Over the last two decades, the recent and fast advances in inexpensive sensor technology and wireless communications has made the design and development of large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and cyber-physical systems (CPS) cost-effective and appealing to a wide range of mission-critical situations, including civilian, natural, industrial, and military applications, such as health and environmental monitoring, seism monitoring, industrial process automation, and battlefields surveillance. Some of these mission-critical applications include the utilization of ground sensor, robot and UAV networks, which are the confluence point where the traditional fields of wireless communications, robotics and control theory meet. Autonomous cooperative systems, made of intelligent devices (such as robots and UAVs), may deploy, repair and relocate sensors to improve coverage, build routes and fix network partition to ensure data communication, change network topology to shape routing patterns and balance energy consumption, and respond to reported events in a timely and effective manner. The benefits are limited only by imagination. As an emerging field, the 5G architecture foresees explicitly the usage of these specialized systems and offer new networking techniques, by which they can fully exploit their particularities and potentials.

Starting from the tradition of MiSeNet and WiSARN workshops, IEEE MiSARN 2018 will aim to provide a forum for participants from academia and industry to discuss topics in mission-oriented WSNs, cyber-physical systems and UAV/Robot networking, combining both research and practice. IEEE MiSARN 2018 will serve as incubator for scientific communities that share a particular research agenda in the area of the workshop’s topics. IEEE MiSARN 2018 will provide its participants with opportunities to understand the major technical and application challenges of mission-oriented WSNs, cyber-physical systems and UAV/Robot networking as well as exchange and discuss scientific and engineering ideas related to their architecture, protocol, algorithm, and application design, in particular at a stage before they have matured to warrant conference/journal publications. IEEE MiSARN 2018 will seek papers that present novel theoretical and practical ideas as well as work in-progress, which will lead to the development of solid foundations for the design, analysis, and implementation of energy-efficient, reliable, and secure mission-oriented WSN applications and cyber-physical systems.

Topics of Interest

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

    UAV and robot networks in 5G systems
    Theoretical foundations, modeling and analysis of mission-oriented WSNs
    System design, implementation, and evaluation of mission-oriented WSNs
    Medium access control and scheduling in mission-oriented WSNs
    Software architectures for mission-oriented WSNs
    Self-organization, self-configuration, and energy efficiency in mission-oriented WSNs
    Topology control, coverage and connectivity issues in mission-oriented WSNs
    Routing and data dissemination in mission-oriented WSNs
    In-network data storage and processing in mission-oriented WSNs
    Sensor database management in mission-oriented WSNs
    Localization, detection and tracking in mission-oriented WSNs
    Cryptography, privacy, robustness, security aspects of mission-oriented WSNs
    Internet and cloud computing, cloud of Things in mission-oriented WSNs
    Sensor-enabled robots and drones in mission-oriented WSNs
    Wearable computing and human centricity in mission-oriented WSNs
    Cyber-physical systems in mission-oriented WSNs
    Theoretical foundations of Cyber-Physical Systems
    Signal Processing for Cyber-Physical Systems
    Mechanism Design for Cyber-Physical Systems
    Control and Optimization of Cyber-Physical Systems
    Data Mining and Analytics Applied to Cyber-Physical Systems
    Game Theory Applied to Cyber-Physical Systems
    Mobile and Cloud Computing for Cyber-Physical Systems
    Security of Cyber-Physical Systems
    Model-Based Design and Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems
    Testbed design and real-world applications of mission-oriented WSNs
    Autonomous sensor networks
    Emergent behavior in robotic systems
    UAV-aided wireless sensor networks
    Optimal control of networked robots
    Robot advanced motion control
    Modeling and control of fleet of UAVs
    Autonomic and self-organizing coordination and communication in Robot and UAV networks
    Sensor-robot and robot-robot coordination
    Energy-efficient and real-time communication protocols in Robot and UAV networks
    Distributed control and management for Robot and UAV network deployments
    Communication protocols for swarms of mobile nodes
    Map exploration and pattern formation of mobile robots
    Robot task assignment
    Biologically inspired communication systems for Robot and UAV networks
    Software-Defined Aerial Networks
    Endurance Management
    Ground sensors to UAVs communication and data gathering
    Context-awareness and decision making for UAV systems
    Path planning, and target tracking in UAV networks