Digital Twins for Energy-Related Applications

Submission Deadline:  1 July 2025

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Digital Twins for Energy-Related Applications.   

Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, Blockchain Technology (BT) and cloud computing are accelerating the trend of Industry 4.0 digital transformation, creating enormous opportunities, and allowing for a paradigm shift in operation and control in energy sectors, such as thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, wind energy, solar energy and oil and gas installations. Building upon these technologies, digital twins (DTs), which are virtual representations of real-world physical objects, are gaining momentum as promising tools for the realization of intelligent energy production systems, and receiving significant interest from both the research and industrial communities. With DTs, the energy production sectors can achieve a real-time simulation environment that can be used for several purposes, including control, safety and reliability improvement, maintenance cost reduction, operational disruption minimization, operational efficiency improvement, profit maximization and precise intelligent decision-making possibilities.  In this context, DT is regarded as a promising enabling technology with the potential to revolutionize the energy system’s design, operation and optimization.

This Special Section covers all energy-related sectors, including thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, wind energy, solar energy and oil and gas installations. In the advent of industry 4.0, DT is a current trend for academic and industrial communities not only in the IEEE but also in many other institutions across the globe. The aim of this Special Section is to provide a platform for academic and industrial communities to share their new ideas and developments relevant to DTs, and to promote, collect and present recent research advancements including both methodological developments and practical deployments of DTs for energy-related applications.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • DT design, data management, modeling and simulation
  • DT-enabling technologies for multi-physics modeling and analysis of energy production assets
  • DT architectural design, development and standard for emerging technologies in energy sectors
  • DT for lifetime prediction and reliability assessment
  • AI/ML-based DT approaches for Prognostics and System Health Management
  • Blockchains and Federated AI/ML-based DT design and development for energy systems
  • Grey-box based DT approaches for energy-related applications
  • Data fusion/assimilation techniques for DT development and management
  • DT-based risk-informed system health and asset management
  • Big-data-based intelligent prediction and assistant decision-making
  • DT-based energy equipment maintenance plan
  • DT-enabling technologies for safety and security assessment of energy production systems
  • Recent developments and future perspectives of DT in emerging technological applications in energy sector

 

We also highly recommend the submission of a video with each article as it significantly increases the visibility of articles.

Lead Editor: Enrico Zio, Politecnico di Milano, Italy and MINES Paris-PSL, CRC, France

Guest Editors:

    1. Syed Bahauddin Alam, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
    2. Rui Kang, Beihang University, China

 

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Mehrdad Saif, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Article submission: Submit manuscripts to: http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For information regarding IEEE Access, including its peer review policies and APC information, please visit the website http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: enrico.zio@polimi.it.

Planar Microwave Sensors

Submission Deadline:  31 May 2025

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Planar Microwave Sensors.   

This Special Section of IEEE Access is focused on Planar Microwave Sensors, a topic of growing research interest. Within today’s paradigms of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Fourth Industrial Revolution (also known as Industry 4.0), and the Digital Transformation (or Smart World), there is an increasing demand for cost-effective, small-sized, and smart sensors and sensor networks, to be applied in a wide diversity of scenarios, such as Smart Cities, Smart Health, Smart Agriculture, Civil Engineering, Structural Health Monitoring, Biosensing, Agrifood Industry, Security, Motion Control, Automotive Industry, and Space, etc. There are many sensing technologies (e.g., optics/photonics, acoustics, electrochemical, etc.), but RF/microwaves (extending the spectrum from UHF up to THz frequencies) offer a series of unique advantages aligned with the requirements of the above-cited paradigmatic concepts. Thus, besides their low cost and size, microwave sensors, and particularly planar sensors, can be implemented in flexible substrates, including plastics, organic substrates, and even fabric, by means of subtractive (etching) or additive (printing) processes, and they are also compatible with other technologies of interest for sensing, such as microfluidics, micromachining, 3D-printing, etc. Additionally, microwaves are very sensitive to the electromagnetic properties of the materials with which they interact. Thus, microwave sensors are very useful for the dielectric characterization of materials (solids or liquids), and for the measurement of many physical, chemical, and biological variables related to material permittivity.

Planar microwave sensors can operate by contact or contactless with the material under test (MUT), or analyte, and can be wirelessly connected to the reader (of interest in many IoT applications), in schemes based on the so-called sensing tags (which act as a “smart skin,” able to provide information of the material or sample under study). Another important aspect of planar sensors is that the necessary associated electronics for signal generation, processing, and communication purposes can be seamlessly integrated within the sensor’s substrate, representing a reduction in system costs and complexity. In summary, planar microwave sensors constitute an enabling technology for the deployment of the IoT, Industry 4.0, and Smart World, where sensing is necessary to obtain information of the system under consideration, in order to gain insight on its current state and take appropriate decisions and actions (either through human intervention or autonomously) when necessary.

The main objective of this Special Section of IEEE Access is to publish high-quality papers related to the theory, techniques, technologies, and applications of planar microwave sensors.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Sensor Phenomenology, modeling, and evaluation
  • Sensitivity, resolution, and selectivity optimization techniques
  • Dielectric characterization and permittivity sensors
  • Resonant and non-resonant planar sensors
  • Contactless, nonintrusive, and non-invasive sensors
  • Liquid and microfluidic sensors
  • Physical sensors (displacement and proximity, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.).
  • Chemical sensors (gas detection, impurity detection in liquids, etc.).
  • Biosensors (bacterial growth, glucose measurements, electrolyte content measurements, cells and organs analysis, etc.) for in vitro and in vivo investigations.
  • Microwave spectroscopy
  • Wireless sensors, RFID sensors, and sensor networks
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related techniques applied to planar microwave sensors
  • New materials and technologies for microwave sensing
  • Active planar sensors
  • “Green” sensors
  • Sensor systems and applications
    • Sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM)
    • Sensors for smart agriculture and agrifood industry
    • Sensors for smart Cities
    • Sensors for civil engineering
    • Sensors for smart industry
    • Sensors for smart healthcare and vital signs monitoring
    • Sensors for motion control
    • Sensors for automotive and space industry
    • Wearable sensors

 

We also highly recommend the submission of a video with each article as it significantly increases the visibility of articles.

Lead Editor: Ferran Martín, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Guest Editors:

    1. Katia Grenier, LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France
    2. Amir Ebrahimi, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
    3. Mohammad Zarifi, University of British Columbia, Canada
    4. Carlos G. Juan, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Elche, Spain

 

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief:  Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide

Article submission: Submit manuscripts to: http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For information regarding IEEE Access, including its peer review policies and APC information, please visit the website http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: Ferran.Martin@uab.cat.