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Nowadays, the demand for healthcare to transform from traditional hospital and disease-centered services to smart healthcare and patient-centered services, including the health management, biomedical diagnosis, and remote monitoring of patients with chronic diseases, is growing tremendously [...]

Soil, a significant natural resource, plays a crucial role in supporting various ecosystems and serves as the foundation of Pakistan’s economy due to its primary use in agriculture. Hence, timely monitoring of soil type and salinity is essential. However, traditional methods for identifying soil types and detecting salinity are time-consuming, requiring expert intervention and extensive laboratory experiments. The objective of this study is to propose a model that leverages MODIS Terra data to identify soil types and detect soil salinity. To achieve this, 195 soil samples were collected from Lahore, Kot Addu, and Kohat, dating from October 2022 to November 2022. Simultaneously, spectral data of the same regions were obtained to spatially map soil types and salinity of bare land. The spectral reflectance of band values, salinity indices, and vegetation indices were utilized to classify the soil types and predict soil salinity. To perform the classification and regression tasks, the study employed three popular techniques in the research community: Random Forest (RF), Ada Boost (AB), and Gradient Boosting (GB), along with Decision Tree (DT), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Extra Tree (ET). A 70–30 test train validation split was used for the implementation of these techniques. The efficacy of the multi-class classification models for soil types was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and f1-score. On the other hand, the regression models’ performances were evaluated and compared using R-squared (R2), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE). The results demonstrated that Random Forest outperformed other methods for both predicting soil types (accuracy = 65.38, precision = 0.60, recall = 0.57, and f1-score = 0.57) and predicting salinity (R2 = 0.90, MAE = 0.56, MSE = 0.98, RMSE = 0.97). Finally, the study designed a web portal to enable real-time prediction of soil types and salinity using these models. This web portal can be utilized by farmers and decision-makers to make informed decisions regarding soil, crop cultivation, and agricultural planning.

This study introduces a monopole 4 × 4 Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna system with a novel structure and outstanding performance. The proposed design has triple-notched characteristics due to CSRR etching and a C-shaped curve. The notching occurs in 4.5 GHz, 5.5 GHz, and 8.8 GHz frequencies in the C-band, WLAN band, and satellite network, respectively. Complementary Split-Ring Resonators (CSRR) are etched at the feed line and ground plane, and a C-shaped curve is used to reduce interference between the ultra-wide band and narrowband. The mutual coupling of CSRR enables the MIMO architecture to achieve high isolation and polarisation diversity. With prototype dimensions of (60.4 × 60.4) mm2, the proposed antenna design is small. The simulated and measured results show good agreement, indicating the effectiveness of the UWB-MIMO antenna for wireless communication and portable systems.

The narrow linewidth fiber laser is useful in applications such as fiber sensing, optical communications, and spectroscopy. This paper presents an investigation of the model and an experiment of a stable, wavelength-selective, narrow linewidth, ring cavity erbium-doped fiber laser incorporating two fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) at 1530.18 nm and 1550.08 nm, respectively. An F-P tunable filter was used to select a specific wavelength after optimizing the spectral output from the two FBGs to measure their respective linewidths. The erbium-doped ring fiber laser was optimized by adjusting the optical cavity loss using a variable optical coupler at a coupling ratio of 95%. The variable coupler was set to an optimal coupling ratio of 95%, where the spectral output powers of 3.4 mW at 1530.18 nm and 3.1 mW at 1550.08 nm were achieved as the optimal fiber laser output powers. The balanced output power had an optical signal-to-noise ratio of (OSNR) of 61 dB for each wavelength. The linewidth was measured for both wavelengths without saturable absorbers, and 27.7 kHz and 28.3 kHz for 1530.18 nm and 1550.08 nm were obtained. Using the saturable absorber, the linewidths were narrowed to 25.3 KHz and 21.1 kHz for 1530.18 nm and 1550.08 nm, respectively.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a well-known technology that has a significant impact on many areas, including connections, work, healthcare, and the economy. IoT has the potential to improve life in a variety of contexts, from smart cities to classrooms, by automating tasks, increasing output, and decreasing anxiety. Cyberattacks and threats, on the other hand, have a significant impact on intelligent IoT applications. Many traditional techniques for protecting the IoT are now ineffective due to new dangers and vulnerabilities. To keep their security procedures, IoT systems of the future will need AI-efficient machine learning and deep learning. The capabilities of artificial intelligence, particularly machine and deep learning solutions, must be used if the next-generation IoT system is to have a continuously changing and up-to-date security system. IoT security intelligence is examined in this paper from every angle available. An innovative method for protecting IoT devices against a variety of cyberattacks is to use machine learning and deep learning to gain information from raw data. Finally, we discuss relevant research issues and potential next steps considering our findings. This article examines how machine learning and deep learning can be used to detect attack patterns in unstructured data and safeguard IoT devices. We discuss the challenges that researchers face, as well as potential future directions for this research area, considering these findings. Anyone with an interest in the IoT or cybersecurity can use this website’s content as a technical resource and reference.

Smart grids are rapidly replacing conventional networks on a worldwide scale. A smart grid has drawbacks, just like any other novel technology. A smart grid cyberattack is one of the most challenging things to stop. The biggest problem is caused by millions of sensors constantly sending and receiving data packets over the network. Cyberattacks can compromise the smart grid’s dependability, availability, and privacy. Users, the communication network of smart devices and sensors, and network administrators are the three layers of an innovative grid network vulnerable to cyberattacks. In this study, we look at the many risks and flaws that can affect the safety of critical, innovative grid network components. Then, to protect against these dangers, we offer security solutions using different methods. We also provide recommendations for reducing the chance that these three categories of cyberattacks may occur.

A lung nodule is a tiny growth that develops in the lung. Non-cancerous nodules do not spread to other sections of the body. Malignant nodules can spread rapidly. One of the numerous dangerous kinds of cancer is lung cancer. It is responsible for taking the lives of millions of individuals each year. It is necessary to have a highly efficient technology capable of analyzing the nodule in the pre-cancerous phases of the disease. However, it is still difficult to detect nodules in CT scan data, which is an issue that has to be overcome if the following treatment is going to be effective. CT scans have been used for several years to diagnose nodules for future therapy. The radiologist can make a mistake while determining the nodule’s presence and size. There is room for error in this process. Radiologists will compare and analyze the images obtained from the CT scan to ascertain the nodule’s location and current status. It is necessary to have a dependable system that can locate the nodule in the CT scan images and provide radiologists with an automated report analysis that is easy to comprehend. In this study, we created and evaluated an algorithm that can identify a nodule by comparing multiple photos. This gives the radiologist additional data to work with in diagnosing cancer in its earliest stages in the nodule. In addition to accuracy, various characteristics were assessed during the performance assessment process. The final CNN algorithm has 84.8% accuracy, 90.47% precision, and 90.64% specificity. These numbers are all relatively close to one another. As a result, one may argue that CNN is capable of minimizing the number of false positives through in-depth training that is performed frequently.

Wearable technology-supported cloud-based smart health (s-health) has emerged as a promising answer to increase the efficiency and quality of healthcare as a result of rapid improvements in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. However, the issues of data security and privacy preservation have not been fully resolved. In recent years, ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE), which was developed as a versatile and potent cryptographic fundamental to accomplish one-to-many encryption with fine-grained access control, has been seen as a viable answer to the security issue in the cloud. The attribute values in the access policy, however, are supplied in cleartext in standard CP-ABE. This will conveniently reveal the data owners’ privacy (patients). Because the Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare stores sensitive data in the cloud, security is crucial. The data must always be accessed via an access key when using traditional encryption techniques. Though the data cannot be accessed right away in an emergency, this offers greater security. The healthcare IoT created the break-glass concept to address this. The encryption technique is integrated with the broken glass idea to offer data protection and simple access in emergency scenarios. The majority of research papers employ cypher text policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) with the broken glass idea to secure electronic health records. For improving data accessibility in the smart healthcare environment, modified cypher text policy attribute-based encryption (MCP-ABE) with the broken glass (BG) technique is suggested. Greater information security is achieved with this method, but the access policy is also dependent on keys that are vulnerable to hacking. To analyze the access policy individually throughout the key generation process, the attribute-based encryption procedure in this case uses the bloom filter. Information about the access policy is kept intact, which enhances the security of the keys. To continue serving patients and saving their lives, this modified CP-ABE is integrated with break glass in the smart healthcare facility. The experimental results demonstrated that, when compared to the lightweight break-glass procedure, the proposed solution is likewise the best in terms of decreased overhead. The main benefit of this strategy is that it uses the bloom filter concept in the MCP-ABE process, which protects the access policy attributes, to ensure that the key is never compromised. For data access in smart healthcare to preserve patients’ lives, the proposed MCP-ABE with broken glass is best.

Severe weather conditions not only damage electric power infrastructure, and energy systems, but also affect millions of users, including residential, commercial or industrial consumers. Moreover, power outages due to weather-related natural disasters have been causing financial losses worth billions of US dollars. In this paper, we analyze the impact of power outages on the revenue of electric power suppliers, particularly due to the top five weather-related natural disasters. For this purpose, reliable and publicly available power outage events data are considered. The data provide the time of the outage event, the geographic region, electricity consumption and tariffs, social and economic indicators, climatological annotation, consumer category distribution, population and land area, and so forth. An exploratory analysis is carried out to reveal the impact of weather-related disasters and the associated electric power revenue risk. The top five catastrophic weather-related natural disaster categories are investigated individually to predict the related revenue loss. The most influencing parameters contributing to efficient prediction are identified and their partial dependence on revenue loss is illustrated. It was found that the electric power revenue associated with weather-related natural disasters is a function of several parameters, including outage duration, number of customers, tariffs and economic indicators. The findings of this research will help electric power suppliers estimate revenue risk, as well as authorities to make risk-informed decisions regarding the energy infrastructure and systems planning.

With the sudden emergence of many dangerous viruses in recent years and with their rapid transmission and danger to individuals, most countries have adopted several strategies, such as closure and social distancing, to control the spread of the virus in the population. In parallel with all these precautions, scientific laboratories are working on developing the appropriate vaccine, which in many cases takes many years. Until then, it is necessary to resort to many solutions, including solutions that rely on information technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). In this context, this paper proposes a new solution based on the ontology and rules of intelligent reasoning. Initially, the virus environment is analyzed, followed by the extraction and editing of the main elements of the ontology using the “Protégé” software. In the last step, the proposed solution is tested, by choosing the city of Adrar in southwestern Algeria, which was particularly affected by COVID-19. Three scenarios were shown for different cases. The efficiency of the proposed solution was confirmed through the instructions it provides in the event of symptoms appearing in a person. In addition, this solution helps the competent authorities know the location and extent of the epidemic by informing the local communities.

The combination of signal processing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the robotics and automation industry by the deployment of intelligent systems and reducing human intervention. Reading human brain signal through electroencephalography (EEG) has provided a new direction of research that automate machines through the human brain and computer interface or Brain–Computer Interface (BCI). The study is also inspired by the same concept of intelligently controlling a robotic arm using BCI and AI to help physically disabled individuals. The proposed system is non-invasive, unlike existing technologies that provide a reliable comparison of different AI-based classification algorithms. This paper also predicts a reliable bandwidth for the BCI process and provides exact placements of EEG electrodes to verify different arm moments. We have applied different classification algorithms, i.e., Random Forest, KNN, Gradient Boosting, Logistic Regression, SVM, and Decision Tree, to four different users. The accuracy of all prescribed classifiers has been calculated by considering the first user as a reference. The presented results validate the novel deployment, and the comparison shows that the accuracy for Random Forest remained optimal at around 76%, Gradient Boosting is around 74%, while the lowest is 64% for Decision Tree. It has been observed that people have different activation bandwidths while the dominant frequency varies from person-to-person that causes fluctuations in the EEG dataset.

An efficient feature extraction method for two classes of electroencephalography (EEG) is demonstrated using Common Spatial Patterns (CSP) with optimal spatial filters. However, the effects of artifacts and non-stationary uncertainty are more pronounced when CSP filtering is used. Furthermore, traditional CSP methods lack frequency domain information and require many input channels. Therefore, to overcome this shortcoming, a feature extraction method based on Online Recursive Independent Component Analysis (ORICA)-CSP is proposed. For EEG-based brain—computer interfaces (BCIs), especially online and real-time BCIs, the most widely used classifiers used to be linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and support vector machines (SVM). Previous evaluations clearly show that SVMs generally outperform other classifiers in terms of performance. In this case, Adaptive Support Vector Machine (A-SVM) is used for classification together with the ORICA-CSP method. The results are promising, and the experiments are performed on EEG data of 4 classes’ motor images, namely Dataset 2a of BCI Competition IV.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the succession of its waves, the transmission of this disease and the number of deaths caused by it have been increasing. Despite the various vaccines, the COVID-19 virus is still contagious and dangerous for affected people. One of the remedies to this is precaution, and particularly social distancing. In the same vein, this paper proposes a remote voting system, which has to be secure, anonymous, irreversible, accessible, and simple to use. It therefore allows voters to have the possibility to vote for their candidate without having to perform the operation on site. This system will be used for university elections and particularly for student elections. We propose a platform based on a decentralized system. This system will use two blockchains communicating with each other: the public Ethereum blockchain and the private Quorum blockchain. The private blockchain will be institution-specific. All these blockchains send the necessary data to the public blockchain which manages different data related to the universities and the ministry. This system enables using encrypted data with the SHA-256 algorithm to have both security and information security. Motivated by the high energy consumption of blockchain and by the performance improvements in low-power, a test is performed on a low-power embedded platform Raspberry PI4 showing the possibility to use the Blockchain with limited resources.

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) contain sensor nodes that sense the data and then transfer them to the sink node or base station. Sensor nodes are operationalized through limited-power batteries. Therefore, improvement in energy consumption becomes critical in UWSNs. Data forwarding through the nearest sensor node to the sink or base station reduces the network’s reliability and stability because it creates a hotspot and drains the energy early. In this paper, we propose the cooperative energy-efficient routing (CEER) protocol to increase the network lifetime and acquire a reliable network. We use the sink mobility scheme to reduce energy consumption by eliminating the hotspot issue. We have divided the area into multiple sections for better deployment and deployed the sink nodes in each area. Sensor nodes generate the data and send it to the sink nodes to reduce energy consumption. We have also used the cooperative technique to achieve reliability in the network. Based on simulation results, the proposed scheme performed better than existing routing protocols in terms of packet delivery ratio (PDR), energy consumption, transmission loss, and end-to-end delay.

The demand for uninterruptible electricity supply is increasing, and the power engineering sector has started researching alternative solutions. Distributed generation (DG) dissemination into the electric grid to cope with the accelerating demand for electricity is taken into consideration. However, its integration with the traditional grid is a key task as sudden changes in load and their fickle nature cause the frequency to deviate from its adjusted range and affect the grid’s reliability. Moreover, the increased use of DG will significantly impact power system frequency response, posing a new challenge to the traditional power system frequency framework. Therefore, maintaining the frequency within the nominal range can improve its reliability. This deviation should be removed within a few seconds to keep the system’s frequency stable so that supply and demand are balanced. In a traditional grid system, the controllers installed at the generation side help to control the system’s frequency. These generators have capital installation costs that are not desirable for system operators. Therefore, this article proposed a comprehensive control framework to enable high penetration of DG while still providing adequate frequency response. This is accomplished by investigating a grasshopper optimization algorithm-based (GOA) fuzzy PD-PI controller (FPD-PI) for analyzing frequency control and optimizing the FPD-PI controller gains to minimize the frequency fluctuations. In this paper, interconnected hybrid power systems (HPS) are considered. In this study, the response of a system is analyzed, and the results validate that the oscillations in frequency are substantially reduced by the proposed controller. Moreover, our model is the best option for controlling frequency instead of conventional controllers, as it is efficient and fast to regulate frequency by switching the preferred loads on or off.

Faults in the power system affect the reliability, safety, and stability. Power-distribution systems are familiar with the different faults that can damage the overall performance of the entire system, from which they need to be effectively cleared. Underground power systems are more complex and require extra accuracy in fault detection and location for optimum fault management. Slow processing and the unavailability of a protection zone for relay coordination are concerns in fault detection and location, as these reduce the performance of power-protection systems. In this regard, this article proposes an optimized solution for a fault detection and location framework for underground cables based on a discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The proposed model supports area detection, the identification of faulty sections, and fault location. To overcome the abovementioned facts, we optimize the relay coordination for the overcurrent and timing relays. The proposed protection zone has two sequential stages for the current and time at which it optimizes the current and time settings of the connected relays through Newton–Raphson analysis (NRA). Moreover, the traveling times for the DWT are modeled, which relate to the protection zone provided by the relay coordination, and the faulty line that is identified as the relay protection is not overlapped. The model was tested for 132 kV/11 kV and 16-node networks for underground cables, and the obtained results show that the proposed model can detect and locate the cable’s faults speedily, as it detects the fault in 0.01 s, and at the accurate location. MATLAB/Simulink (DigSILENT Toolbox) is used to establish the underground network for fault location and detection.

The sizing of microgrids depends on the type of load and its operational hours. The significance of understanding the load operational characteristics in special purpose islanded microgrids is much needed for economic system sizing. The load operation of special-purpose microgrids often consumes high power for a short duration and remains idle most of the time, thus reducing the load factor. The inclusion of such loads in microgrid sizing causes huge capital costs making islanded microgrids an unfeasible solution. The islanded microgrid under study is an agricultural microgrid in a village having a small Crab Processing Plant (CPP) and a Domestic Sector (DS). The CPP constitutes the major power consumption. The community has a unique load consumption trend that is dependent on the highly uncertain parameter of availability of the crabs. Interestingly, crab availability is an independent parameter and cannot be accurately scheduled. The existing system sizing of the microgrid is performed based on the conventional methods that consider the CPP for full-day operation. However, the microgrid sources, especially the storage system may be reflected as oversized if the crab processing plants do not operate for several days due to the uncertain behavior of CPP causing enormous power wastage. In this paper, an integrated fixed and operational mode strategy for uncertain heavy loads is formulated. The proposed algorithm is based on the optimal sizing methodology aided by the load scheduling control strategy. The Particle Swarm Optimization technique is used for the optimal sizing integrated with the fuzzy logic controller to manage the available load. The membership functions are available excess power and the state of the charge of storage that defines the operational conditions for CPP. Based on input membership functions, the fuzzy controller decides on power dispatch in DS or CPP, keeping considerable SoC available for night hours. The simulation result shows that the time-dependent fuzzy controller approach manages to provide power to both sectors under optimal sizing while reducing the overall cost by 24% less than the existing microgrid.

Network slicing (NS) is one of the most prominent next-generation wireless cellular technology use cases, promising to unlock the core benefits of 5G network architecture by allowing communication service providers (CSPs) and operators to construct scalable and customized logical networks. This, in turn, enables telcos to reach the full potential of their infrastructure by offering customers tailored networking solutions that meet their specific needs, which is critical in an era where no two businesses have the same requirements. This article presents a commercial overview of NS, as well as the need for a slicing automation and orchestration framework. Furthermore, it will address the current NS project objectives along with the complex functional execution of NS code flow. A summary of activities in important standards development groups and industrial forums relevant to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is also provided. Finally, we identify various open research problems and potential answers to provide future guidance.

This paper presents a proposal for the development of a new intelligent solution for the optimization of hybrid energy systems. This solution is of great importance for installers of hybrid energy systems, as it helps them obtain the best configuration of the hybrid energy system (efficient and less expensive). In this solution, it is sufficient to enter the name of the location of the hybrid energy system that we want to install; after that, the solution will show the name of the best technology from which the optimal configuration of this system can be obtained. To accomplish this goal, the study relied on the ontology approach for two reasons, one of which is related to the nature of hybrid systems, because it is characterized by a large amount of information that requires good structuring, and the second reason is the interaction of hybrid energy systems with the external environment (climate, site characteristics). Afterward, to develop the knowledge base of the ontology, many steps were followed, the first of which is related to a detailed study of the existing one and the extraction of the basic elements, such as the concepts and the relations between them, followed by the development of the rules of intelligent reasoning, which is an interaction between the elements of the ontology through which all possible cases are treated. The “Protégé” software was used to edit these elements and perform the simulation process to show the results of the developed solution. Finally, the paper includes a case study, and the results show the importance of the developed solution, and it is open to future developments.

Examination cheating activities like whispering, head movements, hand movements, or hand contact are extensively involved, and the rectitude and worthiness of fair and unbiased examination are prohibited by such cheating activities. The aim of this research is to develop a model to supervise or control unethical activities in real-time examinations. Exam supervision is fallible due to limited human abilities and capacity to handle students in examination centers, and these errors can be reduced with the help of the Automatic Invigilation System. This work presents an automated system for exams invigilation using deep learning approaches i.e., Faster Regional Convolution Neural Network (RCNN). Faster RCNN is an object detection algorithm that is implemented to detect the suspicious activities of students during examinations based on their head movements, and for student identification, MTCNN (Multi-task Cascaded Convolutional Neural Networks) is used for face detection and recognition. The training accuracy of the proposed model is 99.5% and the testing accuracy is 98.5%. The model is fully efficient in detecting and monitoring more than 100 students in one frame during examinations. Different real-time scenarios are considered to evaluate the performance of the Automatic Invigilation System. The proposed invigilation model can be implemented in colleges, universities, and schools to detect and monitor student suspicious activities. Hopefully, through the implementation of the proposed invigilation system, we can prevent and solve the problem of cheating because it is unethical.

Artificial intelligence is serving as an impetus in digital health, clinical support, and health informatics for an informed patient’s outcome. Previous studies only consider classification accuracies of cardiotocographic (CTG) datasets and disregard computational time, which is a relevant parameter in a clinical environment. This paper proposes a modified deep neural algorithm to classify untapped pathological and suspicious CTG recordings with the desired time complexity. In our newly developed classification algorithm, AlexNet architecture is merged with support vector machines (SVMs) at the fully connected layers to reduce time complexity. We used an open-source UCI (Machine Learning Repository) dataset of cardiotocographic (CTG) recordings. We divided 2126 CTG recordings into 3 classes (Normal, Pathological, and Suspected), including 23 attributes that were dynamically programmed and fed to our algorithm. We employed a deep transfer learning (TL) mechanism to transfer prelearned features to our model. To reduce time complexity, we implemented a strategy wherein layers in the convolutional base were partially trained to leave others in the frozen states. We used an ADAM optimizer for the optimization of hyperparameters. The presented algorithm also outperforms the leading architectures (RCNNs, ResNet, DenseNet, and GoogleNet) with respect to real-time accuracies, sensitivities, and specificities of 99.72%, 96.67%, and 99.6%, respectively, making it a viable candidate for clinical settings after real-time validation.

In the last decade, the communication of images through the internet has increased. Due to the growing demands for data transfer through images, protection of data and safe communication is very important. For this purpose, many encryption techniques have been designed and developed. New and secured encryption schemes based on chaos theory have introduced methods for secure as well as fast communication. A modified image encryption process is proposed in this work with chaotic maps and orthogonal matrix in Hill cipher. Image encryption involves three phases. In the first phase, a chaotic Henon map is used for permuting the digital image. In the second phase, a Hill cipher is used whose encryption key is generated by an orthogonal matrix which further is produced from the equation of the plane. In the third phase, a sequence is generated by a chaotic tent map which is later XORed. Chaotic maps play an important role in the encryption process. To deal with the issues of fast and highly secured image processing, the prominent properties of non-periodical movement and non-convergence of chaotic theory play an important role. The proposed scheme is resistant to different attacks on the cipher image. Different tests have been applied to evaluate the proposed technique. The results of the tests such as key space analysis, key sensitivity analysis, and information entropy, histogram correlation of the adjacent pixels, number of pixel change rate (NPCR), peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), and unified average changing intensity (UCAI) showed that our proposed scheme is an efficient encryption technique. The proposed approach is also compared with some state-of-the-art image encryption techniques. In the view of statistical analysis, we claim that our proposed encryption algorithm is secured.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a health apprehension of significant proportions that is negatively impacting the ageing population globally. It is characterized by neuronal loss and the formation of structures such as neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques in the early as well as later stages of the disease. Neuroimaging modalities are routinely used in clinical practice to capture brain alterations associated with AD. On the other hand, deep learning methods are routinely used to recognize patterns in underlying data distributions effectively. This work uses Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures in both 2D and 3D domains to classify the initial stages of AD into AD, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Normal Control (NC) classes using the positron emission tomography neuroimaging modality deploying data augmentation in a random zoomed in/out scheme. We used novel concepts such as the blurring before subsampling principle and distant domain transfer learning to build 2D CNN architectures. We performed three binaries, that is, AD/NC, AD/MCI, MCI/NC and one multiclass classification task AD/NC/MCI. The statistical comparison revealed that 3D-CNN architecture performed the best achieving an accuracy of 89.21% on AD/NC, 71.70% on AD/MCI, 62.25% on NC/MCI and 59.73% on AD/NC/MCI classification tasks using a five-fold cross-validation hyperparameter selection approach. Data augmentation helps in achieving superior performance on the multiclass classification task. The obtained results support the application of deep learning models towards early recognition of AD.

Recently, there has been an increasing need for new applications and services such as big data, blockchains, vehicle-to-everything (V2X), the Internet of things, 5G, and beyond. Therefore, to maintain quality of service (QoS), accurate network resource planning and forecasting are essential steps for resource allocation. This study proposes a reliable hybrid dynamic bandwidth slice forecasting framework that combines the long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network and local smoothing methods to improve the network forecasting model. Moreover, the proposed framework can dynamically react to all the changes occurring in the data series. Backbone traffic was used to validate the proposed method. As a result, the forecasting accuracy improved significantly with the proposed framework and with minimal data loss from the smoothing process. The results showed that the hybrid moving average LSTM (MLSTM) achieved the most remarkable improvement in the training and testing forecasts, with 28% and 24% for long-term evolution (LTE) time series and with 35% and 32% for the multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) time series, respectively, while robust locally weighted scatter plot smoothing and LSTM (RLWLSTM) achieved the most significant improvement for upstream traffic with 45%; moreover, the dynamic learning framework achieved improvement percentages that can reach up to 100%.

Biometrics is the term for measuring human characteristics. If the term is divided into two parts, bio means life, and metric means measurement. The measurement of humans through different computational methods is performed to authorize a person. This measurement can be performed via a single biometric or by using a combination of different biometric traits. The combination of multiple biometrics is termed biometric fusion. It provides a reliable and secure authentication of a person at a higher accuracy. It has been introduced in the UIDIA framework in India (AADHAR: Association for Development and Health Action in Rural) and in different nations to figure out which biometric characteristics are suitable enough to authenticate the human identity. Fusion in biometric frameworks, especially FKP (finger–knuckle print) and iris, demonstrated to be a solid multimodal as a secure framework. The proposed approach demonstrates a proficient and strong multimodal biometric framework that utilizes FKP and iris as biometric modalities for authentication, utilizing scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) and speeded up robust features (SURF). Log Gabor wavelet is utilized to extricate the iris feature set. From the extracted region, features are computed using principal component analysis (PCA). Both biometric modalities, FKP and iris, are combined at the match score level. The matching is performed using a neuro-fuzzy neural network classifier. The execution and accuracy of the proposed framework are tested on the open database Poly-U, CASIA, and an accuracy of 99.68% is achieved. The accuracy is higher compared to a single biometric. The neuro-fuzzy approach is also tested in comparison to other classifiers, and the accuracy is 98%. Therefore, the fusion mechanism implemented using a neuro-fuzzy classifier provides the best accuracy compared to other classifiers. The framework is implemented in MATLAB 7.10.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is one of the ways used to transform acoustic speech signals into text. Over the last few decades, an enormous amount of research work has been done in the research area of speech recognition (SR). However, most studies have focused on building ASR systems based on adult speech. The recognition of children’s speech was neglected for some time, which means that the field of children’s SR research is wide open. Children’s SR is a challenging task due to the large variations in children’s articulatory, acoustic, physical, and linguistic characteristics compared to adult speech. Thus, the field became a very attractive area of research and it is important to understand where the main center of attention is, and what are the most widely used methods for extracting acoustic features, various acoustic models, speech datasets, the SR toolkits used during the recognition process, and so on. ASR systems or interfaces are extensively used and integrated into various real-life applications, such as search engines, the healthcare industry, biometric analysis, car systems, the military, aids for people with disabilities, and mobile devices. A systematic literature review (SLR) is presented in this work by extracting the relevant information from 76 research papers published from 2009 to 2020 in the field of ASR for children. The objective of this review is to throw light on the trends of research in children’s speech recognition and analyze the potential of trending techniques to recognize children’s speech.

On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization announced a new coronavirus, which later turned out to be very dangerous. Since that date, COVID-19 has spread to become a pandemic that has now affected practically all regions in the world. Since then, many researchers in medicine have contributed to fighting COVID-19. In this context and given the great growth of scientific publications related to this global pandemic, manual text and data retrieval has become a challenging task. To remedy this challenge, we are proposing CovBERT, a pre-trained language model based on the BERT model to automate the literature review process. CovBERT relies on prior training on a large corpus of scientific publications in the biomedical domain and related to COVID-19 to increase its performance on the literature review task. We evaluate CovBERT on the classification of short text based on our scientific dataset of biomedical articles on COVID-19 entitled COV-Dat-20. We demonstrate statistically significant improvements by using BERT.

Compound systems are generally treated by geometrical optics, for instance, through the Gauss’ formalism. The objective is to simplify the process of image formation. However, this formalism does not include the wave characteristics of light and boundary effects. The treatment of diffraction is not straightforward. Thus, the extension of this formalism towards the scalar theory of diffraction is very desired. This work offers this extension and emphasizes its importance. Compound systems, including the human eye, are then modeled by Fresnel theory. For illustration, a lens-based model of the Fresnel transform is used to treat the human eye system.

This paper investigates the response and characteristics of the narrowband power line communication (NB-PLC) technique for the effective control of electric appliances such as smart air conditioners (SACs) for demand side management (DSM) services. The expression for temperature sensitivity by examining the influence of atmospheric temperature variations on power consumption profile of all possible types of loads, i.e., residential, commercial, and industrial loads is derived and analyzed. Comprehensive field measurements on these power consumers are carried out in Lahore, Pakistan. The responses of low voltage channels, medium voltage channels, and transformer bridge for a 3–500 kHz NB-PLC frequency range are presented for DSM services. The master control room transmits control commands for the thermostat settings of SACs over power lines, crossing the transformer bridge to reach the SACs of power consumers by using communication protocol smart energy profile 1.0. The comparison of hourly and daily power consumption profiles under evaluation loads, by analyzing typical and variable frequency air conditioners on setting thermostat temperature at 25 °C and 27 °C conventionally and then by using DSM control technique, is analyzed. A prominent reduction in power consumption is found with the implementation of the DSM control technique.

Algeria is characterized by extreme cold in winter and high heat and humidity in summer. This leads to an increase in the use of electrical appliances, which has a negative impact on electrical energy consumption and its high costs, especially with the high price of electricity in Algeria. In this context, artificial intelligence can help to regulate the daily consumption of electricity, by optimizing the exploitation of natural resources and alerting the individual to avoid energy wasting. This paper proposes a decision-making tool (IRRHEM) for managing electrical energy at smart home. The IRRHEM solution is based on three elements: the use of natural resources, the notification of the inhabitants in case of resources misuse or wasting behavior, and the aggregation of similar activities at same time. Additionally, based on the proposed intelligent reasoning rules, residents’ behavior and activities are represented by OWL (Ontology Web Language) and written and executed through SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language). Finally, the (IRRHEM) solution is tested in a home located in Algiers city inhabited by a family of four persons. The IRRHEM performance evaluation results are very promising and show a 3.60% rate of energy saving.

We propose a new rotation invariant correlator using dimensionality reduction. A diffractive phase element is used to focus image data into a line which serves as input for a conventional correlator. The diffractive element sums information over each radius of the scene image and projects the result onto one point of a line located at a certain distance behind the image. The method is flexible, to a large extent, and might include parallel pattern recognition and classification as well as further geometrical invariance. Although the new technique is inspired from circular harmonic decomposition, it does not suffer from energy loss. A theoretical analysis, as well as examples, are given.

Cloud computing has emerged as the most favorable computing platform for researchers and industry. The load balanced task scheduling has emerged as an important and challenging research problem in the Cloud computing. Swarm intelligence-based meta-heuristic algorithms are considered more suitable for Cloud scheduling and load balancing. The optimization procedure of swarm intelligence-based meta-heuristics consists of two major components that are the local and global search. These algorithms find the best position through the local and global search. To achieve an optimized mapping strategy for tasks to the resources, a balance between local and global search plays an effective role. The inertia weight is an important control attribute to effectively adjust the local and global search process. There are many inertia weight strategies; however, the existing approaches still require fine-tuning to achieve optimum scheduling. The selection of a suitable inertia weight strategy is also an important factor. This paper contributed an adaptive Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) based task scheduling approach that reduces the task execution time, and increases throughput and Average Resource Utilization Ratio (ARUR). Moreover, an adaptive inertia weight strategy namely Linearly Descending and Adaptive Inertia Weight (LDAIW) is introduced. The proposed scheduling approach provides a better balance between local and global search leading to an optimized task scheduling. The performance of the proposed approach has been evaluated and compared against five renown PSO based inertia weight strategies concerning makespan and throughput. The experiments are then extended and compared the proposed approach against the other four renowned meta-heuristic scheduling approaches. Analysis of the simulated experimentation reveals that the proposed approach attained up to 10%, 12% and 60% improvement for makespan, throughput and ARUR respectively.

Power electronic circuits in modern power supplies have improved the conversion efficiency on the one hand but have also increased harmonic emissions. Harmonic currents from the operation of these units affect the voltage waveforms of the network and could compromise the reliability of the network. Load and source non-linearity can, therefore, limit the renewable source’s hosting capacity in the grid, as a large number of inverter units may increase the harmonic distortions. As a result, voltage and current distortions could reach unbearable levels in devices connected to the network. Harmonic estimation modelling often relies on measurement data, and differences may appear in mathematical simulations as the harmonic aggregation or cancellation may generate different results due to the inaccuracies and limitations of the measurement device. In this paper, the effect of harmonic currents cancellation on the aggregation of different load currents is evaluated to show its impact in the network by presenting a comparison between the measurement and mathematical aggregation of harmonics. Furthermore, the harmonic cancellation phenomenon is also qualified for multiple loads connected to the power supply.

The increased popularity of small-scale DER has replaced the well-established concept of conventional generating plants around the world. In the present energy scenario, a significant share of energy production now comes from the grid integrated DERs installed at various consumer premises. These DERs are being renewable-based generates only intermittent power, which in turn makes the scheduling of electrical dispatch a tough task. The Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is a potential solution to this challenge, which coordinates and aggregates the DERs generation into a single controllable profile. In this paper, a modified PSO-based multi-objective optimization is proposed for the VPP scheduling in distribution network applications such as energy cost minimization, peak shaving, and reliability improvement. For feasibility analysis of the VPP, a case study of state power utility is taken, which includes a 90 bus industrial feeder with grid integrated PVs as DER. The optimized results are computed in both grid-connected and autonomous mode reveal that the operating cost, peak demand, and EENS are declined by 31.70%, 23.59%, and 62.30% respectively. The overall results obtained are compared by the results obtained from other well-established optimization techniques and it is found that the proposed technique is comparatively more cost-effective than others.

The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected aspects of human life and various sectors, especially the health sector. These conditions led to the creation of new patterns of life that people have had to deal with to reduce the spread of the epidemic by committing to social distancing, among others. Therefore, governments and technological organizations had to take advantage of technological developments in the current era to overcome these challenges that were created by these conditions. In this paper, we will discuss the role of the blockchain in combating the COVID-19 crisis. Then we will review the recently recorded blockchain-based research proposals to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we will highlight the challenges of using blockchain to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and find solutions to mitigate these challenges.

In power systems, the programmable numerical differential relays are widely used for the protection of generators, bus bars, transformers, shunt reactors, and transmission lines. Retrofitting of relays is the need of the hour because lack of proper testing techniques and misunderstanding of vital procedures may result in under performance of the overall protection system. Lack of relay’s proper testing provokes an unpredictability in its behavior, that may prompt tripping of a healthy power system. Therefore, the main contribution of the paper is to prepare a step-by-step comprehensive procedural guideline for practical implementation of relay testing procedures and a detailed insight analysis of relay’s settings for the protection of an Extra High Voltage (EHV) auto transformer. The experimental results are scrutinized to document a detailed theoretical and technical analysis. Moreover, the paper also covers shortcomings of existing literature by documenting specialized literature that covers all aspects of protection relays, i.e., from basics of electromechanical domain to the technicalities of the numerical differential relay covering its detailed testing from different reputed manufacturers. A secondary injection relay test set is used for detailed testing of differential relay under test, and the S1 Agile software is used for protection relay settings, configuration modification, and detailed analysis.

Cloud ERP is a type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that runs on the vendor’s cloud platform instead of an on-premises network, enabling companies to connect through the Internet. The goal of this study was to rank and prioritise the factors driving cloud ERP adoption by organisations and to identify the critical issues in terms of security, usability, and vendors that impact adoption of cloud ERP systems. The assessment of critical success factors (CSFs) in on-premises ERP adoption and implementation has been well documented; however, no previous research has been carried out on CSFs in cloud ERP adoption. Therefore, the contribution of this research is to provide research and practice with the identification and analysis of 16 CSFs through a systematic literature review, where 73 publications on cloud ERP adoption were assessed from a range of different conferences and journals, using inclusion and exclusion criteria. Drawing from the literature, we found security, usability, and vendors were the top three most widely cited critical issues for the adoption of cloud-based ERP; hence, the second contribution of this study was an integrative model constructed with 12 drivers based on the security, usability, and vendor characteristics that may have greater influence as the top critical issues in the adoption of cloud ERP systems. We also identified critical gaps in current research, such as the inconclusiveness of findings related to security critical issues, usability critical issues, and vendor critical issues, by highlighting the most important drivers influencing those issues in cloud ERP adoption and the lack of discussion on the nature of the criticality of those CSFs. This research will aid in the development of new strategies or the revision of existing strategies and polices aimed at effectively integrating cloud ERP into cloud computing infrastructure. It will also allow cloud ERP suppliers to determine organisations’ and business owners’ expectations and implement appropriate tactics. A better understanding of the CSFs will narrow the field of failure and assist practitioners and managers in increasing their chances of success.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are one of the fundamental infrastructures for Internet of Things (IoTs) technology. Efficient energy consumption is one of the greatest challenges in WSNs because of its resource-constrained sensor nodes (SNs). Clustering techniques can significantly help resolve this issue and extend the network’s lifespan. In clustering, WSN is divided into various clusters, and a cluster head (CH) is selected in each cluster. The selection of appropriate CHs highly influences the clustering technique, and poor cluster structures lead toward the early death of WSNs. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient clustering and cluster head selection technique for next-generation wireless sensor networks (NG-WSNs). The proposed clustering approach is based on the midpoint technique, considering residual energy and distance among nodes. It distributes the sensors uniformly creating balanced clusters, and uses multihop communication for distant CHs to the base station (BS). We consider a four-layer hierarchical network composed of SNs, CHs, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and BS. The UAV brings the advantage of flexibility and mobility; it shortens the communication range of sensors, which leads to an extended lifetime. Finally, a simulated annealing algorithm is applied for the optimal trajectory of the UAV according to the ground sensor network. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms with respect to energy efficiency and network lifetime when compared with state-of-the-art techniques from recent literature.

It is imperative to find new places other than Earth for the survival of human beings. Mars could be the alternative to Earth in the future for us to live. In this context, many missions have been performed to examine the planet Mars. For such missions, planetary precision landing is a major challenge for the precise landing on Mars. Mars landing consists of different phases (hypersonic entry, parachute descent, terminal descent comprising gravity turn, and powered descent). However, the focus of this work is the powered descent phase of landing. Firstly, the main objective of this study is to minimize the landing error during the powered descend landing phase. The second objective involves constrained optimization in a predictive control framework for landing at non-cooperative sites. Different control algorithms like PID and LQR have been developed for the stated problem; however, the predictive control algorithm with constraint handling’s ability has not been explored much. This research discusses the Model Predictive Control algorithm for the powered descent phase of landing. Model Predictive Control (MPC) considers input/output constraints in the calculation of the control law and thus it is very useful for the stated problem as shown in the results. The main novelty of this work is the implementation of Explicit MPC, which gives comparatively less computational time than MPC. A comparison is done among MPC variants in terms of feasibility, constraints handling, and computational time. Moreover, other conventional control algorithms like PID and LQR are compared with the proposed predictive algorithm. These control algorithms are implemented on quadrotor UAV (which emulates the dynamics of a planetary lander) to verify the feasibility through simulations in MATLAB.

Recently, Electroencephalography (EEG) motor imagery (MI) signals have received increasing attention because it became possible to use these signals to encode a person’s intention to perform an action. Researchers have used MI signals to help people with partial or total paralysis, control devices such as exoskeletons, wheelchairs, prostheses, and even independent driving. Therefore, classifying the motor imagery tasks of these signals is important for a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system. Classifying the MI tasks from EEG signals is difficult to offer a good decoder due to the dynamic nature of the signal, its low signal-to-noise ratio, complexity, and dependence on the sensor positions. In this paper, we investigate five multilayer methods for classifying MI tasks: proposed methods based on Artificial Neural Network, Convolutional Neural Network 1 (CNN1), CNN2, CNN1 with CNN2 merged, and the modified CNN1 with CNN2 merged. These proposed methods use different spatial and temporal characteristics extracted from raw EEG data. We demonstrate that our proposed CNN1-based method outperforms state-of-the-art machine/deep learning techniques for EEG classification by an accuracy value of 68.77% and use spatial and frequency characteristics on the BCI Competition IV-2a dataset, which includes nine subjects performing four MI tasks (left/right hand, feet, and tongue). The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this proposed method for the classification of MI-EEG signals and can be applied successfully to BCI systems where the amount of data is large due to daily recording.

High energy consumption, rising environmental concerns and depleting fossil fuels demand an increase in clean energy production. The enhanced resiliency, efficiency and reliability offered by microgrids with distributed energy resources (DERs) have shown to be a promising alternative to the conventional grid system. Large-sized commercial customers like institutional complexes have put significant efforts to promote sustainability by establishing renewable energy systems at university campuses. This paper proposes the integration of a photovoltaic (PV) system, energy storage system (ESS) and electric vehicles (EV) at a University campus. An optimal energy management system (EMS) is proposed to optimally dispatch the energy from available energy resources. The problem is mapped in a Linear optimization problem and simulations are carried out in MATLAB. Simulation results showed that the proposed EMS ensures the continuous power supply and decreases the energy consumption cost by nearly 45%. The impact of EV as a storage tool is also observed. EVs acting as a source of energy reduced the energy cost by 45.58% and as a load by 19.33%. The impact on the cost for continuous power supply in case of a power outage is also analyzed.

Real-time robotic applications encounter the robot on board resources’ limitations. The speed of robot face recognition can be improved by incorporating cloud technology. However, the transmission of data to the cloud servers exposes the data to security and privacy attacks. Therefore, encryption algorithms need to be set up. This paper aims to study the security and performance of potential encryption algorithms and their impact on the deep-learning-based face recognition task’s accuracy. To this end, experiments are conducted for robot face recognition through various deep learning algorithms after encrypting the images of the ORL database using cryptography and image-processing based algorithms.

As localization represents the main backbone of several wireless sensor networks applications, several localization algorithms have been proposed in the literature. There is a growing interest in the multi-hop localization algorithms as they permit the localization of sensor nodes even if they are several hops away from anchor nodes. One of the most famous localization algorithms is the Distance Vector Hop (DV-Hop). Aiming to minimize the large localization error in the original DV-Hop algorithm, we propose an improved DV-Hop algorithm in this paper. The distance between unknown nodes and anchors is estimated using the received signal strength indication (RSSI) and the polynomial approximation. Moreover, the proposed algorithm uses a recursive computation of the localization process to improve the accuracy of position estimation. Experimental results show that the proposed localization technique minimizes the localization error and improves the localization accuracy.

The COVID-19 disease has spread all over the world, representing an intriguing challenge for humanity as a whole. The efficient diagnosis of humans infected by COVID-19 still remains an increasing need worldwide. The chest X-ray imagery represents, among others, one attractive means to detect COVID-19 cases efficiently. Many studies have reported the efficiency of using deep learning classifiers in diagnosing COVID-19 from chest X-ray images. They conducted several comparisons among a subset of classifiers to identify the most accurate. In this paper, we investigate the potential of the combination of state-of-the-art classifiers in achieving the highest possible accuracy for the detection of COVID-19 from X-ray. For this purpose, we conducted a comprehensive comparison study among 16 state-of-the-art classifiers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study considering this number of classifiers. This paper’s innovation lies in the methodology that we followed to develop the inference system that allows us to detect COVID-19 with high accuracy. The methodology consists of three steps: (1) comprehensive comparative study between 16 state-of-the-art classifiers; (2) comparison between different ensemble classification techniques, including hard/soft majority, weighted voting, Support Vector Machine, and Random Forest; and (3) finding the combination of deep learning models and ensemble classification techniques that lead to the highest classification confidence on three classes. We found that using the Majority Voting approach is an adequate strategy to adopt in general cases for this task and may achieve an average accuracy up to 99.314%.