Elsevier

Future Generation Computer Systems

Volume 86, September 2018, Pages 1167-1169
Future Generation Computer Systems

Editorial
Acoustic sensor networks in the Internet of Things applications

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.05.019Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent advancements in acoustic sensing and electronics technologies offer enormous opportunities for engineers to explore underwater and underground realms and deploy a diverse range of applications including deep sea natural resource extraction, search mission, and man-made asset monitoring. As a result, acoustic sensor networks (ASNs) are gaining increasing attention in research community. In addition, multimodal sensors incorporating acoustic sensing broaden the sensing scope, enabling the development of more useful and robust Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, these networks are distinctively different from the traditional wireless sensor networks due to their inherent characteristics, and present a number of challenges to build low complexity and energy-efficient protocols for reliable data delivery and management of large-scale innovative IoT applications while ensuring the security and privacy of data communication. The papers of this special issue address a number of research challenges in applying acoustic sensors in IoT applications, including routing and data delivery protocols, energy harvesting, sensor management in large applications, cryptographic key distribution, and low-cost, high accuracy identification using sonar data.

Introduction

One of the important sensing means is through sound wave, which is widely used in many medical, technological and scientific applications. Acoustic sensor networks are especially important for communications in underwater and underground and in situations where radio frequency signal is not suitable or unusable. Additionally, multimodal sensor networks incorporating acoustic sensors can augment the sensing scope and enhance the performance and functionalities of wireless of sensor networks. This is particularly important given the fact that sensor networks will be an integral part of the Internet of Things environment.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the design and development of acoustic sensing technology and deployment of acoustic sensor networks for smart environment monitoring, surveillance, offshore exploration, disaster prevention and recovery, smart cities and buildings, and biosecurity applications [1]. However, the current technology faces numerous challenges that need to be resolved for those applications to be cost-effective, efficient and practically deployable in large scale in IoT applications. The slow propagation speed, low bandwidth and inherent noise in underwater environments require new or the re-design of protocols and algorithms from the application layer to physical layer [2]. The unsolved issues include inability of protocols to handle node mobility and environmental noise, distributed sensor management for large-scale applications, throughput analysis, energy harvesting, and security and privacy issues. Works that studied with acoustic data include, among others, devising technique for efficient analysis of large-scale acoustic data from environment [3] and keystroke monitoring from acoustic data to prevent adversary eavesdropping [4]. Though these works have made important contributions, further research efforts on acoustics sensor networks are essential. The papers in this special issue make high-quality contributions focusing on research that addresses the above-mentioned issues as well as innovative applications and services based on acoustic sensor networks in IoT Applications.

Papers were invited for this special issue considering various aspects of the problem concerning ASNs, including:

  • Medium access control protocol design for ASNs;

  • Delay-aware and reliable data delivery protocol;

  • Energy-aware and low complexity protocol design for green communication;

  • Intelligent IoT services and surveillance using acoustic networks (e.g., event/source localization in buildings/cities);

  • Underwater and Underground monitoring, disaster prevention and recovery using ASNs;

  • Security issues on acoustic sensors and IoT based applications;

  • Testbeds for distributed IoT networks using acoustic sensors.

In response to the call for special issue papers, we received twenty papers, out of which six papers have been selected through a rigorous review process. These papers present the state-of-the-art works in ASNs attempting to devise innovative solutions to the above-mentioned problems.

Section snippets

Content of the issue

Pervasive Internet of Things is a need for many emerging applications for detail characterization of real physical applications. In large-scale resource constrained networks, the use of visual sensors is hindered by numerous challenges, where acoustic sensors can provide a viable alternative. Also, most work focuses on abnormal event recognition using centralized systems, though practical deployment demands distributed operation to enable large-scale IoT surveillance systems. The first paper by

Conclusion

The development of ASNs is relatively new and applications integrating ASNs into the IoT framework are gradually emerging. A number of critical research problems need to be solved before dependable ASN based IoT applications can be fully commercialized. This special issue reports several important research works that propose solutions to some of those research problems, and therefore, will be useful to advance the development and deployment of ASN based IoT applications in future.

References (10)

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