Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Platforms and Applications
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 May 2024) | Viewed by 15735
Special Issue Editors
Interests: mobile networks; future internet/NGI; cognitive management; autonomic communications; reconfigurable mobile systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: communications and networking; Internet of Things; pervasive and physical computing; sensor networks; industrial informatics; location and context awareness; informatics in education
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: edge networking; cyber security; public safety; digital video broadcasting; edge computing; SDN; NFV; Internet of Things; network management; network virtualization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In the modern landscape of Industry 4.0, monolithic and vendor-specific industrial control systems (ICSs) of the past, with little or any interaction with the internet world, are pushed to create a digitally interconnected and software-defined control ecosystem. In such highly distributed and heterogeneous environments, specialized modular software allows for the centralized management and orchestration of available services and infrastructures controlling the manufacturing process. The latter provides a unified interoperable intelligent framework for the integration of operational technology (OT) with information technology (IT) that can ideally enable vendor-agnostic and policy-driven infrastructure control, as well as monitoring, decision, execution, and reporting services for large-scale workloads and product lifecycle management. The integration of OT with IT benefits industries by reducing cost and risks along with higher performance and gains in flexibility. A critical trend that boosts OT and IT convergence in the context of smart industries is the emergence of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). IIoT refers to the evolution of typical ICSs, so interconnected sensors, actuators, controllers, PLCs, instruments, and other field devices are networked together with industrial applications. Internetworking technologies comprise traditional serial protocols (e.g., RS232/485) and fieldbus topologies (e.g., Modbus, Profibus, and CAN) to packet data protocols (e.g., PROFINET and Industrial Ethernet), TCP/IP integration (e.g., VLANs, VPN, remote access, and QoS), and wireless connectivity (e.g., WLAN, 802.15.4, and LPWAN). This connectivity allows for a higher degree of automation via data collection, exchange, and analysis. Furthermore, the introduction of the IIoT into industrial environments has brought the need for data processing closer to the field devices to improve response times and save bandwidth, thus, opening the path to edge/fog computing in industrial applications. However, the emergence of this evolution comes with a price: novel risks and cyber-security threads abound at the different layers of ICSs which industrial employers should become aware of.
Hence, IIoT is an umbrella term that incorporates advances from various technological fields such as wireless and computer networking, sensor networks, cyber-physical systems, cloud and edge computing, big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and cybersecurity.
The goal of this Special Issue is to invite high-quality, state-of-the-art research papers that deal with challenging issues in the Internet of Things for Industry-4.0-oriented applications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Advances in the Internet of Things for industrial applications;
- Sensor networking for Industry 4.0 applications;
- Advances concerning the various smart industries (smart factories, manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, farming, cities, grids, etc.);
- Empirical studies from the deployment of IIoT applications in industrial environments;
- Advanced wireless networking for industrial use;
- Communication and networking issues for industrial environments;
- Network management issues for Industry 4.0 environments;
- Edge/fog/cloud computing for Industry 4.0;
- Network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) issues for industrial use;
- Cybersecurity issues and solutions for Industry 4.0 environments;
- Advances concerning the convergence of OT/IT in Industry 4.0 environments;
- Distributed ICSs for Industry 4.0;
- Human–machine interfaces (HMI) and SCADA supervisory systems for Industry 4.0;
- Augmented and virtual reality issues for Industry 4.0 applications;
- Machine learning, artificial, and computational intelligence for use in Industry 4.0 applications;
- Predictive diagnostics and maintenance tools for Industry 4.0;
- Advanced data repository and data analytics tools for Industry 4.0 applications;
- Supply chain management for Industry 4.0.
Dr. Nancy Alonistioti
Dr. Spyros Panagiotakis
Dr. Evangelos K. Markakis
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- industrial informatics
- Industry 4.0
- OT/IT convergence
- Internet of Things
- sensor networks
- computer networks
- wireless communications
- network management
- network function virtualization and software-defined networking
- cybersecurity
- predictive maintenance
- edge/fog/cloud computing
- smart industries (factories, manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, farming, cities, grids, etc.)
- machine learning, artificial and computational intelligence
- augmented and virtual reality
- supply chain management
- data analytics
- human–computer interaction
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