Search

• Temporary continuous observation task using non-customized constellation is studied. • A hybrid method for multi-satellite scheduling and task planning is proposed. • A joint simulation software system is developed via STK and Python. • The proposed technique has higher efficiency and target adaptability. This paper put forward a method to address the problem, of how to select multiple satellites from a given heterogeneous constellation and plan their tasks to implement a temporary mission for ground or aerial targets successive observation, while hardly affecting the constellation's original mission as much as possible. First, considering the observation geometric constraints of the satellite on the target, an observability analysis model for effective observation of the satellite on the target is established to characterize the observable spatio-temporal scope. Considering the time-length requirement of sustained observation on the target, a multi-satellite-to-target sustained observation model is constructed for the scheduling of satellites. Second, to address the problem of selecting task satellites in a given heterogeneous constellation, a mathematical model for task planning is established to maximize observation benefits and minimize task burdens. Third, a hybrid method of multi-satellite scheduling and task planning is designed with fault tolerance, based on dynamic programming and an improved contract network protocol algorithm. Next, a joint simulation software system is established through the secondary development of STK and Python, which includes satellite-target observability analysis, task satellite selection, task allocation and planning, and full process visible demonstration functions. Finally, simulation cases verified the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging threat within blockchain systems is the malicious tactic known as eclipse attacks, wherein attackers aim to deceive and gain control over targeted nodes. Despite the increasing popularity of blockchain technology, effective defence mechanisms against eclipse attacks have been lacking. A novel and dynamic defence model designed explicitly for Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus blockchain systems is proposed to address this critical issue. The model relies on a node-to-node evaluation mechanism to ensure robust protection. By leveraging mutual evaluations conducted between clients and incorporating the renowned Kademlia algorithm, a ranking value is assigned to each node within the defence model. These rankings empower nodes to prudently select trustworthy peers as neighbours based on a threshold comparison, effectively mitigating the risk posed by malicious nodes. Notably, the proposed approach significantly enhances the security of blockchain systems without necessitating modifications to existing protocols or network structures. The effectiveness of the proposed defence model in countering eclipse attacks is extensively validated through a series of experiments. Furthermore, the approach surpasses previous defence strategies, offering a higher probability of successful defence while maintaining minimal overhead. With its straightforward implementation and operational efficiency, the dynamic defence model is an ideal solution for real-world deployment scenarios. This research presents a compelling and robust defence model against eclipse attacks in PoW blockchain systems, addressing the existing gap in defence mechanisms. Furthermore, this advancement paves the way for the wider adoption of blockchain applications across various domains by providing enhanced security, reliability, and trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the boom of Internet of Things (IoT) in recent years, various IoT devices are connected to the Internet and communicate with each other through network protocols such as the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). These protocols are typically defined and described in specification documents, such as Request for Comments (RFC), which are written in natural or semi-formal languages. Since developers largely follow the specification documents when implementing web protocols, they have become the de facto protocol specifications. Therefore, it must be ensured that the descriptions in them are consistent to avoid technological issues, incompatibility, security risks, or even legal concerns. In this work, we propose Neural RFC Knowledge Graph (NRFCKG), a neural network-generated knowledge graph based contradictions detection tool for IoT protocol specification documents. Our approach can automatically parse the specification documents and construct knowledge graphs from them through entity extraction, relation extraction, and rule extraction with large language models. It then conducts an intra-entity and inter-entity contradiction detection over the generated knowledge graph. We implement NRFCKG and apply it to the most extensively used messaging protocols in IoT, including the main RFC (RFC7252) of CoAP, the specification document of MQTT, and the specification document of AMQP. Our evaluation shows that NRFCKG generalizes well to other specification documents and it manages to detect contradictions from these IoT protocol specification documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When controlling cyber–physical systems via consensus algorithms, the robustness issue is of paramount importance because of model mismatching and/or disturbances that generally modify the Laplacian flow dynamics associated to the overall network, compromising the possibility to achieve any expected, orchestrated emergent behavior. To face this issue, the Variable Structure Control (VSC) approach has recently been shown to be an effective tool in designing control protocols over networks, providing robustness and often yielding finite-time convergence. Moreover, VSC further enables the decoupling of simultaneous control objectives where reaching a consensus state is only part of a more complex task, for instance as it happens in distributed optimization. Thus motivated, this paper overviews, from a tutorial perspective, some selected recent advances in the application of VSC with Sliding Modes to design robust consensus controllers in both the leader-less and the leader-following settings. Efforts are also made to unify the notation and to discuss the theoretical foundations of the nonsmooth analysis tools at the basis of their design for a wide readership unfamiliar with these problems and formal tools. To this aim, examples supporting the treatment, and numerical simulations, are given and discussed in detail. Finally, hints for future investigations along with some current open problems are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's world of wireless communication, the prime point of concentration lies on data security. This depends mainly on proper authentication of users who are intended to connect to the network. with modern day technology, the credentials (password), which the legitimate user send to the access points for his/her authorization, can be sniffed and used to enter the system, compromising the system security. WPA2/PSK (Wireless Protected Access/Pre-Shared Key) has a vulnerability which allows an attacker to perform Man-in-the-middle attack by capturing the handshake sent by the legitimate user for authentication. The captured handshake can be used to recover the password using dictionary attack or can be brute forced. To overcome the short comings of the current system, the proposed method uses Frequency Hopping Technique to secure the MIC(Message Integrity Code) before transmitting it. This method reduces the possibility of brute forcing the password, even if the handshake is captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a dynamic posture tracking control strategy for wheel-legged systems on uneven surfaces. Based on the kinematic model of a wheel-legged robotic system, the expected positions for the end-effectors of wheel-legs are calculated according to posture references and sensor feedback. The position control problem for a general wheel-leg is investigated for the active mechanism to imitate a passive suspension and respond to the external contact forces. The position tracking accuracy of the wheel-leg is sacrificed to enhance the compliance performance under rough terrain. Because of the unique contact state with the uneven ground for each wheel-leg, the position responses are different. As a result, the forces from the wheel-legs to the fuselage are inconsistent, which leads to the risk of posture oscillations. Equipping the wheel-legs with an undirected communication network, a consensus scheme for the robotic system is developed with proven global asymptotic stability to improve the posture tracking property. A novel robotic system is established with Stewart-structured wheel-legs, which are connected by a user datagram protocol network. Comparative experimental results are carried out on the physical prototype to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. • An improved kinematic model avoiding geomagnetism disturbances is established for general wheel-legged robotic systems. Considering the contact forces, an active suspension controller is proposed for the single wheel-leg to track the desired position with expected compliance behaviors. • Based on an undirected communication topology, a consensus strategy is carried out for multiple ASCs. The CASC fulfills the coordination requirements and active suspension response demands with proved convergency property. • The proposed posture control scheme is applied to a wheel-legged physical prototype. The comparative experimental results between the proposed CASC and our previous studies are presented, which highlights the CASC in posture tracking accuracy and wheel-leg coordination performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate identification of internet traffic is crucial for network management. However, the use of encryption techniques and constant changes in network protocols make it difficult to extract useful features for traffic classification. Additionally, there may be limited data availability and a lack of diversity within the dataset, which poses further challenges. To address these issues, our research proposes a novel solution that uses an innovative data augmentation technique. This approach leverages the capabilities of LSTM networks to create synthetic data points that closely resemble real traffic data. By doing so, we can significantly enrich the dataset used for training and improve classification efficiency. We conducted thorough experiments to validate our approach and found that combining LSTM-generated data with actual traffic data leads to notable improvements in classification efficiency. We demonstrated the effectiveness of our methodology using academic and commercial datasets. Our classifier, trained on the generated data, showed a performance boost of 6%. Moreover, when classifying with only half of the time, thus utilizing half of the signal, our approach achieved a notable 4% improvement compared to the original classifier. The inclusion of augmented samples within the training set led to a noticeable improvement in both accuracy and F1-score. These findings compellingly demonstrate our data augmentation strategy's practical utility and efficiency in earlier prediction with improved performance for encrypted traffic classification systems. • Enhanced Traffic Analysis via LSTM Augmentation. • Efficiency Boost: Earlier Traffic Classification. • Improved Classifier Performance with Generated Data. • Diverse Data Synthesis for Improved Classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Development of the Depth-Based Stable Election Routing Protocol, which is specifically designed for underwater environments, by combining the probabilistic CH election approach and stable election protocol to improve the stability and efficiency of the proposed routing protocol. • Consideration of energy efficiency as a priority, in addition to tackling the difficulty of energy imbalance in varied IoUT scenarios, by recognizing efficient energy utilization as a major issue in IoUT. • Use fitness functions adapted to underwater nodes with varying energy levels and depths. • The suggested depth-based SEP-IoUT protocol was compared to conventional SEP and SEP-IoUT protocols. Furthermore, higher performance in terms of network lifetime, stability period, and energy consumption reduction must be demonstrated. Internet of underwater things (IoUT) is a technology enabling underwater sensor nodes to communicate with the IoT networks to support various applications. Efficient energy utilization and network lifetime are the two main critical issues related to the IoUT. Both performance factors are related to how efficiently the routing protocol is tailored especially for heterogeneous IoUT. In this context, efficient routing protocols that consider underwater nodes (UNs) energy heterogeneity can adjust the energy imbalance, especially in heterogeneous IoUT scenarios. In IoUT, both the UN's energies and their depths can greatly affect the energy efficiency and clustering-based routing protocol. This paper provided an energy and depth-based stable election routing protocol (SEP) to suit the requirements of underwater communications. The objective of the depth-based SEP protocol is to enhance energy-efficient routing while considering the varying energy levels of UNs in IoUT. The proposed protocol depends on the depth-based cluster head (CH) election approach by defining distinct functions tailored for UNs with different energy levels and depths, in addition to the distance between the selected CH and the surface base station. Experimental results indicate that depth-based SEP-IoUT protocol outperforms network lifetime more than conventional SEP and SEP-IoUT. It gives an average stability period of 19.6 % in addition to reducing energy consumption by 39 % and 15.7 % when compared to SEP and SEP-IoUT respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of cognitive radios in satisfying the growing demand for bandwidth in wireless networks is anticipated to be significant. An innovative method for cognitive network beamforming and interference control based on machine learning and an intelligent network protocol is suggested in this study. A Reinforcement Nash Equilibrium Game Theory (RNEGT) model is used to control network interference, and the Spatiotemporal Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (ST-NOMA) technique is used for beamforming inside the network. Throughput, spectrum efficiency, stability, Mean Square Error (MSE), and Signal-to-Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) are some of the metrics used in experimental study. Examined approach can optimize received SINR at destinations while maintaining interference + noise power below a certain threshold by employing the suggested relay selection and a cooperative beamforming (CBF) mechanism in each cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During this last past decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained much attention because it encompass intelligent devices such as smart sensors and actuators, which enable a wide range of applications that improve our daily life (e.g. smart agriculture). However, due to the presence of an important number of heterogeneous and resources constrained devices (in terms of memory, CPU and bandwidth) communicating over error-prone and lossy radio channels and often deployed in hostile environments (e.g. war zone), IoT networks are experiencing various network performance problems (e.g. excessive energy consumption resulting from network device failure). In this context, an efficient management of IoT networks is needed in order to ensure good network performances. This has fueled the development of different protocols and frameworks for management of IoT networks. In this paper we present a comprehensive study of representative works on IoT network management. The paper analyzes existing solutions for IoT low power networks management and presents a taxonomy of those solutions. Moreover, this paper also compares existing research proposals on management of IoT low power networks based on different requirements. At the end, this survey identifies remaining challenges for an efficient mangement of IoT low power networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia government wants to implement electronic voting. However, the existing electronic voting protocols only include some of the required security features and Colombia needs a protocol with all these features to ensure fraud-free elections. In this paper, we present the design of SIVP (Secure Internet Voting Protocol), a new voting protocol for electoral processes, based on blind signatures and public key cryptography. This protocol has six phases and provides: eligibility, democracy, privacy, verifiability, accuracy, fairness, robustness, receipt-freeness and coercion-resistant. Also, we compare the number of cryptographic operations per phase of SIVP with other four protocols and conclude that the computational load of our protocol is not excessively high despite including more security features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the area of underwater acoustic networking is getting mature and critical for a wide variety of commercial applications, the lack of secure underwater communication standards presents a major impediment for adopting these networking technologies within NATO operations. The NATO Research Task Group IST-174 "Secure Underwater Communications for Heterogeneous Network-enabled Operations" aims to study and to demonstrate secure underwater communications in a holistic approach. In particular, this group's ambition is to define waveforms, network protocols and architectures that will enable underwater connectivity in a secure and interoperable way. To that effect, this paper presents various security concepts and communication systems currently under development that could be included in those standardisation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increase in digitization is giving rise to cybercrimes. The existing network protocols are insufficient for collecting the required digital evidence of cybercrime, which eventually makes the process of forensic investigation difficult. In the current scenario of network forensics, the investigator with current capabilities can reach only up to the ISP. This is not primary evidence. Currently, available tools work only at the network layer. In this work, we propose a protocol that ensures tracking up to the true source by collecting beforehand forensically sound evidence. The proposed protocol can collect target data from the device in the form of a device fingerprint with the help of an agent process. The proposed methodology will help in proving non-repudiation, which is a well-known challenge in forensic cases. The fingerprint evidence generated by the proposed method has the capability of not getting obsolete even if the criminal tries to destroy evidence. The fingerprinting technique deployed uses a hash tree and generates evidence in such a way that this fingerprint can act as legal evidence. The security validation of the proposed system is done using the BAN logic. Formal verification is performed using the AVISPA tool. The system has been implemented as a prototype and hosted on AWS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exercise induced performance fatigue has been shown to impair many aspects of fine motor function in the distal upper limb. However, most fatiguing protocols do not reflect the conditions experienced with computer use. The purpose of this study was to determine how a prolonged, low-force mouse clicking fatigue protocol impacts performance fatigue of the distal upper limb for gamers and non-gamers. Participants completed a total of 1 h of mouse clicking at 5 clicks per second. Muscle fatigue and performance were intermittently assessed. RMS amplitude increased for the forearm flexors throughout the fatigue protocol. Accuracy decreased following the first bout of clicking and returned to baseline values after 40-min. EDC and ECU displayed the greatest muscle activity while aiming, producing 11.4% and 12.9% of MVC, respectively. These findings indicate that mouse clicking may not result in performance fatigue, however, high levels of extensor activity may explain common injuries among gamers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional partial synchronous Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) protocols are confronted with new challenges when applied to large-scale networks like IoT systems, which bring about rigorous demand for the liveness and consensus efficiency of BFT protocols in asynchronous network environments. HoneyBadgerBFT is the first practical asynchronous BFT protocol, which employs a reliable broadcast protocol (RBC) to broadcast transactions and an asynchronous binary agreement protocol (ABA) to determine whether transactions should be committed. DumboBFT is a follow-up proposal that requires fewer instances of ABA and achieves higher throughput than HoneyBadgerBFT, but it does not optimize the communication overhead of HoneyBadgerBFT. In this paper, we propose TortoiseBFT, a high-performance asynchronous BFT protocol with three stages. We can significantly reduce communication overhead by determining the order of transactions first and requesting missing transactions after. Our two-phase transaction recovery mechanism enables nodes to recover missing transactions by seeking help from 2 f + 1 nodes. To improve the overall throughput of the system, we lower the verification overhead of threshold signatures in HoneyBadgerBFT, DumboBFT, and DispersedLedger from O n 3 to O n 2 . We develop a node reputation model that selects producers with stable network conditions, which helps to reduce the number of random lotteries. Experimental results show that TortoiseBFT improves system throughput, reduces transaction delays, and minimizes communication overhead compared to HoneyBadgerBFT, DumboBFT, and DispersedLedger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serverless computing is a new concept as cloud computing, which dynamically manages the networks and is applied in Serverless Wireless Sensor Networks (SWSN) to help the networks. These networks are becoming famous for monitoring various physical and environmental factors. Serverless computing also facilitates the networks by offering an extensive range of applications. Different applications have been designed for monitoring purposes where the sensor nodes sense the data and transmit it to the base station through single or multi-hop routing. However, existing routing protocols cannot manage the sensor nodes' energy issues because of the complex routing processes and depleted their power before their time. Because of these limitations, the nodes close to BS continuously rely on the network for data forwarding. As a result, these nodes cause energy consumption and lead to a useless state. This paper proposes a serverless architecture and designs an Enhanced Centroid-based Energy Efficient Clustering (ECEEC) protocol for SWSN networks. The proposed serverless architecture provides automated scalability, cost-effective services, and stateless execution. In addition, the proposed protocol offers the cluster head selection and its rotation to maximize the energy efficiency in the network. Furthermore, gateway nodes are chosen in every cluster to overcome the load on the cluster head. Simulation results indicated the excellent performance of the proposed protocol as compared to the existing routing protocols concerning network lifetime and energy consumption. The proposed protocol shows better reliability with nodes failing at 650 rounds compared to 600 rounds, especially with 5 % and 10 % Cluster Heads. The proposed protocol exhibits superior energy efficiency consumption of SNs under varying CH percentages, indicating the protocol's consistent performance across different scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Filtered Smith predictors are well established for controlling linear plants with constant time delays. Apart from this classical application scenario, they are also employed within networked control loops, where the measurements are sent in separate packets over transmission channels that are subject to time-varying delays. Consequently, classical tools for the stability analysis, e.g., for time delay systems, have to be extended to facilitate an explicit consideration of network-induced effects such as packet skipping and disordering of sent packets. The present paper illustrates that the time-varying delays and, particularly important, the packetized character of the transmissions have to be explicitly taken into account for the stability analysis. Three network protocols, which use different packet selection and hold mechanisms, are considered to state criteria for the robust stability of the networked feedback loops with filtered Smith predictors. They are based on the small gain theorem and allow a computationally inexpensive way to check stability for the case with uncertain plant models and bounded time-varying packet delays in the communication channels. • Filtered Smith predictor for packet-based networked systems. • Communication network with bounded and time-varying packet delays. • Three different network protocols (different packet skipping and hold mechanisms). • Easy-to-use stability analysis for uncertain plants and time-varying packet delays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A dynamic-distributed structure is designed as a satellite organizational structure. • An improved contract network protocol under the dynamic-distributed structure is proposed. • A blackboard model mechanism is proposed to coordinate the satellites under uncertainty. • An online single-satellite scheduling algorithm is designed. • The applicability of the proposed methods to different implementations of problems is studied. To meet the demand for real-time response to emergent events in the uncertain environment, the multi-autonomous-satellite system with real-time inter-satellite links and on-board scheduling capability has been proposed. This paper focuses on the multi-autonomous-satellite coordination and scheduling problem which is formulated by a novel mathematical model based on the multi-agent system (MAS). To solve the problem, we firstly analyze general organizational structures for the MAS and propose a new dynamic-distributed organizational structure. For these different structures, an improved contract network protocol (ICNP) and a blackboard model (BM) negotiation mechanism are proposed to coordinate the satellites. Then, an online single-satellite scheduling algorithm is proposed to schedule the tasks. In the experiments, we build up a multi-satellite system to analyze the performance of different autonomous coordination mechanisms. Experimental results indicate that the ICNP mechanism can increase the total revenue and reduce the inter-satellite communication cost. In scenarios where satellites could break down randomly, the BM can reduce the revenue losses and the number of task failures efficiently, which proves the good performance of the proposed methods in terms of robustness. The proposed methods have important practicality in the real application of the multi-autonomous-satellite system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article connects mobile terminals through improved network protocols, and connects monitoring devices through improved network protocols in the local area network. At the same time, it can convert mobile terminal requests into requests that comply with improved network protocols and forward them to monitoring devices. Method of three-dimensional feature extraction based on dynamic data. First, normalize the coordinates and scales of the three-dimensional calculus model, and use two kinds of data (voxel representation and pixel representation) to deal with video object recognition. Then construct a convolutional neural network as an input to the network, extract visual information and geometric information, and use deep learning to improve the recognition ability of single-modal features. Based on the convolutional neural network, the geometric descriptor and the view descriptor of the three-dimensional calculus model are extracted separately, and the two feature descriptors are fused in a network to find the association between the patterns. After forming the fused feature descriptor, it is applied to micro Classification and retrieval of integral 3D features. The multi-feature fusion layer can not only learn more distinguishing features of the two descriptors, but also supplement relevant information between the two descriptors. Compared with using these two representations alone, this method produces a much better classifier and improves retrieval efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial Internet-of-Things systems suffer from a vast and vulnerable attack surface, raising widespread concerns about shielding IIoT devices from malicious attacks and reducing cyber risks. Device identification is the prerequisite to safeguard IIoT systems. We leverage the observation that IIoT network protocol implementations vary due to different hardware architectures/configurations and design tasks of IIoT devices, which cause the difference in their network traffic payloads. Specifically, we develop a novel neural network to learn the semantic/syntax features among multiple IIoT packets. The neural network has multiple branches, each of which consists of convolution layers, attention modules, and highway units for learning the classification model of IIoT devices. To validate the precision and recall of our neural network in IIoT devices fingerprinting, we have implemented a prototype of the proposed IIoT device identification system. Our results show that our approach achieves 95.8% precision and 95.4% recall, significantly outperforming other classification models. • We propose a novel IIoT fingerprinting approach based on neural network. • We conduct experiments to validate the effectiveness of it. • The results show that our approach can achieve 95.8% precision. • We demonstrate the usefulness of fingerprinting in application. • Our approach is useful in shielding industrial systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to investigate the use of a communication network utilizing Long Range (LoRa) low-power wide-area network protocol for the telemetry of detected target chemicals. The sensor platform under development allows traditional electrochemical techniques to be executed with a low Size, Weight, and Power (low SWaP) system that is deployable using an autonomous or remote-controlled vehicle. Once in the field, the sensors communicate target chemical concentrations to a centralized gateway through LoRa to an Internet of Things (IoT) network. Researchers are currently deploying the prototype network for field testing of each node's sensing, meshing, and communication capabilities throughout all weather climates. Developing a robust and dynamic sensor network to monitor the environment and provide a live data feed to detect chemicals of interest in the environment eliminates the need for direct human interaction. The low power consumption of LoRa allows the network nodes to be deployed for an extended amount of time on a single battery supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geocast routing aims the transmission of a message to a community of vehicles in the same geographical area. The GPS information of vehicles, especially taxis, in a city gives reliable information about the traffic pattern of a city. With the help of this information smart models can be created to use when making routing decisions. In this paper, a smart geocasting protocol, GeoAKOM, is introduced and implemented by using the GPS data of taxis in Bursa city, Turkey. In GeoAKOM, the mobility pattern of city is analized in two levels as in GeoMobCon introduced earlier. In the macroscopic level analysis, the city is segmented into clusters using k-means clustering and optimal paths for a message is generated using these clusters. In the microscopic level, mobility based likelihood value is used to make routing decision. The message is transmitted if the encountered vehicle has a larger mobility based likelihood or contact history based likelihood value than the carrying vehicle as in GeoMobCon. Moreover, in GeoAKOM, the next cluster of a vehicle is predicted with the help of all k-order Markov model (AKOM) by using GPS records of all vehicles. Mobility based likelihood calculations are performed by using this prediction. With these features, GeoAKOM provides a robust solution for the vehicles which do not have large GPS record history and which are relatively new in the system. Simulations on real world taxi GPS data are compared for various number of clusters in terms of delivery ratio, average delay, and hop count by using the ONE simulator. Simulation results show that, GeoAKOM provides promising results when compared with GeoMobCon and the First Contact routing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the security threats posed inside and outside the network due to the weaknesses of network protocols and systems, power line and wireless converged communications have security problems in communication connections that appear in environments where heterogeneous networks overlap. In order to cope with the problems of network delay and data transmission security in smart grid, this paper proposes an online monitoring security protection method based on edge nodes, which manages user trust under the premise of not leaking grid user data, and establishes a personalized machine learning model. This method not only guarantees users a secure communication experience, but also ensures users' real-time network connection and content acquisition, and can obtain a fast and personalized user experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massively dense deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has put a stringent requirement on cellular networks to provide convenient service for not only human type traffic (HTC) but also for bursty traffic for IoT devices. Any bottleneck in the random access process means the bottleneck of the entire system because it is the first step before scheduled access. Access class barring (ACB) scheme is one of the key schemes in long term evolution advanced (LTE-A) to control the congestion in a random access process in which the access of some devices is barred based on a parameter, ACB factor, to relieve the congestion. In this paper, we analyze the ACB factor and criteria of its selection as the optimal selection of the ACB factor is essential for the maximum throughput of the system. The metrics used in the analysis of the ACB factor are total service time (TST), access delay and maximum collision, success, and idle probabilities with fixed and optimal ACB factor. Simulation results in MATLAB provide the complete picture of the behavior of the ACB factor and its control, used in the random access process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IEEE 802.15.4 protocol is intended to accomplish the characteristics of low power and low rate Wireless Sensor Network. It employs carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol to access the network using either unslotted or slotted mode. This paper concentrates on the unslotted CSMA/CA where the node tends to wait for a very limited backoff exponent value, and cannot perform clear channel assessment until backoff procedure is completed. Therefore, the collision probability and the average delay are high. To enhance the unslotted CSMA/CA performance, this paper proposes a modified unslotted CSMA/CA that divides the backoff delay into Main Backoff and Secondary Backoff. The Markov model for the modified CSMA/CA is presented to assess a single hop IEEE 802.15.4 behavior, and derive expressions for average delay, energy consumption and reliability. An optimization problem is also presented to minimize the delay while guaranteeing energy consumption and reliability constraints for the modified CSMA/CA. OPNET simulation tool is applied to compare the modified to the standard unslotted CSMA, and to validate the Markov model proposed. The results demonstrate that the modified CSMA improves the reliability, while reducing the average delay significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the use of Wireless Sensor Networks grows, many challenging issues with these networks arise. The utilization of power consumption is one of the most significant issue due to the limited energy constraints of the individual sensor nodes. This limitation imposes a challenge to design the best energy-efficient routing mechanism. This work presented an Energy-Efficient Gossiping protocol (EEGossip) that routes data to the sink by choosing the optimal next node. EEGossip uses Chebyshev distance, residual energy and the sink distance as factors when determining the optimal next node. The result of the proposed work has shown that the proposed protocol improves the total energy consumption of the network and leverages the network lifetime since it decreases the computational overhead and ensures that the best next node is chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless sensor networks is made up of many tiny nodes that has the ability to measure physical phenomena and send the collected measurements to the sink node using multiple-hop protocol with short range transmission. One of the main factors that can be considered to increase the sensor network life is routing protocol. The main goal of routing protocol is to select the most optimal path and make decision of sending the gathering data to the sink node. Inefficient routing protocol leads to more re-transmission of data which consume more energy.Thus, a careful and comprehensive performance analysis of the routing protocols used in any wireless sensor network is required. The main goal of this paper is to study the performance of the RPL protocol under three different MAC protocols named; ContikiMac, CXMAC, NullRDC in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and power consumption to find the best behaviour of the RPL routing protocol under the MAC protocols effect. The results show that NullRDC is better in terms of latency while the ContikiMac outperforms the others in terms of power consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to many previous studies on population protocols using the uniformly random scheduler, we consider a more general non-uniform case. Here, pair-wise interactions between agents (moving and communicating devices) are assumed to be drawn non-uniformly at random. While such a scheduler is known to be relevant for modeling many practical networks, it is also known to make the formal analysis more difficult. This study concerns data collection , a fundamental problem in mobile sensor networks (one of the target networks of population protocols). In this problem, pieces of information given to the agents (e.g., sensor readings) should be eventually delivered to a predefined sink node without loss or duplication. Following an idea of the known deterministic protocol TTF solving this problem, we propose an adapted version of it and perform a complete formal analysis of execution times in expectation and with high probability (w.h.p.). We further investigate the important issue of energy consumption. The goal is to improve TTF in terms of energy complexity, while still keeping good time complexities (in expectation and w.h.p.). Namely, we propose a new parameterized protocol for data collection, called lazy TTF, and present a study showing that an appropriate choice of the protocol parameters can considerably improve energy performances (compared to TTF), at a slight expense of time performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concentrates on the design of an event-triggered communication strategy for secondary multi-agent systems. Many existing results in this field usually require centralized information depending on the Laplacian matrices. In a real application, however, such the constraint is conservative. To address it, this paper proposes an event-triggered sampling mechanism for interagent communication with updated thresholds. Accordingly, consensus protocols with adaptive coupling control gains are proposed for both a fixed topology and switching topologies. It is proven that the proposed method guarantees the leader-following consensus for second-order multiagent systems with an arbitrarily connected topology and even with jointly connected switching topologies. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified by simulation examples. • An adaptive event-triggered strategy makes MASs independent of spectrums of Laplacian matrices. • A fully distributed protocol for nonlinear MASs eases the burden of communication channels. • The networking protocol can be easily generalized to jointly connected switching topologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most vastly used protocols to protect services traffic like the web and email is Transport Layer Security (TLS). In 2018 the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standardized the latest version TLS 1.3, Introduced a significant enhancement in the protocol performance, and presented some new features. One of the new features is zero round trip-time (0-RTT) handshake mode, where the client can send the application data to the server within the handshake messages before the TLS connection is fully established. However, this application data is replayable. The replay attacks in 0-RTT handshake mode have been studied, and several mechanisms are proposed for protection, these proposed mechanisms are not able to prevent replay attacks when the server functionality is provided by a distributed environment such as multiple servers in a cloud computing environment or a CDN. This paper introduces TLS Guard as a new mechanism that extends TLS 1.3 to prevent replay attacks in a distributed environment. We evaluated a prototype TLS Guard implementation in controlled experiments and showed that its effect comes at the cost of some CPU overhead. More importantly, we showed that TLS Guard is scalable and tolerates faults without any required changes on the client side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WSN became a key technology for ubiquitous living and remains an active research due to wide range of applications. Energy awareness is a critical design issue in WSN. Clustering is the most popular energy efficient technique and provides various advantages like energy efficiency, lifetime, scalability and less delay; but it leads to hot spot problem. To overcome this, unequal clustering is proposed. In unequal clustering, the cluster size varies proportionally to the distance to Base Station (BS). Absence of recent and detailed survey papers in unequal clustering approaches stimulated us to perform this study. In this paper, a comprehensive survey of various unequal clustering approaches with their objectives, characteristics etc., is presented. Also, the classifications of unequal clustering approaches are made and compared based on various cluster properties, Cluster Head (CH) properties and clustering process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Application of health-care networks is becoming more and more attractive. Electronic-monitoring and movable cameras are the key parts of health - care information collection by mobile electronic devices. Healthy public domain is developed by intellectual approaches. A wide variety of data from electronic-monitoring and movable camera will be stored and shared with continued demand for health-care service demands (e.g., ECG service, personal pulse service information). However, health-care networks and devices usually share the same frequency spectrum that results in inflexible access sharing. Frequency spectrum access sharing makes the challenge of how best to use electronic health-care information and commutation protocol. We design an priority considerations health-care networks and commutation protocol to enhance quality of access sharing and the users' health-care accuracy by stochastic sharing and protocol optimization. The numerical results show that the health-care networks and protocol can enhance capacity of access sharing for users and spectrum utility of networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper is concerned with the distributed resilient filtering for nonlinear time-varying systems over sensor networks with communication protocol constraints. In order to prevent data collisions over sensor networks, the data transmission between each node and its neighboring ones is realized through the Round-Robin/stochastic protocol, which guarantee that only one neighboring node is permitted to send message at each transmission instant. Moreover, the resilient filter is designed to suppress the adverse effects induced by imprecision of filter parameters. By means of the stochastic analysis approach and recursive linear matrix inequality technique, several sufficient conditions are established to ensure that the state estimation error system subject to communication protocols satisfies the prescribed H ∞ performance constraint over a finite-horizon. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed results. Highlights • Protocols are employed in sensor networks to prevent data collisions. • The distributed filter is designed for time-varying systems over sensor networks. • The resilient filter is applied to reduce the adverse effects caused by imprecision. • A recursive algorithm is proposed to derive parameters of distributed filter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Broadcast of beacon messages including geographic coordinates, node speeds, and directions are among the most commonly used methods in routing protocols of VANETs to obtain neighboring positions. Broadcast of periodic beacon messages in fixed time intervals will reduce network performance due to increased channel load and contention. In this paper, an adaptive update strategy for sending beacon messages according to the VANETs' characteristics (position, speed, and direction) and the nature of broadcast wireless channel in an opportunistic routing strategy is studied. It is based on two rules: 1) an estimation of the lifetime of the links between vehicles' beacon messages are sent after the expiration of the estimated time to inform their local topology and 2) if the forwarding set of consecutively received data packets is changed, a beacon message is sent to maintain the accuracy of the topology. The simulation results show that the proposed strategy significantly reduces the cost of routing and improves network performance in terms of packet-delivery ratios, average end-to-end delay, and routing overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract 1 1 Video demonstrations and a video presentation providing a summary of the paper can be found at https://goo.gl/EDvxhk. Low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are increasingly gaining interest for enabling novel commercial and civil Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. However, there are still open challenges that restrain their real-world deployment. First, drones typically have limited wireless communication ranges with the ground stations preventing their control over large distances. Second, these low-cost aerial platforms have limited computation and energy resources preventing them from running heavy applications onboard. In this paper, we address this gap and we present Dronemap Planner (DP), a service-oriented cloud-based drone management system that controls, monitors and communicates with drones over the Internet. DP allows seamless communication with the drones over the Internet, which enables their control anywhere and anytime without restriction on distance. In addition, DP provides access to cloud computing resources for drones to offload heavy computations. It virtualizes the access to drones through Web services (SOAP and REST), schedules their missions, and promotes collaboration between drones. DP supports two communication protocols: (i.) the MAVLink protocol, which is a lightweight message marshaling protocol supported by commodities Ardupilot-based drones. (ii.) the ROSLink protocol, which is a communication protocol that we developed to integrate Robot Operating System (ROS)-enabled robots into the IoT. We present several applications and proof-of-concepts that were developed using DP. We demonstrate the effectiveness of DP through a performance evaluation study using a real drone for a real-time tracking application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract To cope with the diversity of Internet of Things (IoT) requirements, a large number of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols have been proposed in scientific literature, many of which are designed for specific application domains. However, for most of these MAC protocols, no multi-platform software implementation is available. In fact, the path from conceptual MAC protocol proposed in theoretical papers, towards an actual working implementation is rife with pitfalls. (i) A first problem is the timing bugs, frequently encountered in MAC implementations. (ii) Furthermore, once implemented, many MAC protocols are strongly optimized for specific hardware, thereby limiting the potential of software reuse or modifications. (iii) Finally, in real-life conditions, the performance of the MAC protocol varies strongly depending on the actual underlying radio chip. As a result, the same MAC protocol implementation acts differently per platform, resulting in unpredictable/asymmetrical behavior when multiple platforms are combined in the same network. This paper describes in detail the challenges related to multi-platform MAC development, and experimentally quantifies how the above issues impact the MAC protocol performance when running MAC protocols on multiple radio chips. Finally, an overall methodology is proposed to avoid the previously mentioned cross-platform compatibility issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the use of Wireless Sensor Networks grows, many challenging issues with these networks arise. The utilization of power consumption is one of the most significant issue due to the limited energy constraints of the individual sensor nodes. This limitation imposes a challenge to design the best energy-efficient routing mechanism. This work presented an Energy-Efficient Gossiping protocol (EEGossip) that routes data to the sink by choosing the optimal next node. EEGossip uses Chebyshev distance, residual energy and the sink distance as factors when determining the optimal next node. The result of the proposed work has shown that the proposed protocol improves the total energy consumption of the network and leverages the network lifetime since it decreases the computational overhead and ensures that the best next node is chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless sensor networks is made up of many tiny nodes that has the ability to measure physical phenomena and send the collected measurements to the sink node using multiple-hop protocol with short range transmission. One of the main factors that can be considered to increase the sensor network life is routing protocol. The main goal of routing protocol is to select the most optimal path and make decision of sending the gathering data to the sink node. Inefficient routing protocol leads to more re-transmission of data which consume more energy.Thus, a careful and comprehensive performance analysis of the routing protocols used in any wireless sensor network is required. The main goal of this paper is to study the performance of the RPL protocol under three different MAC protocols named; ContikiMac, CXMAC, NullRDC in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and power consumption to find the best behaviour of the RPL routing protocol under the MAC protocols effect. The results show that NullRDC is better in terms of latency while the ContikiMac outperforms the others in terms of power consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Boosted by trends such as Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0, industrial Ethernet networks (EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT and PROFINET IRT as top-3 players) have been commonly deployed in industrial automation. The aim of this paper is to provide a practical guideline for selecting the right protocol in industrial networked control systems (NCSs) by comparing the performance of these protocols. Communication delays are discussed, formulated and evaluated with a study of a typical NCS. Simulation results demonstrate that with different frame packing, media access scheme, etc., EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT and PROFINET IRT offer different levels of real-time capabilities which lead to different control performance. Highlights • EtherCAT, PROFINET IRT and EtherNet/IP offers various real-time capabilities. • A generic process is established to evaluate communication and control performance. • A guideline to choose the right protocol for a networked control system is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we present a finite-block-length comparison between the orthogonal multiple access (OMA) scheme and the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for the uplink channel. First, we consider the Gaussian channel, and derive the closed form expressions for the rate and outage probability. Then, we extend our results to the quasi-static Rayleigh fading channel. Our analysis is based on the recent results on the characterization of the maximum coding rate at finite block-length and finite block-error probability. The overall system throughput is evaluated as a function of the number of information bits, channel uses and power. We find what would be the respective values of these different parameters that would enable throughput maximization. Furthermore, we analyze the system performance in terms of reliability and throughput when applying the type-I ARQ protocol with limited number of retransmissions. The throughput and outage probability are evaluated for different blocklengths and number of information bits. Our analysis reveals that there is a trade-off between reliability and throughput in the ARQ. While increasing the number of retransmissions boosts reliability by minimizing the probability of reception error, it results in more delay which decreases the throughput. Nevertheless, the results show that NOMA always outperforms OMA in terms of throughput, reliability and latency regardless of the users priority or the number of retransmissions in both Gaussian and fading channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Mobile sink has been used by many routing algorithms to improve the network lifetime in wireless sensor networks. Sink mobility brings new challenges to the sensor network. It suggests that sink position is continuously propagated through the network area to keep all sensor nodes updated with the direction of forwarding data to the sink. Unfortunately, frequent sink position updates can lead to both high-energy consumption and increased collisions in the network. In this paper, a new routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks is proposed, which uses a virtual multi-ring shaped infrastructure to advertise the mobile sink position to the network. In addition, the proposed algorithm supports several mobile sinks in the network. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm reduces energy consumption and delay, and prolongs the sensor network lifetime when compared with the other similar algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We consider an ad hoc radio network in which nodes perform some distributed algorithms. We provide a framework, that at the cost of increasing time complexity, prevents an outer, passive adversary from gaining significant information about the execution of the algorithm. The main idea we utilize is adding some extra obfuscating rounds to conceal the real execution. Despite the fact that we assume a relatively weak model of the adversary, trying to solve the problem, we encounter several non-trivial issues. First of all, the proposed method needs to be universal and work in on-line mode. Moreover, the method should entail possibly small time overhead and provide a provable security. Finding a satisfactory solution is particularly difficult due to the very restrictive, in terms of nodes capabilities, communication model. The main result presented in this paper is an efficient general method for obfuscating an execution of any underlying algorithm and its rigid analysis. We provide security guarantees against a passive adversary, with an ability of eavesdropping every transmission in the network, that aims at learning the execution of the algorithm. We also present a specialized algorithm for a secure listing of all present (active) nodes, that does not reveal any substantial information about the network to the outer adversary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In a globalized world, the mobile user roams frequently from one place to other. Global mobility network provides roaming services to a mobile user when the mobile user is away from his home network and wants to avail the services of the foreign network. Roaming authentication protocol supports authentication between the mobile user and the foreign server in global mobility network so that the malicious user can not get access the roaming services in the foreign network. Moreover, privacy-preserving authentication between the mobile user and the foreign server is an essential technology for the secure access of global mobility network because mobile user's privacy protection has become a major issue due to increasingly misuse of consumer's private data by various organizations and individuals. Many privacy-preserving two-factor authentication protocols have been proposed to provide secure roaming services in global mobility network but they failed to support privacy and security while ensuring efficient typo detection by the smart card. We propose a privacy-preserving secure two-factor authentication protocol for roaming service in global mobility network which not only ensures the privacy of the mobile user but also provides efficient typo detection using fuzzy verifier and honeyword technique. Moreover, the proposed protocol overcomes the problem of desynchronization attack using public key encryption technique based on quadratic residue assumption with low computational load at the mobile user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper, we propose two relay selection methods to enhance system outage performance for energy harvesting (EH) based two-way relaying protocols in wireless adhoc networks. In the proposed protocol, two source nodes communicate with each other via the assistance of multiple decode-and-forward (DF) relays using three-phase digital network coding. At the first and second phases, two sources broadcast their data to the relays. Employing a power-splitting model, the relays would harvest energy from radio frequency (RF) signals of the sources to transmit the data at the third phase. We propose a simple partial relay selection (PRS) method and an opportunistic relay selection (ORS) method to enhance the reliability of data transmission at the cooperative phase. For performance evaluation, we derive exact and asymptotic expressions of the system outage probability (SOP) for the proposed protocols over block Rayleigh fading channels. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are presented to verify the theoretical derivations as well as to compare the performance of the proposed protocols with that of the random relay selection protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Temporal/spatial disruptions and IP changing caused by host mobility lead the user applications to fail. This remains a problem due to the ossification of the TCP/IP protocol stack and the lack of support of existing solutions in enabling connection failure tolerance at application layer. To preserve integrity and transmission consistency upon erroneous communication events caused by host mobility, enabling mobility awareness is a key requirement for the current user applications. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive study on mobility-aware application protocols that ensure reliability and resiliency for long-lived TCP sessions established between clients and severs that migrate across different wireless IP networks on the Internet. To this end, we modeled and simulated such protocols through general-purpose state machines, which we conceived regarding the Socket semantic to resume session from broken connections. Simulations results revealed how internal and external factors, i.e., protocol design decisions and mobile environment conditions, respectively, can and cannot influence performance. When comparing results with TCP-Migrate – a well-known transport layer mobility protocol, handover delays in application protocols are longer in single jumps between mobile client and stationary server, but shorter in double jumps, when both client and server are mobile entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper describes the overlay protocol Chord using the formalism of Abstract State Machines. The formalization concerns Chord actions that maintain ring topology and manipulate distributed keys. We define a minimal set of deterministic constraints and prove that they guarantee the stability of the topological structure of the network and the consistency of data handling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Bit commitment is an important tool in the design of many secure cryptographic protocols, such as coin flipping, zero-knowledge proof, and secure computation. In this paper, we present a computationally light-weight bit commitment protocol over a noisy channel. For the security of the proposed protocol, we show that the receiver has almost no information about the committer's secret due to unpredictability of the noises in the communication channel. Hence, the security of our bit commitment protocol does not depend on hard problems; it is information-theoretically secure. Furthermore, the protocol needs only exclusive-or operations. Thus, it is computationally light-weight, and it can be used in the devices whose computing resources are limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The work presented in this paper proposes an efficient routing protocol named AHP-based Multimetric Geographical Routing Protocol (AMGRP) as it adopts an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) while considering multiple routing criteria such as mobility metric, link lifetime, node density and node status which have been accepted as crucial factors for better performance of a protocol. The protocol implements the computed single-weighing function to identify a next hop node within a defined range which can ensure an enhanced forwarding process. The simulation results in the paper have proved that the designed protocol performs better when compared with GPSR and SLD-GEDIR protocols in an obstacle modelled urban vehicular environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Offloading data traffic from Infrastructure-to-Device (I2D) to Device-to-Device (D2D) communications is a powerful tool for reducing congestion, energy consumption, and spectrum usage of mobile cellular networks. Prior network-level studies on D2D data offloading focus on high level performance metrics as the offloading efficiency , and take into account the radio propagation aspects by using simplistic wireless channel models. In this work, we consider a D2D data offloading protocol tailored to highly dynamic scenarios as vehicular environments, and evaluate its performance focusing on physical layer aspects, like energy consumption and spectral efficiency. In doing this, we take into account more realistic models of the wireless channel, with respect to the simplistic ones generally used in the previous studies. Our objective is twofold: first, to quantify the performance gain of the considered D2D offloading protocol with respect to a classic cellular network, based on I2D communications, in terms of energy consumption and spectral efficiency. Second, to show that using simplistic channel models may prevent to accurately evaluate the performance gain. Additionally, the use of more elaborated models allows to obtain insightful information on relevant system-level parameters settings, which would not be possible to obtain by using simple models. The considered channel models range from widely used models based on deterministic path loss formulas, to more accurate ones, which include effects like multipath fading and the associated frequency selectivity of wideband channels. These models have been proposed and validated, in the recent years, through large-scale measurements campaigns. Our results show that the considered protocol is able to achieve a reduction in the energy consumption of up to 35%, and an increase in the system spectral efficiency of 50%, with respect to the benchmark cellular system. The use of different channel models in evaluating these metrics may result, in the worst case, in a sixfold underestimation of the achieved improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Threshold-based Low-energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (T-LEACH) protocol declares that cluster heads do not have to turn over every round but rather every batch of rounds. In other words, nodes keep serving as cluster heads as long as their energy is higher than a threshold energy. This article imposes upon major drawbacks of T-LEACH protocol and presents a Modified Threshold-based Cluster Head Replacement (MT-CHR) protocol. In the MT-CHR protocol, a new probability of being a cluster head, for any node in any round, has been proposed which agrees fairly with the assumptions introduced in LEACH protocol. Moreover, a new expression for threshold energy is proposed in which delaying the first node death and avoiding any data loss are taken into consideration. The performance of MT-CHR is evaluated using alive nodes, network lifetime, as well as network utilization performance metrics. The results are further compared with those obtained importantly from LEACH and T-LEACH protocols and the contributions of MT-CHR protocol are extremely impressive. As far as the real sensor network is concerned, the MT-CHR protocol is highly applicable and very effective as long-lasting networks are ascertained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]