Dear Colleagues,

Energy is one of the most important resources in the modern world. Power- and energy-aware systems and networks have attracted the attention of researchers and practitioners for the few last decades. In fact, all situations where vehicles, devices, machines, etc. are supplied from a common electric power source can be considered here. Better efficiency of systems powered by electrical energy may be achieved in various ways, for example by developing energy-efficient production technologies or improving the management of existing systems. Power can be considered as a limited resource, such that the processing time and/or speed depend on the amount of resource allotted to a job. A special feature of this resource is that it can be allotted to a job in an arbitrary (not necessarily discrete) amount. Another important observation is that power can be modelled as a doubly constrained resource, whose consumption over time is represented by energy. This means that there are limits on both instantaneous and total power consumption. Under such assumptions basically two types of optimization problems are considered: minimization of a scheduling objective subject to given resource availability or minimization of power/energy consumption subject to defined scheduling requirements.

At present, when electric vehicles, cars, flying objects (e.g., drones), etc. are becoming increasingly present in our lives, the energy-efficient management of systems and networks of various types becomes a problem of huge importance. This is related, for example, to problems of charging such units in environments of limited power, energy, or both. As an example, we can imagine a process of charging a set of batteries from a common electric power source, where each battery may have a different characteristic (capacity, initial power demand, power vs. time charging function, etc.). Many various optimization models for such real-life situations can be developed and then practically applied.

Additionally, in environments of different types of networks (communication, computer, sensor networks, etc.), energy efficiency becomes an increasingly important topic. Optimal energy flow management requires the metering of each source and energy consumer. The metering system is distributed, and devices are often several kilometers apart. A good solution for obtaining measurement data is the use of low-energy communication networks using unlicensed frequencies (e.g., low-power wide-area networks, LPWANs) and intelligent edge devices (e.g., Internet of Things, IoT). The integration of LPWANs with the IoT enables long-distance communication with low energy consumption, low cost of metering devices, and simplified implementation of control algorithms for edge devices. The use of IoT technologies also makes it possible to perform calculations on measurement data at the edges of the network. The use of prediction in calculations will enable the reduction of energy consumption for the implementation of measurements and data transmission. Implementations of those solutions contribute to the Internet of Energy (IoE)—distributed energy systems aimed at achieving energy efficiency, avoiding energy waste, and improving environmental conditions.

This Special Issue aims to present and spread widely recent advances related to theory and practice, models and applications, as well as control and monitoring of energy-efficient systems and networks of different types.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to:

• Energy-efficient systems and networks;
• New mathematical optimization models;
• Power- and energy-aware scheduling;
• Green computing and energy-efficient computations;
• Energy-efficient computation and data centers;
• Systems for charging electric vehicles, devices, machines, etc.;
• Energy-efficient systems for control and monitoring;
• Smart metering in intelligent buildings and smart cities;
• Smart energy management and smart buildings;
• Low-energy data processing in IoT.

Dr. Grzegorz Waligóra
Dr. Rafał Różycki
Dr. Mariusz Nowak
Guest Editors

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