Special Issue on Smart Industrial IoT: Architecture, Protocols and Applications

Technology is a key enabler in the evolution and revolution of societies around the globe. We are now in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution – Industry 4.0 – and one of the biggest drivers has been the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The IIoT is the result of widespread use of computers and the interconnectedness of machines. It has made software a crucial tool for almost every industry, from bakeries and arts to manufacturing facilities and banking systems.

Computers can be mobile or geographically separated over large distances, which exposes them to network disturbances, Quality of Service (QoS) degradation, and security vulnerabilities. The IIoT is a complex network at a large scale and there is a dire need for network architecture and protocol design that will accommodate these diverse domains and competencies and handle the increasing levels of complexity.

This special issue will highlight the challenges of network architectures and communication protocol design in the context of the smart industry.

Topics Covered:

These include, but are not limited to:

• Networking protocol performance in IIoT
• Communication protocol interoperability aspects in IIoT
• Secured and privacy-preserved communication protocols in IIoT
• Secured and privacy-preserved communication in IIoT
• Network architecture and novel communication protocol designs for IIoT
• Automated IoT onboarding mechanisms in the industry
• Determinism in IIoT wireless environments
• Semi-automated brownfield device integration in IIoT
• Delay-Tolerant Networking in IIoT
• Information-centric networking in IIoT
• Serverless cloud-edge computing mechanisms in IIoT
• AI operationalisation in IIoT
• The role of machine learning-enabled and deep learning-enabled communication in IIoT
• Decentralised security mechanisms for IIoT

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: 28 February 2022        
• First revision due: 31 May 2022                       
• Second revision due: 31 July 2022
• Final manuscript due: 30 August 2022             
• Publication date: November 2022

Submission Instructions:

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online via the editorial management system. Please select the option ‘SI: Smart IIoT’.

Guest Editors:

• Dr. Fazlullah Khan, Senior Member IEEE, RoZetta Institute, Australia. Email: fazlullah@ieee.org 
• Prof. Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, IEEE Fellow, Professor at the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), Brazil | Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal. Email: joeljr@ieee.org
• Prof. Mian Ahmad Jan, Senior Member IEEE, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Pakistan. Email: mianjan@awkum.edu.pk