摘要
The rapid growth in hardware technologies and the fourth industrial revolution-Industry 4.0 have enabled the Internet of Things(IoT)to be smarter.One of the main drivers in Industry 4.0 is smart and secured Industrial IoT(IIoT)[1].The IIoT results from the widespread use of computers and the interconnectedness of machines.It has made software a crucial tool for almost every industry,from bakeries and arts to manufacturing facilities and healthcare systems[2].The IIoT devices can be mobile and geographically distributed over a long distance,which exposes them to network disturbances,Quality of Service(QoS)degradation,and security vulnerabilities.In addition,the IIoT is a complex network at a large scale,and there is a dire need for network architecture and protocol design to accommodate these diverse domains and competencies and handle the increasing levels of complexity.Therefore,in this special issue,we aim to focus on the challenges of network architectures and communication protocol design in the context of the smart industry.This special issue has attracted numerous high-quality research articles and has accepted fourteen research papers[3–16].
