Challenges, Trade-offs, and Experiences for Edge Computing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Dear Colleagues,

The vast diffusion of wirelessly connected intelligent devices is rapidly changing the approach towards the design of monitoring infrastructures in several application fields. The availability of low-cost data-processing devices is moving part of the computation load towards the edge of the network. This leads to the definition of a wide range of new application scenarios. In particular, intelligent wireless sensor networks open up the way for the realization of monitoring infrastructures based on sensors that require mixed use of computationally light sensors (e.g., pressure sensors, thermal sensors, sound sensors), up to computationally heavy ones (e.g., cameras and 3D range sensors), to implement distributed, scalable, flexible, and resilient systems.

Data processing at the edge of the network, nevertheless, poses several technological challenges, in terms of security and reliability, as well as energy efficiency and management, network connectivity, timing constraints, and orchestration. And, crucially, in the vast majority of situations, multiple facets need to be addressed together and induce the design and management of nontrivial trade-offs.

This Special Issue invites original contributions on topics including, but not limited to, the following arguments:

• Wireless data transmission techniques for intelligent sensor networks;
• Data summarization and data interpolation that also accounts for spatial and temporal information;
• Integration between fixed and mobile sensors, including drone-based ones;
• Imaging and multimedia data management in wireless sensor networks;
• Energy policies and trade-offs;
• Security and reliability in the architectural design of wireless sensor networks;
• Energy harvesting techniques and implications for intelligent sensor nodes and networks;
• Hierarchical design of the architecture and functions;
• Dynamic role reconfiguration in nodes and networks;
• Programmability and performance/energy efficiency;
• Timing constrains in surveillance and monitoring; and
• Applications, best practices, and real-world examples based on intelligent sensor nodes/networks.

Prof. Dr. Allessandro Mecocci
Prof. Dr. Sandro Bartolini
Dr. Alessandro Pozzebon
Guest Editors

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• wireless sensor networks
• edge computing
• fog computing
• security
• reliability
• energy harvesting
• power management