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The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges

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A special issue of Computers (ISSN 2073-431X). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 29830

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Sergio Correia

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1. COPELABS, Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Campo Grande 376, 1749-024 Lisboa, Portugal
2. VALORIZA, Instituto Politécnico de Portalegre, Campus Politécnico n.10, 7300-555 Portalegre, Portugal
Interests: sensors networks; applied mathematics; computer science; electrical engineering; optimization algorithms; electronics and communication engineering; localization algorithms; analog and digital hardware design; Internet of Things; embedded design; artificial intelligence; computer architectures
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has changed traditional living into a high-tech lifestyle. Pervasive environments that interconnect many heterogeneous physical objects (or things) to enhance the efficiency of everyday tasks are becoming common in an increasing number of fields of application. However, there are still many open challenges and obstacles that need to be addressed to achieve the full potential of the IoT. These challenges and combined issues must be considered from various aspects of IoT, such as applications, challenges, enabling technologies, or social and environmental impacts.

With this Special Issue, it is intended to bring together researchers and professionals to discuss a collection of ideas on the advancements in technology, application areas, or social and environmental impacts that the IoT currently faces, and to state possible future challenges and directions of research.

Dr. Sergio Correia
Guest Editor

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. Computers is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1800 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 (IoT)
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Blockchain
Privacy and security
Industry 4.0
Cloud computing
Big data
Embedded computing
Sensors networks
Distributed computing
Green computing and energy efficiency
Internet of Wearable Things
Healthcare
Testbed and experimental results for the IoT
Smart sensors
Drones and UAVs
5G and beyond 5G networks
Software-defined wireless access networks
Pervasive computing
Social and environmental impacts

Published Papers (10 papers)

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Research

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18 pages, 1840 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Classifying the Main Technology Clusters and Assignees of Home Automation Networks Using Patent Classifications

by Konstantinos Charmanas, Konstantinos Georgiou, Nikolaos Mittas and Lefteris Angelis

Computers 2023, 12(10), 211; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12100211 - 20 Oct 2023

Viewed by 1381

Abstract

Home automation technologies are a vital part of humanity, as they provide convenience in otherwise mundane and repetitive tasks. In recent years, given the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors, these technologies have seen a tremendous rise, both in the methodologies utilized and in their industrial impact. Hence, many organizations and companies are securing commercial rights by patenting such technologies. In this study, we employ an analysis of 8482 home automation patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to extract thematic clusters and distinguish those that drive the market and those that have declined over the course of time. Moreover, we identify prevalent competitors per cluster and analyze the results under the spectrum of their market impact and objectives. The key findings indicate that home automation networks encompass a variety of technological areas and organizations with diverse interests. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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14 pages, 512 KiB

Open AccessArticle

QoS-Aware and Energy Data Management in Industrial IoT

by Yarob Abdullah and Zeinab Movahedi

Computers 2023, 12(10), 203; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12100203 - 10 Oct 2023

Viewed by 1073

Abstract

Two crucial challenges in Industry 4.0 involve maintaining critical latency requirements for data access and ensuring efficient power consumption by field devices. Traditional centralized industrial networks that provide rudimentary data distribution capabilities may not be able to meet such stringent requirements. These requirements cannot be met later due to connection or node failures or extreme performance decadence. To address this problem, this paper focuses on resource-constrained networks of Internet of Things (IoT) systems, exploiting the presence of several more powerful nodes acting as distributed local data storage proxies for every IoT set. To increase the battery lifetime of the network, a number of nodes that are not included in data transmission or data storage are turned off. In this paper, we investigate the issue of maximizing network lifetime, and consider the restrictions on data access latency. For this purpose, data are cached distributively in proxy nodes, leading to a reduction in energy consumption and ultimately maximizing network lifetime. To address this problem, we introduce an energy-aware data management method (EDMM); with the goal of extending network lifetime, select IoT nodes are designated to save data distributively. Our proposed approach (1) makes sure that data access latency is underneath a specified threshold and (2) performs well with respect to network lifetime compared to an offline centralized heuristic algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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15 pages, 2158 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Rendezvous Based Adaptive Path Construction for Mobile Sink in WSNs Using Fuzzy Logic

by Omar Banimelhem and Fidaa Al-Quran

Computers 2023, 12(3), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12030066 - 20 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1369

Abstract

In this paper, an adaptive path construction approach for Mobile Sink (MS) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for data gathering has been proposed. The path is constructed based on selecting Rendezvous Points (RPs) in the sensing field where the MS stops in order to collect the data. Compared with the most existing RP-based schemes, which rely on fixed RPs to construct the path where these points will stay fixed during the whole network lifetime, we propose an adaptive path construction where the locations of the RPs are dynamically updated using a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). The proposed FIS, which is named Fuzzy_RPs, has three inputs and one output. The inputs are: the remaining energy of the sensor nodes, the transmission distance between the RPs and the sensor nodes, and the number of surrounding neighbors of each node. The output of FIS is a weight value for each sensor node generated based on the previous three parameters and, thus, each RP is updated to its new location accordingly. Simulation results have shown that the proposed approach extends the network lifetime compared with another existing approach that uses fixed RPs. For example, in terms of using the first dead node as a metric for the network lifetime, when the number of deployed sensor nodes changes from 150 to 300, an improvement that ranges from 48.3% to 83.76% has been achieved compared with another related approach that uses fixed RPs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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17 pages, 2684 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Energy-Efficient Cluster Head Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks Using an Improved Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm

by Mandli Rami Reddy, M. L. Ravi Chandra, P. Venkatramana and Ravilla Dilli

Computers 2023, 12(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12020035 - 06 Feb 2023

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 3255

Abstract

The internet of things (IoT) and industrial IoT (IIoT) play a major role in today’s world of intelligent networks, and they essentially use a wireless sensor network (WSN) as a perception layer to collect the intended data. This data is processed as information and send to cloud servers through a base station, the challenge here is the consumption of minimum energy for processing and communication. The dynamic formation of cluster heads and energy aware clustering schemes help in improving the lifetime of WSNs. In recent years, grey wolf optimization (GWO) became the most popular feature selection optimizing, swarm intelligent, and robust metaheuristics algorithm that gives competitive results with impressive characteristics. In spite of several studies in the literature to enhance the performance of the GWO algorithm, there is a need for further improvements in terms of feature selection, accuracy, and execution time. In this paper, we have proposed an energy-efficient cluster head selection using an improved version of the GWO (EECHIGWO) algorithm to alleviate the imbalance between exploitation and exploration, lack of population diversity, and premature convergence of the basic GWO algorithm. The primary goal of this paper is to enhance the energy efficiency, average throughput, network stability, and the network lifetime in WSNs with an optimal selection of cluster heads using the EECHIGWO algorithm. It considers sink distance, residual energy, cluster head balancing factor, and average intra-cluster distance as the parameters in selecting the cluster head. The proposed EECHIGWO-based clustering protocol has been tested in terms of the number of dead nodes, energy consumption, number of operating rounds, and the average throughput. The simulation results have confirmed the optimal selection of cluster heads with minimum energy consumption, resolved premature convergence, and enhanced the network lifetime by using minimum energy levels in WSNs. Using the proposed algorithm, there is an improvement in network stability of 169.29%, 19.03%, 253.73%, 307.89%, and 333.51% compared to the SSMOECHS, FGWSTERP, LEACH-PRO, HMGWO, and FIGWO protocols, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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13 pages, 3292 KiB

Open AccessCommunication

Energy Efficiency of IoT Networks for Environmental Parameters of Bulgarian Cities

by Zlatin Zlatev, Tsvetelina Georgieva, Apostol Todorov and Vanya Stoykova

Computers 2022, 11(5), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11050081 - 17 May 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1990

Abstract

Building modern Internet of Things (IoT) systems is associated with a number of challenges. One of the most significant among them is the need for wireless technology, which will serve to build connectivity between the individual components of this technology. In the larger cities of Bulgaria, measures to ensure low levels of harmful emissions, reduce noise levels, and ensure comfort in urban environments have been taken. LoRa technology shows more advantages in transmission distance and low energy consumption compared to other technologies. That is why this technology was chosen for the design of wireless sensor networks (WSN) for six cities in Bulgaria. These networks have the potential to be used in IoT configurations. Appropriate modules and devices for building WSN for cities in Bulgaria have been selected. It has been found that the greater number of nodes in the WSN leads to an increase in the average power consumed in the network. On the other hand, depending on the location of these nodes, the energy consumed may decrease. The performance of wireless sensor networks can be optimized by applying appropriate routing protocols, which are proposed in the available literature. The methodology for energy efficiency analysis of WSN can be used in the design of wireless sensor networks to determine the parameters of the environment, with the possibility of application in IoT. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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9 pages, 418 KiB

Open AccessArticle

IoT Security Mechanisms in the Example of BLE

by Evgeny Kalinin, Danila Belyakov, Dmitry Bragin and Anton Konev

Computers 2021, 10(12), 162; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10120162 - 29 Nov 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3055

Abstract

In recent years, a lot of IoT devices, wireless sensors, and smart things contain information that must be transmitted to the server for further processing. Due to the distance between devices, battery power, and the possibility of sudden device failure, the network that connects the devices must be scalable, energy efficient, and flexible. Particular attention must be paid to the protection of the transmitted data. The Bluetooth mesh was chosen as such a network. This network is built on top of Bluetooth Low-Energy devices, which are widespread in the market and whose radio modules are available from several manufacturers. This paper presents an overview of security mechanisms for the Bluetooth mesh network. This network provides encryption at two layers: network and upper transport layers, which increases the level of data security. The network uses sequence numbers for each message to protect against replay attacks. The introduction of devices into the network is provided with an encryption key, and the out-of-band (OOB) mechanism is also supported. At the moment, a comparison has been made between attacks and defense mechanisms that overlap these attacks. The article also suggested ways to improve network resiliency. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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24 pages, 1234 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Enhancing Robots Navigation in Internet of Things Indoor Systems

by Yahya Tashtoush, Israa Haj-Mahmoud, Omar Darwish, Majdi Maabreh, Belal Alsinglawi, Mahmoud Elkhodr and Nasser Alsaedi

Computers 2021, 10(11), 153; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10110153 - 15 Nov 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2595

Abstract

In this study, an effective local minima detection and definition algorithm is introduced for a mobile robot navigating through unknown static environments. Furthermore, five approaches are presented and compared with the popular approach wall-following to pull the robot out of the local minima enclosure namely; Random Virtual Target, Reflected Virtual Target, Global Path Backtracking, Half Path Backtracking, and Local Path Backtracking. The proposed approaches mainly depend on changing the target location temporarily to avoid the original target’s attraction force effect on the robot. Moreover, to avoid getting trapped in the same location, a virtual obstacle is placed to cover the local minima enclosure. To include the most common shapes of deadlock situations, the proposed approaches were evaluated in four different environments; V-shaped, double U-shaped, C-shaped, and cluttered environments. The results reveal that the robot, using any of the proposed approaches, requires fewer steps to reach the destination, ranging from 59 to 73 m on average, as opposed to the wall-following strategy, which requires an average of 732 m. On average, the robot with a constant speed and reflected virtual target approach takes 103 s, whereas the identical robot with a wall-following approach takes 907 s to complete the tasks. Using a fuzzy-speed robot, the duration for the wall-following approach is greatly reduced to 507 s, while the reflected virtual target may only need up to 20% of that time. More results and detailed comparisons are embedded in the subsequent sections. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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15 pages, 288 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Affecting Young Children’s Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors for Ultraviolet Radiation Protection through the Internet of Things: A Quasi-Experimental Study

by Sotiroula Theodosi and Iolie Nicolaidou

Computers 2021, 10(11), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10110137 - 25 Oct 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2661

Abstract

Prolonged exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation is linked to skin cancer. Children are more vulnerable to UV harmful effects compared to adults. Children’s active involvement in using Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect and analyze real-time UV radiation data is suggested to increase their awareness of UV protection. This quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group study implemented light sensors in a STEM inquiry-based learning environment focusing on UV radiation and protection in primary education. This exploratory, small-scale study investigated the effect of a STEM environment implementing IoT devices on 6th graders’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors about UV radiation and protection. Participants were 31 primary school students. Experimental group participants (n = 15) attended four eighty-minute inquiry-based lessons on UV radiation and protection and used sensors to measure and analyze UV radiation in their school. Data sources included questionnaires on UV knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors administered pre- and post-intervention. Statistically significant learning gains were found only for the experimental group (t₁₄ = −3.64, p = 0.003). A statistically significant positive behavioral change was reported for experimental group participants six weeks post-intervention. The study adds empirical evidence suggesting the value of real-time data-driven approaches implementing IoT devices to positively influence students’ knowledge and behaviors related to socio-scientific problems affecting their health. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

Review

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33 pages, 3530 KiB

Open AccessReview

Generic IoT for Smart Buildings and Field-Level Automation—Challenges, Threats, Approaches, and Solutions

by Andrzej Ożadowicz

Computers 2024, 13(2), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13020045 - 03 Feb 2024

Viewed by 1632

Abstract

Smart home and building systems are popular solutions that support maintaining comfort and safety and improve energy efficiency in buildings. However, dynamically developing distributed network technologies, in particular the Internet of Things (IoT), are increasingly entering the above-mentioned application areas of building automation, offering new functional possibilities. The result of these processes is the emergence of many different solutions that combine field-level and information and communications technology (ICT) networks in various configurations and architectures. New paradigms are also emerging, such as edge and fog computing, providing support for local monitoring and control networks in the implementation of advanced functions and algorithms, including machine learning and artificial intelligence mechanisms. This paper collects state-of-the-art information in these areas, providing a systematic review of the literature and case studies with an analysis of selected development trends. The author systematized this information in the context of the potential development of building automation systems. Based on the conclusions of this analysis and discussion, a framework for the development of the Generic IoT paradigm in smart home and building applications has been proposed, along with a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of its usability. Future works are proposed as well. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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30 pages, 2945 KiB

Open AccessReview

Blockchain-Based Internet of Things: Review, Current Trends, Applications, and Future Challenges

by Tanweer Alam

Computers 2023, 12(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12010006 - 26 Dec 2022

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 8406

Abstract

Advances in technology always had an impact on our lives. Several emerging technologies, most notably the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, present transformative opportunities. The blockchain is a decentralized, transparent ledger for storing transaction data. By effectively establishing trust between nodes, it has the remarkable potential to design unique architectures for most enterprise applications. When it first appeared as a platform for anonymous cryptocurrency trading, such as Bitcoin, on a public network platform, blockchain piqued the interest of researchers. The chain is completed when each block connects to the previous block. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of networked devices that can exchange data and be managed and controlled via unique identifiers. Automation, wireless sensor networks, embedded systems, and control systems are just a few of the well-known technologies that power the IoT. Converging advancements in real-time analytics, machine learning, commodity sensors, and embedded systems demonstrate the rapid expansion of the IoT paradigm. The Internet of Things refers to the global networking of millions of networked smart gadgets that gather and exchange data. Integrating the IoT and blockchain technology would be a significant step toward developing a reliable, secure, and comprehensive method of storing data collected by smart devices. Internet-enabled devices in the IoT can send data to private blockchain networks, creating immutable records of all transaction history. As a result, these networks produce unchangeable logs of all transactions. This research looks at how blockchain technology and the Internet of Things interact to understand better how devices can communicate with one another. The blockchain-enabled Internet of Things architecture proposed in this article is a useful framework for integrating blockchain technology and the Internet of Things using the most cutting-edge tools and methods currently available. This article discusses the principles of blockchain-based IoT, consensus methods, reviews, difficulties, prospects, applications, trends, and communication between IoT nodes in an integrated framework. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Internet of Things—Current Trends, Applications and Future Challenges)

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