Special Issue on Security and Privacy for AI-powered Smart IoT Applications

With the continuous development of Internet technologies and service-oriented applications, Internet of Things (IoT) is playing an increasingly important role in industry 4.0. IoT technology, which can connect billions of intelligent machines, focuses on the inter-networking of various physical units, including sensors, actuators, objects and people. The prevalence of IoT applications has been generating an unprecedented volume of industrial data, a main source of big data. How to effectively and efficiently pre-process, integrate and analyse IoT big data from multiple sources is still a fundamental challenge.

Fortunately, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently emerged as one of the key technologies to achieve intelligent data analyses and scientific business decision-making. AI algorithms can process the streaming data generated by distributed IoT devices, and provide powerful tools to deal with complex big data analytics. However, IoT devices, which run in unstable environments and have poor computing capabilities, are often confronted with a wide range of application requirements, such as quick response, secure communications and privacy protection. Currently, there is still a lack of light-weight security and privacy solutions specifically designed for the devices and servers operating in the IoT environment. This further challenges the security and privacy issues in AI-based smart IoT applications, e.g., data privacy disclosure, adversarial attacks, confidentiality attacks, etc.

This special issue aims to share and discuss recent advances and future trends in security and privacy for AI-powered smart IoT applications, and to bring together academic researchers and industry developers.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• AI algorithms, models and protocols for IoT security
• Blockchain-based lightweight data structure for IoT
• Secure, multi-party computation for AI-based IoT
• AI-powered privacy protection in IoT
• Trust, reliability and dependability in IoT
• Attacks vs. countermeasures in IoT applications
• Encryption, signature and forensics for IoT applications
• Vulnerability testing through intelligent probing
• Privacy-aware data mining and decision-making in IoT
• AI-based intrusion detection and botnet detection
• Smart communications in cloud/fog/edge-based IoT
• Intelligent data pre-processing, integration and analyses in IoT
• Experiments, test-beds and prototyping systems for AI security and privacy

Paper Submission

Digital Communications and Networks (DCN) publishes rigorously peer-reviewed and high-quality articles and authoritative reviews. Only original and unpublished research papers will be considered for this special issue. Authors should follow DCN manuscript format described in the Guide for Authors found on the journal homepage.

Manuscripts should be submitted online; please choose the article type “SI: S&P-AI-IoT”.

Time Table

• Manuscript submission: 1 October 2020
• Final manuscript due: 15 March 2021  
• Acceptance notification: 1 January 2021
• Publication date: June 2021

Guest Editors

• Prof. Lianyong Qi, Qufu Normal University, China 
• Prof. Jin Li, Guangzhou University, China 
• A/Prof. Mehdi Elahi, University of Bergen, Norway 
• Dr. Keshav Sood, Deakin University, Australia 
• Dr. Yuan Yuan, Michigan State University, USA
• Dr. Mohammad Khosravi, Persian Gulf University, Iran