Aims

Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417) provides an advanced forum on all aspects of applied natural sciences. It publishes reviews, research papers and communications. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers. The full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Electronic files and software regarding the full details of the calculation or experimental procedure, if unable to be published in a normal way, can be deposited as supplementary electronic material.

Scope

The journal covers all aspects of applied physics, applied chemistry, engineering, environmental and earth sciences, and applied biology. It has 7 broad subjects and 33 narrower Sections:

Physical Sciences

- Optics and Lasers
- Energy
- Acoustics and Vibrations
- Applied Physics
- Quantum Science and Technology
- Applied Thermal Engineering
- Applied Adhesion
- Fluid

Chemistry

- Chemistry
- Membrane Science and Technology 
- Food Science and Technology
- Surface Sciences and Technology

Material Sciences

- Materials
- Nanotechnology and Applied Nanoscience

Environmental Science and Engineering

- Environmental and Sustainable Science and Technology

Engineering

- Mechanical Engineering
- Computing and Artificial Intelligence
- Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Applied Industrial Technologies
- Robotics and Automation
- Agricultural Engineering
- Additive Manufacturing Technologies
- Transportation and Vehicles

Earth-Aerospace-Marine Science and Engineering

- Earth Sciences and Geography
- Marine Engineering 
- Aerospace Science and Engineering

Biological Science and Engineering

- Applied Biosciences and Bioengineering
- Applied Dentistry
- Applied Microbiology
- Applied Micromedicine
- Biomedical Engineering
- Neurosciences

Special Issue on Blockchain and Edge Computing Techniques for Emerging IoT Applications
Submission Date: 2022-08-20

Dear Colleagues,

As the number of Internet-connected devices is dramatically increasing, the IoT is becoming more prevalent for emerging applications to meet the demands of the efficient, flexible, reliable and powerful accessibility of cyberspace from physical systems. More devices are concerned with offering an innovative approach to quality of life, urban challenges, food production, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, energy supply and how to offer a wide variety of smart products and services. While motivating new business models in the growing digital economies, the large volume of IoT data collected by heterogeneous devices interacting and working under IoT systems requires more network resources for enhanced transmission and processing such as AI-based analytics. Edge computing can offload computation tasks from the centralized data center to the network edges in closer proximity to IoT devices and balance resource consumption between data centers and the edge devices, thus making data processing more efficient and flexible while using less resources. Meanwhile, the blockchain provides a decentralized digital ledger and also facilitates decentralized applications of the IoT. Especially, it could enable an open distributed cloud marketplace desired for collaboration among participants in an edge-computing-assisted IoT. An edge device can join the decentralized computing ecosystem and lend computational resources when required. In view of the challenges by enabling new IoT applications and services heavily restricted by the problems of resource management, single points of failure, data privacy, security and robustness, both edge computing and the blockchain would provide attractive solutions.

The motivation of this Special Issue is to discover and promote the current advancements, techniques, innovation and real-world solutions of blockchain and edge computing techniques in IoT infrastructure. This Special Issue will focus on gathering both quantitative and qualitative research contributions from individual, academic, organizational and industry practitioners in the newly emerging area of blockchain and edge computing solutions for resource management, scalable operation, big data processing and dependability issues in IoT.

Topics of interest to the Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

Theory and foundation research of IoT big data transmission and processing based on blockchain and edge computing;
Innovative blockchain and edge computing architectures for optimizing time series computational data in IoT;
Architecture for convergence of blockchain-based IoT supported by edge computing techniques;
Lightweight and secure algorithms for real-world IoT applications based on blockchain and edge computing;
Blockchain and edge computing assisted efficient resource management for:
    (1) IoT architectures (things-centric, data-centric and service-centric architectures);

    (2) Edge and cloud computing-based IoT designs;

    (3) IoT enabling smart applications (smart city, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart transport, etc.);

Use of blockchain techniques for security, trust and privacy in edge-computing-assisted IoT systems.
Dependable policy management for securing IoT systems assisted with blockchain and edge computing;
Other technologies and applications that advocate techniques in the field of blockchain and edge computing in IoT.