Internet of Things: Part 1.

The articles in this special section are devoted to the topic of the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is seen as a set of vertical application domains that share a limited number of common basic functionalities. In this view, consumer-centric solutions, platforms, data management, and business models have to be developed and consolidated in order to deploy effective solutions in the specific fields. The availability of low-cost general-purpose processing and storage systems with sensing/actuation capabilities coupled with communication capabilities are broadening the possibilities of IoT leading to open systems that will be highly programmable and virtualized, and will support large numbers of application programming interfaces. These articles address several promising approaches to sensors, actuators, and new consumer devices. New communication capabilities,from short-range to low-power WAN (LPWAN) to fourth generation (4G) and 5G networks, with narrowband IoT (NB-IoT). In addition, there are new communication protocols and the exploitation of NFV/SDN for better communications. New solutions are needed for large distributed systems. New business models, ecosystems, and consumer-centric aspects need to be addressed, including IoT application development, utilization of semantics, and security, privacy, and trust. This section presents information from a wide range of perspectives in different industrial and research communities of IoT.