Applications of Internet of Things Networks in 5G and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

The pervasiveness of Internet of Things technology is expected to be ever-increasing in the next decade, with applications including healthcare, smart manufacturing, transport and logistics, and security, to name but a few. This explosion of devices, with different application scenarios, requires new networking paradigms and is heavily influencing the new communications standards like 5G – where the most relevant differences with respect to the previous generation are, indeed, in the support for IoT-based applications.

Even though 5G can, and will be, an enabling technology, there is still a wide area of research, both theoretical and applicated, that has to be performed. Examples of research topics under active development are spectrum coexistence, resource allocation, remote area connectivity, heterogeneous network integration, network optimization, etc. The research, of course, is not limited to improvements in 5G and intends to pave the way toward future standards like 6G.

The challenges and opportunities are not limited to communication technologies. As a matter of fact, IoT systems will produce a massive amount of data that will require proper and timely processing. In this context, the research will need to tackle issues arising from the privacy and security of user data, big data processing, networking paradigms based on virtualization, and network and resource slicing, among others.

A further set of challenges will be driven by the need for new paradigms to cope with cyber threats, as IoT systems are tightly coupled to the cyber-physical domain, meaning that threats to the cyber domain can potentially have severe outcomes in the physical domain.

Finally, the importance of green networking and computing paradigms are expected to increase in the future, both because IoT devices are typically mobile and because energy consumption reduction is nowadays a priority.

This Topical Collection seeks innovative works on a wide range of research topics, spanning both theoretical and systems research, including results from industry and academic/industrial collaborations, related but not restricted to the following topics:

• Machine learning/AI applications for 5G networks
• Distributed and federated machine learning/AI applications to 5G and IoT domains
• 5G and IoT systems integration
• Security and privacy aspects of 5G and IoT pervasive networks
• 5G and IoT heterogeneous networks
• 5G and IoT use cases and scenarios (e.g., e-health, vehicular networks, transport systems, autonomous driving, logistic management, etc.)
• Age of information in pervasive networks
• Network virtualization systems for 5G and IoT networks (e.g., SDN, NFV, virtual machine placement and migration, network slicing, etc.)
• Service and network planning for IoT and 5G systems
• Edge networking and computation for 5G/IoT domains
• Evolution of 5G and IoT toward 6G and beyond networks
• Full duplex communications in 5G and IoT networks

Prof. Dr. Tommaso Pecorella
Dr. Benedetta Picano
Collection 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. 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-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.