Acoustic sensor networks in the Internet of Things applications

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.