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Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities
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Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2022) | Viewed by 21030

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Gianni Pasolini

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering "Guglielmo Marconi", University of Bologna, Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy
Interests: Internet of Things; heterogeneous networks; low power wide area networks; wireless personal area connectivity; LoRaWAN; IoT applications and use cases
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Margot Deruyck

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Technology, IMEC-Ghent University-WAVES, Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 126, 9052 Ghent, Belgium
Interests: (green) wireless network design; energy- and exposure-aware networking; 5G and beyond 5G networks; unmanned aerial networks; internet of animals; digital agriculture; machine learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Konstantin Mikhaylov

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Erkki Koiso-Kanttilan katu 3, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Interests: Internet of Things; machine-type communication technologies; multi-RAT connectivity; heterogeneous networks; low power wide area networks; wireless personal area connectivity; NB-IoT; LoRaWAN; BLE; 5G; IoT applications and use cases
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As of today, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and projections show that this trend will continue in the next decades, so that cities are expected to absorb virtually all the future growth of the world’s population. This trend poses serious challenges to the implementation of an ambitious urban development agenda, aimed at making human settlements safe, healthy, sustainable and inclusive.

By leveraging on information and communication technologies (ICT), as well as on drones and metamaterials, smart cities promise to increase the efficiency in the use of physical infrastructures and resources, to learn and adapt more effectively to changing circumstances, and to fruitfully engage with citizens in local governance and public utilities. In such a scenario, Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSANs), Internet of Things (IoT), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electromagnetic metasurfaces are, along with 5G and beyond, the most promising technologies to establish the nervous system of future reactive and proactive urban environments, aimed at improving the connectivity, collecting data to be processed and triggering actions as responses. In fact, these technologies are expected to be the founding pillars of Society 5.0, an ICT-enhanced people-centric smart community that targets both the resolution of societal challenges and economic prosperity.

This special issue aims at providing a snapshot of the status and progress of smart city technologies, discussing applications, use-cases, architectures, deployments, recent advances and findings from theoretical investigations and ongoing trials, as well as future trends. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • New paradigms, concepts and architectures for smart city WSANs and IoT
  • 5G and mmWave connectivity for future smart city
  • Low-power wide-area technologies (LoRa, Sigfox, etc.)
  • Cellular-IoT technologies (NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1)
  • Short range and high-throughput technologies (IEEE802.15.4, BLE, UWB, THz, etc.)
  • Other connectivity and beyond wireless technologies (backscatter, radars, wireless power transfer, etc.)
  • Applications and use-cases enabled by WSANs and IoT for smart cities (smart environments, smart roads, context-aware applications, etc.)
  • Heterogeneous (multi-RAT/multi-connectivity) IoT networks
  • UAVs for data collection, security and coverage extension
  • Metasurfaces for outdoor and indoor applications (antennas, reflectors, etc.)
  • IoT-enabled indoor revolutions: Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 in Smart Buildings
  • Radio signal propagation and performance of radio access technologies in city environment
  • Management, security and privacy with respect to IoT data
  • Social aspects of smart city IoT and interaction between humans and IoT machines
  • Trials, testbeds and practical results

Dr. Gianni Pasolini
Dr. Margot Deruyck
Dr. Konstantin Mikhaylov
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 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 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 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

  • Internet of Things
  • Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks
  • Low Power Wide Area Networks
  • Cellular-IoT technologies
  • 5G and beyond
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Electromagnetic metasurfaces

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 5452 KiB  
Article
A Universal Testbed for IoT Wireless Technologies: Abstracting Latency, Error Rate and Stability from the IoT Protocol and Hardware Platform
by Edgar Saavedra, Laura Mascaraque, Gonzalo Calderon, Guillermo del Campo and Asuncion Santamaria
Sensors 2022, 22(11), 4159; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22114159 - 30 May 2022
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2024
Abstract
IoT applications rely strongly on the performance of wireless communication networks. There is a wide variety of wireless IoT technologies and choosing one over another depends on the specific use case requirements—be they technical, implementation-related or functional factors. Among the technical factors, latency, [...] Read more.
IoT applications rely strongly on the performance of wireless communication networks. There is a wide variety of wireless IoT technologies and choosing one over another depends on the specific use case requirements—be they technical, implementation-related or functional factors. Among the technical factors, latency, error rate and stability are the main parameters that affect communication reliability. In this work, we present the design, development and validation of a Universal Testbed to experimentally measure these parameters, abstracting them from the wireless IoT technology protocols and hardware platforms. The Testbed setup, which is based on a Raspberry Pi 4, only requires the IoT device under test to have digital inputs. We evaluate the Testbed’s accuracy with a temporal characterisation—accumulated response delay—showing an error less than 290 µs, leading to a relative error around 3% for the latencies of most IoT wireless technologies, the latencies of which are usually on the order of tens of milliseconds. Finally, we validate the Testbed’s performance by comparing the latency, error and stability measurements with those expected for the most common IoT wireless technologies: 6LoWPAN, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, BLE and NB-IoT. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities)
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22 pages, 24744 KiB  
Article
Variable Link Performance Due to Weather Effects in a Long-Range, Low-Power LoRa Sensor Network
by Thomas Ameloot, Patrick Van Torre and Hendrik Rogier
Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3128; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093128 - 30 Apr 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5164
Abstract
When aiming for the wider deployment of low-power sensor networks, the use of sub-GHz frequency bands shows a lot of promise in terms of robustness and minimal power consumption. Yet, when deploying such sensor networks over larger areas, the link quality can be [...] Read more.
When aiming for the wider deployment of low-power sensor networks, the use of sub-GHz frequency bands shows a lot of promise in terms of robustness and minimal power consumption. Yet, when deploying such sensor networks over larger areas, the link quality can be impacted by a host of factors. Therefore, this contribution demonstrates the performance of several links in a real-world, research-oriented sensor network deployed in a (sub)urban environment. Several link characteristics are presented and analysed, exposing frequent signal deterioration and, more rarely, signal strength enhancement along certain long-distance wireless links. A connection is made between received power levels and seasonal weather changes and events. The irregular link performance presented in this paper is found to be genuinely disruptive when pushing sensor-networks to their limits in terms of range and power use. This work aims to give an indication of the severity of these effects in order to enable the design of truly reliable sensor networks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities)
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26 pages, 5989 KiB  
Article
Sustainable Irrigation System for Farming Supported by Machine Learning and Real-Time Sensor Data
by André Glória, João Cardoso and Pedro Sebastião
Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3079; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093079 - 28 Apr 2021
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4322
Abstract
Presently, saving natural resources is increasingly a concern, and water scarcity is a fact that has been occurring in more areas of the globe. One of the main strategies used to counter this trend is the use of new technologies. On this topic, [...] Read more.
Presently, saving natural resources is increasingly a concern, and water scarcity is a fact that has been occurring in more areas of the globe. One of the main strategies used to counter this trend is the use of new technologies. On this topic, the Internet of Things has been highlighted, with these solutions being characterized by offering robustness and simplicity, while being low cost. This paper presents the study and development of an automatic irrigation control system for agricultural fields. The developed solution had a wireless sensors and actuators network, a mobile application that offers the user the capability of consulting not only the data collected in real time but also their history and also act in accordance with the data it analyses. To adapt the water management, Machine Learning algorithms were studied to predict the best time of day for water administration. Of the studied algorithms (Decision Trees, Random Forest, Neural Networks, and Support Vectors Machines) the one that obtained the best results was Random Forest, presenting an accuracy of 84.6%. Besides the ML solution, a method was also developed to calculate the amount of water needed to manage the fields under analysis. Through the implementation of the system it was possible to realize that the developed solution is effective and can achieve up to 60% of water savings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities)
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25 pages, 886 KiB  
Article
Ultra-Low-Power Wide Range Backscatter Communication Using Cellular Generated Carrier
by Muhammad Usman Sheikh, Boxuan Xie, Kalle Ruttik, Hüseyin Yiğitler, Riku Jäntti and Jyri Hämäläinen
Sensors 2021, 21(8), 2663; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21082663 - 10 Apr 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2886
Abstract
With the popularization of Internet-of-things (IoT) and wireless communication systems, a diverse set of applications in smart cities are emerging to improve the city-life. These applications usually require a large coverage area and minimal operation and maintenance cost. To this end, the recently [...] Read more.
With the popularization of Internet-of-things (IoT) and wireless communication systems, a diverse set of applications in smart cities are emerging to improve the city-life. These applications usually require a large coverage area and minimal operation and maintenance cost. To this end, the recently emerging backscatter communication (BC) is gaining interest in both industry and academia as a new communication paradigm that provides high energy efficient communications that may even work in a battery-less mode and, thus, it is well suited for smart city applications. However, the coverage of BC in urban area deployments is not available, and the feasibility of its utilization for smart city applications is not known. In this article, we present a comprehensive coverage study of a practical cellular carrier-based BC system for indoor and outdoor scenarios in a downtown area of a Helsinki city. In particular, we evaluate the coverage outage performance of different low-power and wide area technologies, i.e., long range (LoRa) backscatter, arrow band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT), and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) based BC at different frequencies of operation. To do so, we carry out a comprehensive campaign of simulations while using a sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) ray tracing (RT) tool, ITU outdoor model, and 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) indoor hotspot model. This study also covers the energy harvesting aspects of backscatter device, and it highlights the importance of future backscatter devices with high energy harvesting efficiency. The simulation results and discussion provided in this article will be helpful in understanding the coverage aspects of practical backscatter communication system in a smart city environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities)
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21 pages, 51438 KiB  
Article
LoRaWAN for Smart Campus: Deployment and Long-Term Operation Analysis
by Rumana Yasmin, Konstantin Mikhaylov and Ari Pouttu
Sensors 2020, 20(23), 6721; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20236721 - 24 Nov 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5451
Abstract
The recent years have gradually increased the value of wireless connectivity, making it the de facto commodity for both human users and the machines. In this paper, we summarize our experiences of deploying and managing for over two years the extensive indoor sensor [...] Read more.
The recent years have gradually increased the value of wireless connectivity, making it the de facto commodity for both human users and the machines. In this paper, we summarize our experiences of deploying and managing for over two years the extensive indoor sensor network composed of more than three hundred devices connected over LoRaWAN low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology. We start by detailing the background and methodology of our deployment and then present the results of analyzing the network’s operation over a period of two years, focusing specifically on identifying the reasons after the packet losses. Our results reveal that despite the common assumptions, in a real-life network, the packets are lost not only during the on-air transmission but also within the backbone. Among the other interesting findings are the observed nonuniform distribution of the packet transmissions by the nodes in the networks, the seasonal effects on the packet delivery, and the observed effects of the interferences on network performance. The empirical results presented in the paper provide valuable insight into the performance of a real-life extensive LoRaWAN network deployed in an indoor environment and thus may be of interest both to the practitioners and academics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT for Smart Cities)
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