Innovative Protocols, Algorithms, and Applications for Autonomous Sensing and Sensor Networks
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 August 2026 | Viewed by 634
Special Issue Editors
Interests: shared spectrum networks; intelligent computer networks; AI-based healthcare; multi-agent systems
Interests: software engineering; deep learning; artificial intelligence; cloud computing; cybersecurity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: distributed multimedia systems; high-speed networks to support real-time applications; performance evaluation; local area networks
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The confluence of sensing technologies and artificial intelligence is driving a transformative shift across numerous domains, enabling sensing systems to move beyond simple data collection toward intelligent, predictive, and autonomous decision-making. Leveraging advanced AI-enabled capabilities, such as perception, reasoning, and action execution, particularly through large language models and deep learning, offers significant potential for developing new and innovative protocols, algorithms, and applications to autonomously perform complex fusion and processing of massive amounts of multimodal data to gain valuable insights and knowledge. Armed with these capabilities, future sensing applications can anticipate trends, simulate scenarios to uncover vulnerabilities and hidden risks, and recommend optimal actions, securely and at scale, with unprecedented levels of accuracy, efficiency, and adaptability. The dynamic continuous loop, where perception, cognition, and action are seamlessly integrated into sensing devices and sensor networks, will enable the development of self-configuring, self-adapting, and self-optimizing sensing systems. These systems will support autonomous, proactive sensing strategies, applications, and decision-making across a wide range of domains, including healthcare, agriculture, supply chain, and manufacturing.
Despite recent advances in intelligent sensors and sensing technology, autonomous sensing and sensor networks face several key challenges. A primary issue is the need for real-time algorithms and protocols for the acquisition and processing of compositional and semantic data necessary to provide meaning, context, and relationships. Effective approaches and methods are also needed to handle domain shifts caused by variations in sensor technology and the environment. Moreover, integrating intelligent capabilities into autonomous sensor networks requires responsive and robust hardware that can securely and reliably perform observation, reconfiguration, and cognition. This Special Issue seeks original research articles, as well as review and survey papers, focused on advances in innovative protocols, algorithms, and applications for the next generation of intelligent, autonomous sensor networks.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Intelligent sensing models that go beyond traditional threshold sensing to enable autonomous adaptive systems capable of handling real-world complexities.
- Intelligent, adaptive processing algorithms to enable automatic analysis of multimodal sensor signals in environments prone to noisy data and cross-sensory interference.
- Intelligent consensus and negotiation frameworks and algorithms, for resilient data aggregation and network operation, in dynamic, resource-constrained, and failure-prone sensor deployments.
- Robust, explainable personalized models for human activity recognition and behavior analysis in various real-world contexts and for complex multi-task activities.
- Intelligent algorithms and protocols for secure, privacy-preserving sensing, fault diagnosis, and real-time anomaly and intrusion detection, in shared spectrum environments.
- Intelligent sensing models and methods for autonomous decision-making, adaptive sensor control, dynamic resource allocation, and optimal routing in large-scale sensor networks.
- Edge and fog computing frameworks and approaches for low-latency, energy-efficient intelligent model execution on resource-constrained sensor devices.
- Integrated computing and sensing paradigms for efficient temporal data processing and input dynamics capture, including autonomic and neuromorphic computing and architectures.
- Intelligent perception–planning–control coordination using AI agents to ensure safety and timing guarantees in autonomous sensing systems.
- Intelligent multi-agent systems and algorithms to support sensing applications in various environments, including, but not limited to, transportation systems, industrial IoT, autonomous mobile robots, smart homes, and personalized healthcare.
Dr. Debarun Das
Prof. Dr. Haiping Xu
Prof. Dr. Taieb Znati
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- autonomous sensing
- sensor networks
- innovative sensing algorithms, protocols, and applications
- intelligent sensing hardware
- intelligent methods for real-time semantic data acquisition and processing
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