20(10), 2786; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20102786 - 14 May 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 868
Abstract
Parked vehicle edge computing (PVEC) utilizes both idle resources in parked vehicles (PVs) and roadside units (RSUs) as service providers (SPs) to improve the performance of vehicular internet of things (IoT). However, it is difficult to make optimal service migration decisions in PVEC [...] Read more.
Parked vehicle edge computing (PVEC) utilizes both idle resources in parked vehicles (PVs) and roadside units (RSUs) as service providers (SPs) to improve the performance of vehicular internet of things (IoT). However, it is difficult to make optimal service migration decisions in PVEC networks due to the uncertain parking duration and resources heterogeneity of PVs. In this paper, we formulate the service migration of all the vehicles as an optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the average latency. We propose a two-stage service migration algorithm for PVEC networks, which divides the original problem into the service migration between SPs and the serving PV selection in parking lots. The service migration between SPs is transformed to an online problem based on Lyapunov optimization, where the expected parking duration of PVs is utilized. A modified Hungarian algorithm is proposed to select the PVs for migration. A series of simulation experiments based on the real-world vehicle traces are conducted to verify the superior performance of the proposed two-stage service migration (SEA) algorithm as compared with the state-of- art solutions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Article
A Novel Point Cloud Encoding Method Based on Local Information for 3D Classification and Segmentation
Sensors 2020, 20(9), 2501; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092501 - 28 Apr 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1014
Abstract
Deep learning is robust to the perturbation of a point cloud, which is an important data form in the Internet of Things. However, it cannot effectively capture the local information of the point cloud and recognize the fine-grained features of an object. Different [...] Read more.
Deep learning is robust to the perturbation of a point cloud, which is an important data form in the Internet of Things. However, it cannot effectively capture the local information of the point cloud and recognize the fine-grained features of an object. Different levels of features in the deep learning network are integrated to obtain local information, but this strategy increases network complexity. This paper proposes an effective point cloud encoding method that facilitates the deep learning network to utilize the local information. An axis-aligned cube is used to search for a local region that represents the local information. All of the points in the local region are available to construct the feature representation of each point. These feature representations are then input to a deep learning network. Two well-known datasets, ModelNet40 shape classification benchmark and Stanford 3D Indoor Semantics Dataset, are used to test the performance of the proposed method. Compared with other methods with complicated structures, the proposed method with only a simple deep learning network, can achieve a higher accuracy in 3D object classification and semantic segmentation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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Review

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Review
Internet of Everything (IoE) Taxonomies: A Survey and a Novel Knowledge-Based Taxonomy
Sensors 2021, 21(2), 568; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020568 - 14 Jan 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 914
Abstract
The paradigm of the Internet of everything (IoE) is advancing toward enriching people’s lives by adding value to the Internet of things (IoT), with connections among people, processes, data, and things. This paper provides a survey of the literature on IoE research, highlighting [...] Read more.
The paradigm of the Internet of everything (IoE) is advancing toward enriching people’s lives by adding value to the Internet of things (IoT), with connections among people, processes, data, and things. This paper provides a survey of the literature on IoE research, highlighting concerns in terms of intelligence services and knowledge creation. The significant contributions of this study are as follows: (1) a systematic literature review of IoE taxonomies (including IoT); (2) development of a taxonomy to guide the identification of critical knowledge in IoE applications, an in-depth classification of IoE enablers (sensors and actuators); (3) validation of the defined taxonomy with 50 IoE applications; and (4) identification of issues and challenges in existing IoE applications (using the defined taxonomy) with regard to insights about knowledge processes. To the best of our knowledge, and taking into consideration the 76 other taxonomies compared, this present work represents the most comprehensive taxonomy that provides the orchestration of intelligence in network connections concerning knowledge processes, type of IoE enablers, observation characteristics, and technological capabilities in IoE applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Internet of Things, Big Data and Smart Systems)
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