For more than a decade, embedded wireless sensors and actuators have been increasingly networked to continually narrow the gap between the physical world and cyberspace. Domain-specific sensing deployments in scenarios like industrial settings and home automation are becoming more and more ubiquitous, particularly with the advent of novel sensing platforms which allow for the seamless integration of sensing devices into everyday environments. At the same time, data gathered through wireless sensor network deployments empower applications in the emerging domains of smart cities and smart infrastructures.

While enabling technologies have evolved into mature and widely available solutions, insights gathered from real-world sensor network deployments are still scarce and many practical issues in building sensor network applications persist. A thorough understanding of these challenges from a practical/systems perspective is still necessary. This especially applies to insights from the areas of hardware platforms of sensor and actuator nodes, their operating systems, the networking of nodes, and fresh perspectives from field trials and applications.

The IEEE SenseApp workshop series brought together researchers from both academia and industry to showcase their work and obtain feedback. It served as a forum for the sensing network research communities working on embedded sensing systems to discuss open issues, novel solutions, and the future development of wireless sensing in general. Contributions described innovative work in the realms of wireless sensor networks, cyber-physical systems, smart spaces, machine-to-machine communication, the Internet of Things, and all related disciplines.