Challenges and Complexities in Emerging Smart Cities

Dear Colleagues,

The technological revolution occurring in sensorization is determining the way in which we must engineer solutions. Robustness, efficiency, scalability, flexibility, sustainability, and security are some of the complexities we are accustomed to finding in the requirement documentation linked to those projects. Sensors are becoming more intelligent, wireless networks are becoming more affordable and powerful, and system engineering must remain aligned to give the required response to the complexity inherent in the new functional and non-functional requirements, which is a challenging task in a highly dynamic environment. Wireless sensor networks are enabling innovative and interesting applications ranging from smart homes and smart cities to precision agriculture and advanced healthcare. The widespread acceptance of these new services, however, can be improved by designing techniques promoting ubiquity and the definition of new protocols, frameworks, and architectures that can not only simplify the software development of wireless sensor networks but also facilitate the associated system design, control design, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance, taking into account power requirements and physical assembly, which frequently occur in adverse environments. Tackling these challenges requires contributions from many fields such as physics (new materials and implementation techniques), control engineering, embedded systems, software engineering, real-time data acquisition and data fusion, wireless protocols, and system security. The recent pandemic threat is an example of the challenges mentioned above. Suddenly, technological development has made it possible to implement apps capable of helping to detect potential infections using WSN devices.

This Special Issue aims not only to collect outstanding S-CUBE 2021 conference extension papers but also research papers on advanced smart technologies and applications. Submissions are invited covering all aspects and dimensions of sensor software systems development supporting WSN, aimed at smart applications, including, but not restricted to:

• IoT sensors and networks;
• Smart and efficient sensors (environmental, infrastructure, others);
• Networked control systems;
• Critical WSN-based infrastructure resilience, monitoring, and control;
• Data processing, storage, and management;
• Distributed algorithms for reasoning and signal processing in WSN;
• Disaster (pandemics, earthquakes, etc.) monitoring, sensing, and control using WSN;
• Environmental monitoring;
• Security and privacy in sensor systems (security and privacy by design);
• Health monitoring of cyber-physical systems
• Smart homes, smart cities, and building automation;
• Tools and platforms for sensor systems planning, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance;
• Case studies (healthcare, public services, surveillance, education, sport, and leisure).

Prof. Dr. Dongsheng Yang
Dr. Neetesh Saxena
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• IoT sensors and networks
• Smart and efficient sensors (environmental, infrastructure, others)
• Networked control systems
• Critical WSN-based infrastructure resilience, monitoring, and control
• Data processing, storage, and management
• Distributed algorithms for reasoning and signal processing in WSN
• Disaster (pandemics, earthquakes, etc.) monitoring, sensing, and control using WSN
• Environmental monitoring
• Security and privacy in sensor systems (security and privacy by design)
• Health monitoring of cyber-physical systems Smart homes, smart cities, and building automation
• Tools and platforms for sensor systems planning, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance
• Case studies (healthcare, public services, surveillance, education, sport, and leisure)