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The development of wireless sensor and actuator network is leading to high complexity networks and subsequently, new challenges in task assignment for effective sensor–actuator coordination. This article proposes an adaptive auction protocol for task assignment in multi-hop wireless actuator networks, considering a scenario where all actuators are immobile and each of them can obtain the target information from sensors. Unlike existing methods that neglect the adaptive auction area required by dynamic networks, the proposed method uses an adaptive factor k o (reflects the adaptive auction area) that is deduced based on the relation between network characteristics and protocol performance. Simulation results show that the adaptive protocol can dynamically change the auction area during the network operation. In addition, comparison with existing methods, such as simple auction protocol, 1 hop simple auction aggregation protocol, and 1 hop simple auction aggregation protocol greedy extension, shows that the adaptive auction protocol can choose the optimal solution at a low communication cost with a high probability, irrespective of the changes in the network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Problematic internet use (PIU) is an increasingly worrisome issue, as youth population studies are establishing links with internalizing and externalizing problems. There is a need for a better understanding of psychiatric diagnostic profiles associated with this issue, as well as its unique contributions to impairment. Here, we leveraged the ongoing, large-scale Child Mind Institute Healthy Brain Network, a transdiagnostic self-referred, community sample of children and adolescents (ages 5–21), to examine the associations between PIU and psychopathology, general impairment, physical health and sleep disturbances. Methods: A total sample of 564 (190 female) participants between the ages of 7–15 (mean = 10.80, SD = 2.16), along with their parents/guardians, completed diagnostic interviews with clinicians, answered a wide range of self-report (SR) and parent-report (PR) questionnaires, including the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and underwent physical testing as part of the Healthy Brain Network protocol. Results: PIU was positively associated with depressive disorders (SR: aOR = 2.43, CI: 1.22–4.74, p =.01; PR: aOR = 2.56, CI: 1.31–5.05, p =.01), the combined presentation of ADHD (SR: aOR = 1.91, CI: 1.14–3.22, p =.01; PR: n.s.), Autism Spectrum Disorder (SR: n.s.; PR: aOR = 2.24, CI: 1.34–3.73, p <.001), greater levels of impairment (SR: Standardized Beta = 4.63, CI: 3.06–6.20, p <.001; PR: Standardized Beta = 5.05, CI: 3.67–6.42, p <.001) and increased sleep disturbances (SR: Standardized Beta = 3.15, CI: 0.71–5.59, p =.01; PR: Standardized Beta = 3.55, CI: 1.34–5.75, p <.001), even when accounting for demographic covariates and psychiatric comorbidity. Conclusions: The association between PIU and psychopathology, as well as its impact on impairment and sleep disturbances, highlight the urgent need to gain an understanding of mechanisms in order to inform public health recommendations on internet use in U.S. youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the next-generation heterogeneous wireless networks, designing authentication protocols that meet the demand of mobile users/applications is a challenge. This paper proposes authentication and re-authentication protocols for 4G wireless networks, in particular, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), WLAN, and WiMAX-Advanced (WiMAX-A) interworking architecture. The proposed protocols are applicable to 5G networks. With the consideration of the existing standard authentication protocols, a new set of authentication and re-authentication protocols has been reinvented to provide fast and secure handovers (HO) in the current 4G and the next 5G networks. The proposed authentication protocols can be invoked when the users perform a vertical HO (between different networks) for the first time, whereas the re-authentication protocols can be invoked when the users perform a horizontal HO (within the same network domain). These protocols provide an efficient method to protect user identity and reduce the burden on the authentication server (AS) during the sequential handovers. The results of the analytical model show that the proposed protocols achieve better performance than standard and other protocols. The reduction of handover cost, handover delay, and energy consumption in the proposed protocols reaches up to 22%, 44%, and 17%, respectively. In addition, the verification tools show that the proposed protocols are secure, dependable, and prevent all types of authentication and secrecy attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the complexity of industrial control systems and the diversity of protocols in networks, it is difficult to build intrusion detection models based on network characteristics and physical modeling. In order to build a better flow model without additional knowledge, we propose an intrusion detection method based on the content of network packets. The construction of the model is based on the idea of ZOE method. The similarity between flows is calculated through the sequential coverage algorithm, the normal flow model is established by multi-layered clustering algorithm, and the Count-Mean-Min Sketch is used to store and count the flow model. By comparing the unknown flow with the constructed normal flow model, we achieve the intrusion detection of industrial control system (ICS). The overall experimental results on 4 ICS datasets show that the improved method can effectively improve the detection rate and reduce the false-positive rate. The detection rate reached 96.7% on average, and the false-positive rate reached 0.7% on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite recent improvements in the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the UK, deaths from CVD are relatively high compared with other high-income countries. An estimated 7 million people in the UK are living with CVD, and the healthcare cost is approximately £11 billion annually. In more than 90% of cases, the risk of a first heart attack is thought to be related to modifiable risk factors including smoking, poor diet, lipidemia, high blood pressure, inactivity, obesity and excess alcohol consumption. The aim of the study is to synthesise evidence for the comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different interventions for the primary prevention of CVD. Methods: We will systematically search databases (for example, MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), Cochrane Library) and the reference lists of previous systematic reviews for randomised controlled trials that assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of any form of intervention aimed at adult populations for the primary prevention of CVD, including but not limited to lipid lowering medications, blood pressure lowering medications, antiplatelet agents, nutritional supplements, dietary interventions, health promotion programmes, physical activity interventions or structural and policy interventions. Interventions may or may not be targeted at high-risk groups. Publications from any year will be considered for inclusion. The primary outcome will be all cause mortality. Secondary outcomes will be cardiovascular diseases related mortality, major cardiovascular events, coronary heart disease, incremental costs per quality-adjusted life years gained. If data permits, we will use network meta-analysis to compare and rank effectiveness of different interventions, and test effect modification of intervention effectiveness using subgroup analyses and meta-regression analyses. Discussion: The results will be important for policymakers when making decisions between multiple possible alternative strategies to prevent CVD. Compared to results from existing multiple separate pairwise meta-analyses, this overarching synthesis of all relevant work will enhance decision-making. The findings will be crucial to inform evidence-based priorities and guidelines for policies and planning prevention strategies of CVD. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42019123940. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the optimal power allocation for a radio frequency (RF)-powered cooperative network and propose energy-saving time switching relaying (ES-TSR) and energy-saving power splitting relaying (ES-PSR) protocols with an iterative energy-saving (ES) algorithm. In particular, we develop the analytical expressions of the channel capacity and the total energy consumption for the considered cooperative network. We formulate the system energy efficiency maximization problems and then provide the corresponding solutions by deriving the source's optimal transmit power in terms of energy fraction consumed with time switching (TS) factor and power splitting (PS) factor for the proposed ES-TSR and ES-PSR protocols, respectively, in each transmission block. From the past approaches, the optimal power allocation to maximize the system energy efficiency of the RF-powered cooperative networks has been studied under the assumption that the relay must utilize all of its harvested power in each transmission block. This work considers optimal power allocation to maximize the system energy efficiency for the case when the relay node can save energy for the next transmission block. Our simulation results show that the proposed ES-TSR and ES-PSR protocols outperformed the existing TS-based and PS-based relaying protocols with $\text{14.22}\%$ and $\text{8.4}\% $ , respectively, in paticular when the number of transmission blocks $\boldsymbol{L} = 10$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-stabilization in distributed systems is a technique to guarantee convergence to a set of legitimate states without external intervention when a transient fault or bad initialization occurs. Recently, there has been a surge of efforts in designing techniques for automated synthesis of self-stabilizing algorithms that are correct by construction. Most of these techniques, however, are not parameterized, meaning that they can only synthesize a solution for a fixed and predetermined number of processes. In this paper, we report a breakthrough in parameterized synthesis of self-stabilizing algorithms in symmetric networks, including ring, line, mesh, and torus. First, we develop cutoffs that guarantee (1) closure in legitimate states, and (2) deadlock-freedom outside the legitimate states. We also develop a sufficient condition for convergence in self-stabilizing systems. Since some of our cutoffs grow with the size of the local state space of processes, scalability of the synthesis procedure is still a problem. We address this problem by introducing a novel SMT-based technique for counterexample-guided synthesis of self-stabilizing algorithms in symmetric networks. We have fully implemented our technique and successfully synthesized solutions to maximal matching, three coloring, and maximal independent set problems for ring and line topologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of methods have been proposed for the response-time analysis (RTA) of controller area networks (CANs), which are the industry standard for in-vehicle network protocols. However, most of these methods are unsuitable for analyzing nonperiodically transmitted messages because they assume a constant transmission period for each message. Moreover, the calculated evaluation criteria are limited and comprise many over-pessimistic estimations, such as the worst-case response time (WCRT). To tackle these problems, this paper proposes an RTA method for CANs with randomly occurring messages, which replaces the constant transmission period with the average number of transmission instances per unit time. This approach finds the approximate probability distribution of the response time to any message in a CAN, providing a more general measure than the WCRT. To this end, a mathematical model based on M/G/1 queueing theory is developed. The model accurately emulates the behavior of nonperiodic CAN messages and enables RTA with minimal pessimistic estimations. When tested against the benchmarks, the proposed method accurately obtained response time distributions within several seconds to several tens of seconds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software Defined Networks (SDN) has been attracting researchers, scientist, and technology experts from both academia and industry to enhance the current ICT stakes and networking paradigm. The beauty of SDN is the division of Control and Data planes and make it easy for the engineers to modify the networking protocols without visiting onsite devices. Similarly, smart cities concept has been coined recently, where a plethora of smart devices will be connected and providing tons of services to the citizens, officials, and governmental departments. The Internet of Things (IoT) plays a vital role in guaranteeing such services. Few efforts have been made to merge SDN and IoT with the sole purpose of efficient Data retrieval and achieve remotely configurable networks. In this paper, we explicitly define the Internet of Software Defined Things architecture and bring it to Smart Cities as a use-case. Our 3-tier architecture consists of Data Collection, Data Management, and Application levels that are further connected via two intermediate levels working on SDN principles. Followed by the potentials of SDN and IoT for Smart Cities, we evaluated our proposed architecture using Spark and GraphX with Hadoop Ecosystem and the results shows that efficient transfer of Data over SDN for real-time processing is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nodes in a wireless sensor network are normally constrained by hardware and environmental conditions and face challenges of reduced computing capabilities and system security vulnerabilities. This fact calls for special requirements for network protocol design, security assessment models, and energy-efficient algorithms. Data aggregation is an effective energy conservation technique, which removes redundant information from the data aggregated from neighbor sensor nodes. How to further improve the effectiveness of data aggregation plays an important role in improving data collection accuracy and reducing the overall network energy consumption. Unfortunately, sensor nodes are normally deployed in an open environment and thus are subject to various attacks conducted by adversaries. Consequently, data aggregation brings new challenges to wireless sensor network security. In this article, we propose a novel secure data aggregation solution based on autoregressive integrated moving average model, a time series analysis technique, to prevent private data from being learned by adversaries. We leverage the autoregressive integrated moving average model to predict the data volume in sensor nodes, and update and synchronize the model as needed. The experimental results demonstrate that our model provides accurate predictions and that, compared with competing methods, our solution achieves better security, lower computation and communication costs, and better flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the performance of the cooperative cognitive radio network with the amplify-and-forward protocol is studied when the relay uses a nonlinear power amplifier (NLPA). Furthermore, taking the pulse shaping filter for the data signal into account, the power of the adjacent channel interference (ACI) to the primary users (PUs) caused by the spectral regrowth of the relay output signal is analytically calculated. Moreover, two compensation techniques are proposed which are implemented at the destination receiver to deal with the in-band nonlinear interference. The first technique is based on the calculation of the distorted signal constellation to enhance the performance of the demodulator. The second technique is feedforward compensation at the receiver. The bit error rate (BER) expressions for both techniques are presented. The ACI resulting from the spectral regrowth due to the relay NLPA is investigated by the simulation and numerical studies, and then, the BER performance degradation at the destination node and the performance improvement resulting from the proposed compensation methods are evaluated. Since the ACI confines the transmit power due to the interference power constraint of the PU, the achievable BER of the secondary user (SU) is studied. The simulation results show that the feedforward compensation technique has better BER performance than the modified constellation based approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the interest and attention that the Blockchain and the Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) have recently demanded, the technology is advancing at a very high rate. With investors and applications in a wide variety of fields, a lot of funding and efforts are being driven into bringing the technology to everyday use. The community and companies are coming up with new ways to collaborate, which makes the blockchain ecosystem evolve at full tilt. Consequently, this paper's aim is to review the academic and grey literature and to provide readers with information about the evolution, benefits and challenges of the Public Distributed Ledger Technologies and to discuss the latest solutions, which are being developed for bringing decentralization closer to the mainstream. The paper reviews the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structured distributed ledgers with focus on the Hedera Hashgraph, a novelty DLT bringing a unique consensus algorithm with new use-cases enabled by new cryptoeconomic mechanisms, as well as vital services, such as Solidity smart contracts and distributed file storage. Then, we are going to explore second-layer network protocols, a major topic for solving scalability issues and for decentralizing cryptocurrency exchanges. The article tries also to identify the particularities of these technologies and how they bring specific answers to the blockchain trilemma, consisting in three themes - scalability, interoperability and sustainability. [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]

Nodes in original S-MAC protocol just can visit the channel in the scheduling and listening stage. The working schema may result in data latency and high conflict. To solve those above problems, we split scheduling duty into multiple micro-duties. By using different micro-dispersed contention channel, the sensor nodes reduce the collision probability of the data. Aiming at detecting the fixed duty cycle in S-MAC protocol, on the basis of the micro-duty and buffer queue length, this paper presents an adaptive duty cycle and back-off algorithm. While using different back-off algorithm with different duty cycles, sensor node Fast-Binary Exponential Backoff and Conflict-Avoid-Binary exponential Backoff algorithm separated are applied to reduce data latency further reduce the conflict probability. Combining both of the improvements, we propose a modified S-MAC protocol. Comparing the performance of S-MAC protocol and Division-Multiple Access-Media Access Control (MDA-SMAC) protocol on the NS-2 simulation platform, the results show that MDA-SMAC protocol performs better in terms of energy consumption, latency, and effective throughput than S-MAC protocol [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the design of media access control (MAC) mechanism in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs), due to the propagation characteristic of low-speed underwater acoustic signals, it is necessary to solve the spatial–temporal uncertainty problem. In order to avoid the multi-user access conflict in underwater networks, reduce the energy cost and improve the throughput and fairness across the network, a dynamic channel negotiation MAC mechanism based on spatial–temporal mapping of receiving queue (DCN-MAC) was proposed. DCN-MAC uses a duty cycle mechanism and implements a network management based on dynamic single node wake-up. The awakening node collects the request to send (RTS) and network status information in the network to solve the problem of space-temporal uncertainty and the highly dynamic needs of network access nodes and access services. The simulation results show that in different network scenarios, especially in those featuring high density and heavy network load, compared with the traditional underwater acoustic network MAC protocols, this protocol can effectively improve the network throughput and reduce the packet loss probability caused by multi-node conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because the simple preview tracking method cannot meet the requirements of UAV dynamic path tracking, a path tracking control system based on adaptive preview is designed. Firstly, the image information collected by the camera is sent through the monitoring module of the system, and the road information, such as obstacles is judged according to the TCP network communication protocol. Then, the corresponding operation instructions are sent to the bottom control module according to the monitoring information, and the image information collected by the camera is sent to the sensor through the monitoring module to build the line to judge the UAV kinematics Sex tracking error model. Finally, the future driving behavior of UAV is analyzed, and the adaptive preview time model is constructed to complete the trajectory tracking of UAV. Experiments show that the system is correct, adaptive preview has obvious advantages, and can accurately control the vehicle tracking the preset path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coherent communications aim to support higher data rates and extended connectivity at lower power consumption compared with traditional point-to-point transmissions. The typical setting of coherent communication schemes is based on a single data stream with multiple transmitters and a single receiver. This paper studies the case of multiple concurrent data streams, each with multiple transmitters and multiple receivers, in self-organizing wireless networks. A distributed optimization solution based on joint network formation and beamforming is developed for coherent group communications in a network of nodes that need to communicate over long distances. This solution significantly improves the power gain for a single data stream and the signal-to-interference-ratio for multiple data streams compared to point-to-point communications. These gains are in turn translated to improvements in communication range, power efficiency, reliability, and throughput. In this multi-layer network optimization solution, nodes coordinate with each other in a distributed manner to form transmitter and receiver groups, and communicate with each other coherently over long distances. The coherent beamforming protocol is optimized for given transmitter and receiver groups, whereas the network formation protocol is optimized to determine these groups. By using single-antenna communication nodes, the proposed optimization solution provides a major gain in network communications and outperforms other benchmark combinations of beamforming and network formation protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the problem of video transmission in an IP network. The authors consider the ability of using the most popular video codecs that use both the MPEG2 Transport Stream and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (DASH). The main emphasis was given to ensuring the quality of service and quality assessment methods, taking into account not only the service- or network provider's point of view but also the end user's perspective. Two quality assessment approaches were presented, i.e. objective and subjective methods. The authors presented the results of the quality evaluation for H.264/MPEG-4, H.265/HEVC and VP9 codecs. The objective measurements, proved by statistical analysis of user opinion scores, confirmed the ability of using H.265 and VP9 codecs in both real time and streaming transmissions, while the quality of video streaming over HTTP with the H.264 codec proved inadequate. The authors also presented a connection between the dynamics of network bandwidth changing and MPEG-DASH mechanism operation and their influence on the quality experienced by users [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) applications makes the existing network structure insufficient because it is split by multiple non-cooperative operators, does not scale with the future development of IoT, and calls for novel networking concepts and protocols. The need for multi-operator IoT paradigms poses some unprecedented challenges, including trust considerations. To enable a multi-operator network without shared authentication, we propose a trustworthy grant-free IoT access protocol named Hash Access by leveraging a blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) architecture. B-RAN re-organizes multiple individual radio access networks into a joint multi-operator network based on a blockchain. B-RAN can establish trust among initially trustless operators and efficiently utilize resources across networks, matching and creating values for multiple participants. Furthermore, to mitigate the loss of network efficiency caused by selfish behavior among untrustworthy IoT devices, the proposed protocol can induce IoT devices to follow an access rule and control their data traffic. The proposed framework unifies the IoT access and the underlying B-RAN to reduce confirmation delays in traditional blockchains significantly. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance edge for the B-RAN-enabled Hash Access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scarcity of clean water resources around the globe has generated a need for their optimum utilization. Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, based on the application-specific sensors' data acquisition and intelligent processing, are bridging the gaps between the cyber and physical worlds. IoT based smart irrigation management systems can help in achieving optimum waterresource utilization in the precision farming landscape. This paper presents an open-source technology-based smart system to predict the irrigation requirements of a field using the sensing of ground parameters like soil moisture, soil temperature, and environmental conditions along with the weather forecast data from the Internet. The sensing nodes, involved in the ground and environmental sensing, consider soil moisture, air temperature, and relative humidity of the crop field. This mainly focused on wastage of water, which is a major concern of the modern era. It is also time-saving, allows a user to monitor environmental data for agriculture using a web browser and Email, cost-effectiveness, environmental protection, low maintenance and operating cost and efficient irrigation service. The proposed system is made up of two parts: hardware and software. The hardware consists of a Base Station Unit (BSU) and several Terminal Nodes (TNs). The software is made up of the programming of the Wi-Fi network and the system protocol. In this paper, an MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transportation) broker was built on the BSU and TU board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current scenario, around 35 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices is connected to the internet. By 2025, it is predicted that the number will grow between 80 and 120 billion devices connected to the internet, supporting to generate 180 trillion gigabytes of new sensor data that year. The IoT sensor data is generated from various heterogeneous devices, communication protocols, and data formats that are enormous in nature. This huge amount of sensor data is unable to acquire and analyze manually. This is a significant problem for IoT application developers to make the integration of IoT sensor data automatically. However, the large amount of data has led to the inadequacy of the manual data acquisition and stressed the urgency into the research of IoT based frameworks in automatic. In this paper, we have proposed a framework for IoT sensor data acquisition and analysis (FSDAA). The FSDAA has been implemented on the ThingSpeak IoT Cloud platform for data analysis and visualizations, and compared with the state of the art schemes. Finally, the results show that the proposed FSDAA is efficient in terms of Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F-measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new random channel access framework, named as zigzag-division multiple access (ZDMA), is proposed for wireless networks with long and heterogeneous propagation delays to achieve system throughput significantly larger than 1. The key idea is to allow simultaneous transmissions at the transmitters and employ zigzag decoding at the receiver. After studying the zigzag decoding, we present three new random access protocols. Extensive numerical studies show that incorporating ZDMA in existing slotted Aloha and tree splitting protocols can significantly increase system throughput. The third protocol of greedy scheduling with ZDMA achieves the highest throughput performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial bee colony or ABC is an interesting meta-heuristic algorithm designed to solve various continuous optimization problems. However, it cannot be directly applied to solve discrete problems such as clustering of sensor nodes in the wireless sensor networks (WSNs). For this purpose, in this paper, we present a chaotic discrete version of the ABC algorithm, denoted as chaotic discrete ABC (CDABC). By using the CDABC algorithm, we propose a novel clustering protocol that can be used to organize WSNs into multiple levels of clusters to reduce their energy consumption. The main objective of this protocol is to improve WSN's lifetime by selecting appropriate nodes as cluster heads in each clustering level and reducing the energy costs of the inter-cluster and intra-cluster communications. Extensive simulations results validate the effectiveness of the proposed CDABC-based multi-level clustering protocol in improving the network lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A natural basis for the detection of a wireless random reactive jammer (RRJ) is the perceived violation by the detector [typically located at the access point (AP)] of the carrier sensing protocol underpinning many wireless random access protocols (e.g., Wi-Fi). Specifically, when the wireless medium is perceived by a station to be busy, a carrier sensing compliant station will avoid transmission, while an RRJ station will often initiate transmission. However, hidden terminals (HTs), i.e., activity detected by the AP but not by the sensing station, complicate the use of carrier sensing as the basis for RRJ detection since they provide plausible deniability to a station suspected of being an RRJ. The RRJ has the dual objectives of avoiding detection and effectively disrupting communication, but there is an inherent performance tradeoff between these two objectives. In this paper, we capture the behavior of both the RRJ and the compliant stations via a parsimonious Markov chain model and pose the detection problem using the framework of the Markov chain hypothesis testing. Our analysis yields the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) of the detector and the optimized behavior of the RRJ. While there has been extensive work in the literature on jamming detection, our innovation lies in leveraging carrier sensing as a natural and effective basis for detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a protocol that enables an unlimited number of Wi-Fi users to position themselves within a meter-level accuracy and navigate indoors using time-delay-based Wi-Fi measurements. The proposed protocol, called collaborative time of arrival, is broadcast-based and relies on cooperation between the network sensors that support IEEE 802.11 fine-timing measurements (FTMs) capabilities, which are enabled in state-of-the-art Wi-Fi chipsets. The clients can estimate and track their position by passively listening to timing measurements that are exchanged between the FTM-sensors. The passive nature of the clients’ operation enables them to maintain their privacy by not exposing their presence to the network. This paper outlines the principles of the protocol and the mathematical background of the position estimation algorithms. Both theoretical analysis of the expected positioning accuracy, as well as real-life system performance examples, are provided. The protocol’s performance analysis is based on a publicly available database of real network measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IoT has evolved from an experimental to a backbone technology able to connect myriads of people, things, and services for a large range of businesses. At the same time, the emergence of SDN can ideally handle IoT challenges for elasticity, heterogeneity, and mobility, offering an architecture that abstracts decision making away from the data plane and providing a programmable network facility. Along these lines, we propose MINOS, a multi-protocol SDN platform for IoT that implements service awareness utilizing appropriate SDN abstractions and interfaces for logically centralized network control of diverse and resource-constrained IoT environments, two network protocols that are deployable and configurable on demand, and a GUI that provides a bespoke dashboard and a real-time visualization tool. Due to its components, MINOS enables experimentation with novel network control features and protocols that realize optimized routing over heterogeneous IoT nodes, application of real-time strategies as a response to dynamic network conditions, support of individual protocol configurations per node, and flexibility to accommodate new protocols and control algorithms. Our results demonstrate MINOS as an enabling platform for two protocols, CORAL-SDN and Adaptable-RPL, which, in comparison with the state-of-the-art IoT routing protocol RPL, improve the packet delivery ratio with relatively small control overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving reliable and energy-saving broadcast is the main issue discussed in this study. Firstly, a multi-hop broadcast model is introduced, and the energy consumption and reliability of the network are defined in this study. Then five broadcast-based automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocols (automatic retransmission N times, stop-and-wait end-to-end-ARQ, stop-and-wait hop-by-hop-ARQ, stop-and-wait hop-by-hop oriented implicit ARQ, stop-and-wait hop-by-hop implicit and explicit ARQ) are proposed to realise the reliable transmission. Secondly, based on five protocols, the relationship between the system reliability and the number of retransmissions of the root node is established analytically, and the maximum number of retransmissions is solved under the required system reliability. Thirdly, the energy consumptions of the root node are calculated, and then the analytical expressions of the minimum system energy consumption are obtained separately according to five broadcast-based retransmission mechanisms. Finally, the relationships between the maximum number of retransmissions, energy consumption and reliability, the broadcast probability and feedback probability are discussed in the numerical analysis. Specially, for better energy-saving, the modulation technique should be adopted to choose suitable protocol based on a dynamic hop threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development and universal application of satellite technology, an important way to expand the function of satellites is setting up inter-satellite networks to make them work together. Traditional satellite networking methods generally adopt a fixed time slot allocation method, which is not suitable for small satellite groups with low latency and high throughput requirements. In order to solve this problem, it has been proposed to apply the traditional Wifi protocol in satellite networking. As there are differences between satellite networks and terrestrial networks, it’s necessary to improve the traditional 802.11 protocol. The Media Access Control (MAC) protocol in 802.11 is improved in this paper, which mainly includes the adaptive algorithm of maximum contention window size and the growth algorithm of Contention Window (CW) size. The maximum contention window is adjusted according to the conflict state of the current network, which makes the network accommodate more satellite nodes. The CW growth algorithm improves the traditional Binary Exponential Back-off (BEB) algorithm, where the CW is designed according to the priority of the data frame or the network load. In this way, high-priority satellite accusation information will have higher reliability or tolerate greater network load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advancement of precision medicine requires new methods to coordinate and deliver genetic data from heterogeneous sources to physicians and patients. The eMERGE III Network enrolled >25,000 participants from biobank and prospective cohorts of predominantly healthy individuals for clinical genetic testing to determine clinically actionable findings. The network developed protocols linking together the 11 participant collection sites and 2 clinical genetic testing laboratories. DNA capture panels targeting 109 genes were used for testing of DNA and sample collection, data generation, interpretation, reporting, delivery, and storage were each harmonized. A compliant and secure network enabled ongoing review and reconciliation of clinical interpretations, while maintaining communication and data sharing between clinicians and investigators. A total of 202 individuals had positive diagnostic findings relevant to the indication for testing and 1,294 had additional/secondary findings of medical significance deemed to be returnable, establishing data return rates for other testing endeavors. This study accomplished integration of structured genomic results into multiple electronic health record (EHR) systems, setting the stage for clinical decision support to enable genomic medicine. Further, the established processes enable different sequencing sites to harmonize technical and interpretive aspects of sequencing tests, a critical achievement toward global standardization of genomic testing. The eMERGE protocols and tools are available for widespread dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controller area network (CAN) is the most widely adopted network protocol in vehicle communication systems. The intermittent connection (IC) fault, a random cable connectivity problem with short durations, occurring in the CAN network may result in system performance degradation and system level failures in severe cases. Therefore, the health management of CAN-based networked systems demands effective detection and accurate localization of the IC fault. However, the diagnosis of IC fault in CAN network has not been fully exploited. This paper proposes a novel tree-based IC fault diagnosis method to identify the various IC fault locations in the CAN network. First, the error event pairs for network nodes are defined by analyzing the data-link layer information upon each error. Then, the domains of error event pairs and the information cost of IC faults included in the domains are derived. Finally, a tree-based minimal cost diagnosis algorithm is proposed to find the locations of the IC faults. Laboratory testbed is constructed and the case studies are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that IC fault identified by the proposed method agree well with the case study setups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an analytical model to investigate the performance of periodical broadcast of safety messages in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), regarding a hybrid medium access control (MAC) protocol, called NC-PNC MAC. We first examine the percent of vehicles involved in subcarrier collisions during a random orthogonal frequency-division multiple access scheme, and then theoretically analyze the total number of transmissions and the packet delivery ratio (PDR) during one dissemination period. Based upon the analysis, this paper not only reveals how the subcarrier collision probability influences the PDR performance, but mathematically obtains the maximum PDR. To confirm the results, by adjusting a pivotal parameter of the MAC protocol, the PDR performance for basic safety message broadcast in VANETs can be enhanced by 10% to 30% under the constraint of the delivery latency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporting clinicians in decision making using advanced technologies has been an active research area in biomedical engineering during the past years. Among a wide range of ubiquitous systems, smartphone applications have been increasingly developed in healthcare settings to help clinicians as well as patients. Today, many smartphone applications, from basic data analysis to advanced patient monitoring, are available to clinicians and patients. Such applications are now increasingly integrating into healthcare for clinical decision support, and therefore, concerns around accuracy, stability, and dependency of these applications are rising. In addition, lack of attention to the clinicians' acceptability, as well as the low impact on the medical professionals' decision making, are posing more serious issues on the acceptability of smartphone applications. This article reviews smartphone-based decision support applications, focusing on hospital care settings and their overall impact of these applications on the wider clinical workflow. Additionally, key challenges and barriers of the current ubiquitous device-based healthcare applications are identified. Finally, this article addresses current challenges, future directions, and the adoption of mobile healthcare applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain -- a distributed and public database of transactions -- has become a platform for decentralized applications. Despite its increasing popularity, blockchain technology faces a scalability problem: the throughput does not scale with the increasing network size. Thus, in this paper, we propose a scalable blockchain protocol to solve the scalability problem. The proposed method was designed based on a proof of stake (PoS) consensus protocol and a sharding protocol. Instead of transactions being processed by the whole network, the sharding protocol is employed to divide unconfirmed transactions into transaction shards and to divide the network into network shards. The network shards process the transaction shards in parallel to produce middle blocks. Middle blocks are then combined into a final BLOCK in a timestamp recorded on the blockchain. Experiments were performed in a simulation network consisting of 100 Amazon EC2 instances. The latency of the proposed method was approximately 27 s and the maximum throughput achieved was 36 transactions per second for a network containing 100 nodes. The results of the experiments indicate that the throughput of the proposed protocol increases with the network size. This confirms the scalability of the proposed protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth in the usage of the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in the deployment of diverse networks. However, the multiple networking interfaces and embedded protocols pose a significant challenge to communication compatibility. To tackle this problem and establish a flexible networking framework, we propose the implementation of a general-purpose message parser utilizing a recurrent neural network model with stack memory (RNN-SM). This parser has the ability to extract crucial keywords from the various communication network messages, which are trained on multiple network protocol specifications. During the training phase, the RNN-SM predicts candidate keywords and cross-references them with predefined keywords in an expandable dictionary, thus improving the accuracy of keyword extraction. Additionally, we have introduced the concept of minimum prediction fork level as a hyperparameter to balance the simplicity and flexibility of the RNN-SM. The proposed parser proves to be an effective solution in facilitating smooth communication between multiple devices and also has the added benefit of filtering out noise. The RNN-SM's robust keyword extraction capability holds up even in noisy environments, making it a reliable solution for the compatibility challenges posed by the IoT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The in-vehicle voltage-based intrusion detection system (VIDS) can recognize the identity of the ECUs and detect the physical layer attacks that cannot be detected by the content-based or frequency-based IDS. However, recent research in VIDS has discovered an overlapped voltage attack that can bypass the existing VIDS by generating overlapped voltage signals from two compromised ECUs to distort the fingerprint of the target ECU. The existing solutions need to change the communication protocol or network topology to mitigate the attack, which may involve additional development costs or scheduling mechanisms to coordinate the tasks. In this paper, motivated by not changing the network topology and protocols, we propose an improved VIDS that can efficiently detect the overlapped voltage attack of the in-vehicle CAN network. Before retraining the VIDS classifier model, we add the mechanism for detecting and filtering overlapped signals in the voltage samples by applying the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) autoencoder network to preserve the fingerprint characteristics of the benign waveform in the original samples. First, we establish an LSTM autoencoder model with benign voltages collected in a usual scenario and then apply the automatic thresholding approach to obtain the threshold to separate the overlapped and benign voltages. Next, we filter the overlapped voltages and extract the fingerprint features from the filtered voltage samples to predict the classification of the masquerade CAN packet during the attack. Finally, we evaluate the performance and attack success rate of the proposed VIDS on a CAN bus testbench. The results show that the proposed VIDS can effectively detect the overlapped voltage attack and identify the compromised ECU mimicking the distorted voltage fingerprints with an accuracy of 99.4%. The attack success rate of the proposed VIDS drops to 0 ∼ 18%, which is about 60 ∼ 95% for the existing VIDS. [Display omitted] • We propose an improved in-vehicle VIDS to mitigate the overlapped voltage attack. • We present an LSTM-AE-based examination mechanism to protect VIDS from poisoning. • We evaluate VIDS and prove the effectiveness of overlapped voltage attack detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of the Internet of Things, multi-access edge computing (MEC) is widely used in industrial IoT, intelligent transport systems, and IoT data management. As a decentralized, tamper-proof, multiparty trusted ledger technology, blockchain can enhance MEC security, privacy, and automatic use of resources. However, highly redundant storage and complex consensus prevent the blockchain from being directly deployed to edge computing nodes with limited resources. Unlike existing lightweight schemes, which do not consider liberating transaction data from blocks, this paper proposes a lightweight blockchain ledger protocol for MEC networks. The novelty of this work is that the transaction data in the block is compressed into a succinct proof through the zero-knowledge proof algorithm. To reduce the storage of block data, this paper proposes the proof-of-state-transfer model in which nodes verify the correctness of the global state transfer in the block without transactions. To reduce the communication complexity of consensus, this paper proposes a lightweight consensus protocol, which reduces the communication complexity of block voting and view switching to O (n). This paper develops the prototype system of TinyLedger to experiment and evaluate the performance of the system in terms of storage, verification, throughput, and communication. Experimental results show that compared to Ethereum, TinyLedger reduces storage capacity by 98.16%, communication volume by 74.53%, and block verification time by 87%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There is no collaborative multihop LoRa protocol. Users 'nodes cannot relay each-other's messages. • MauMe assumes users have a home-node with permanent power supply (base-node) acting as a relay for all users. • MauMe is single channel and designed for a controlled flooding of messages. • Messages are acknowledged. Acknowledgments kill lost messages. • Users can activate local Wi-Fi connection to allow sending free emergency SMS using a smartphone. • MauMe has a ready-to-use Github C++ library which allows immediate deployment on ESP32 microcontrollers. • The proposed implementation respects the legal duty-cycle. Low-cost low-power long-distance LoRa radio devices recently made available on the market allow the emerging of a new generation of networking paradigms on the Internet of Things. While the LoRaWan offers an efficient way of connecting LoRa end-point devices to the internet, LoRaWan nodes do not act as peers, but rather as terminals connected to gateways. As such, the current state of the art does not offer a public protocol for easily taking advantage of the fact that individuals and professionals wishing to aggregate data using LoRa devices are likely to run each a "base-node" on a continuous basis. Such permanently-powered base-nodes could potentially offer an increased cumulated area coverage to other nodes if they would behave as relays. In the present study, an Epidemic Delay Tolerant Network messaging protocol is proposed, which allows multi-hops between peer LoRa relay-nodes through a raw-LoRa controlled-flooding approach. This protocol has been implemented on low-cost LoRa-chip-equipped microcontrollers in the form of an open-source library acting as a network transport-layer. The design analysis concluded that MauMe is better suited for networks with reduced connectivity (≤ 9), and that a 4-connectivity redundant network could allow each user to send several tens of messages several tens of hops away. The proposed approach was tested on three different LoRa network topologies, and the totality of the packets and acknowledgments reached their destination. Furthermore, the network's activity ceased after delivery, confirming the ability of the protocol to return the network to rest after the flooding. The proposed library also offers to users a free emergency-messaging system implemented as an http server embedded in each node and accessible via Wi-fi. End-users can readily use our solution to easily deploy a network of sensors at a much lower cost than when using multiple gateways. The MauMe protocol is a first step towards the creation of collaborative and application-friendly extended-range LoRa-peers networks, and is intended for use in remote regions with scattered housings such as in the islands and atolls of Polynesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of collaborative applications in which several individuals interact to solve a problem is an important strategy both in educational settings as well as professional environments. Virtual Reality (VR) technology, in particular, has acquired a predominant role in many industries. However, as the level of immersion and realism of the VR experience increases, so does the demand for computational resources, as rendering processes become increasingly intensive and can negatively affect other communication processes that are critical in collaborative environments. In this paper, we present a software framework based on multi-agent systems that enables the separation of rendering processes from internal data management tasks and communication processes between users, which are prevalent in collaborative virtual reality applications. The results of our validation studies show that, compared to other techniques based on protocol or network enhancements, the proposed architecture can significantly improve collaborative processes in general, and virtual reality-based applications in particular. • A multi-agent paradigm is proposed for the development of collaborative VR-based applications. • The multi-agent architecture enables separating data management and communication tasks from rendering tasks. • The proposed paradigm demonstrates significant improvements in terms of computational cost in collaborative applications. • The use of an agent-based architecture enables the scalability of the platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liang, Z., 2019. Design of automatic matching system for ocean-going cargo in international logistics. In: Guido-Aldana, P.A. and Mulahasan, S. (eds.), Advances in Water Resources and Exploration. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 93, pp. 1105–1110. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. To realize the automatic matching and automatic dispatching of ocean-going cargo in international logistics, a design scheme of automatic matching system for ocean-going cargo in international logistics based on fuzzy scheduling and wireless sensor communication networking technology is proposed. The automatic matching model of ocean-going cargo in international logistics is constructed, and the MVB bus controller is used to schedule the automatic matching of ocean-going cargo in international logistics. Based on PID fuzzy neural network control, the automatic matching dispatching control model of ocean-going cargo in international logistics is constructed. According to the IEC61375 protocol, the wireless sensor communication network design for the automatic matching of ocean-going cargo in international logistics is carried out. According to the results of auto-correlation feature detection, fuzzy scheduling and optimal control of ocean-going cargo auto-matching in international logistics are carried out by extracting the associated features of ocean-going cargo auto-matching in international logistics. In the application layer, the real-time transport protocol is used for automatic scheduling of ocean-going cargo in international logistics. Based on DSP and RAM as the core processors, the hardware development and design of the automatic matching system for ocean-going cargo in international logistics is carried out. The test results show that the automation level of automatic matching device scheduling for ocean-going cargo in international logistics is high, and the throughput performance of scheduling process is better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the tremendous energy consumption growth with ever-increasing connected devices, alternative wireless information and power transfer techniques are important not only for theoretical research but also for saving operational costs and for a sustainable growth of wireless communications. In this paper, we investigate the multi-source in decode-and-forward cooperative networks with the power splitting protocol based full-duplex energy harvesting relaying network over a Rayleigh fading channel. In this system model, the multi-source and the destination communicate with each other by both the direct link and an intermediate helping relay. First, we investigate source selection for the best system performance. Then, the closed-form expression of the outage probability and the symbol error ratio are derived. Finally, the Monte Carlo simulation is used for validating the analytical expressions in connection with all main possible system parameters. The research results show that the analytical and simulation results matched well with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The packet transmission among sensor nodes mainly focuses on clock synchronization. This paper proposes a protocol for efficient clock synchronization in energy based approaches to overcome the clock synchronization invariances and communication overheads. Clustering technique helps to design the sensor network architectures and broadcast the sensor nodes. The existing Mobility Zonal Based Stable Election Protocol (Mob-ZSEP) protocol identifies best path using clustering approach. The selected best path using Mob-ZSEP routing protocol will be utilized by proposed clock synchronization protocols. This research paper proposes two novel protocols: Energy based Proportional Integral and Least Common Multiple (EPILCM) and Weighted based Least Common Multiple (WLCM). EPILCM protocol hybrids two methods such as Energy based Proportional Integral (EPI) and Energy based Least Common Multiple (ELCM). The proposed EPILCM protocol is used for clock synchronization using energy based approach which reduces energy consumption, synchronization error, propagation delay, clock inaccuracy and communication overhead. WLCM protocol performs transmission based on the weight of the packet in sensor networks. The EPILCM, WLCM protocols are compared and the simulation results shows that EPILCM protocol outperforms WLCM protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has revolutionized the field of smart applications. In order to improve the performance of WSNs, refinement of clustering and routing protocols can make a vast difference. Existing classical and evolutionary optimization technique-based protocols have high computational complexity since clustering and routing problems are solved separately. Moreover, these protocols suffer from hot-spot problem due to uneven formation of clusters. In this paper, we propose a multi-level clustering protocol (MLCP) for energy-efficient data gathering in large-scale WSNs. Additionally, a hierarchical clustering architecture is designed in MLCP to jointly solve the problems of clustering and routing. Further, for the purpose of cluster head selection, a hybrid dragonfly algorithm-based particle swarm optimization technique is proposed which combines the exploration and exploitation capabilities of dragonfly algorithm and particle swarm optimization, respectively. MLCP considers intra-cluster distance, node degree and inter-cluster distance for the formation of scalable, load-balanced and energy-efficient clusters. To demonstrate the full potential of MLCP, network simulations have been carried out in diverse network conditions. MLCP has shown up to 90% increase in the network lifetime and an improvement of 19.36% in conservation of energy in comparison with the competent protocols. The comparison of obtained results with state-of-the-art clustering protocols clearly establishes the superiority of MLCP in achieving load-balanced, scalable and energy-efficient clustering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending an Internet subnet by connecting resource-constrained nodes (e.g., embedded sensors and actuators) over multiple wireless hops is necessary to support the future Internet of Things (IoT). RPL, the IPv6 routing standard for low-power and lossy networks, tried to achieve this goal but has not seen wide adoption in practice. As an alternative, Thread is a recently standardized low-power network protocol for IoT, driven by the Thread group, an industry consortium led by Google/Nest. We provide a comparative analysis of the technical aspects of RPL and Thread based on their specifications, explaining why using Thread, as opposed to RPL, may make sense for the future Internet. Specifically, the fundamental differences between RPL and Thread are their respective scopes and multihop network architectures, which result in Thread's unique design and advantages over RPL. Lastly, we evaluate Thread in an indoor multihop wireless testbed using OpenThread, an official open source implementation of Thread. This work serves as the first analysis of the Thread protocol in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a new vision of joint computation and communication resource management that goes beyond the end-to-end and client-server model of the current Internet. Enabled by a growing trend toward embedding processing and networking capabilities into "smart" network nodes and devices, for example, smartphones, watches, appliances, and automobiles, Dispersed Computing describes a new resource-centric architecture that leverages the diversity of networked computation points within the network, and the heterogeneity of network links and protocol stacks that connect them. We describe this new, resource-centric architecture as an evolution of both fog/edge networking and active networks. We illustrate the fundamental principles and the advantages over the current Internet architecture, and highlight several commercial use cases enabled by a dispersed computing architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with traditional radio frequency identification (RFID), computational RFID (CRFID) tag has more powerful computing capability, but it shows poor performance when it follows EPC Class-1 Generation-2 protocol especially transmitting large amounts of data. In fact, the operation of the CRFID tag entirely depends on the state of energy. For this point, this study proposes an optimised protocol called LILAC. LILAC allows tags to select the communication time slot according to their current voltage value measured by using an analogue-to-digital converter rather than randomly selecting, the authors proposed a more reasonable time slot mapping algorithm for LILAC that increases the success rate of tag responding. In addition, they design a data transmission format that can be retransmitted to improve the uplink throughput. Finally, they implemented LILAC on a CRFID platform and practically measured several parameters to compare with the existing well-known protocol. The results of experiments show that LILAC increases the maximum communication distance by more than half in the access phase and doubles the goodput of the backscatter link in both the inventory and access phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a retrial queueing model for random access protocols arising in local area networks such as carrier sense multiple access networks. In our model, one channel is shared among multiple nodes. Each node accesses the channel according to a Poison process and the holding time of the channel is exponentially distributed. Blocked users join the orbit and retry to access again after an exponentially distributed time depending on the number of retrials so far. As the model under study is not amenable for exact analysis, we focus on its performance in the light traffic regime. In particular, we describe a fast algorithm for calculating the terms in the Maclaurin series expansion of various performance measures, the arrival rate being the independent parameter of the expansion. We illustrate our approach by various numerical examples and verify the accuracy of the light traffic approximation by means of simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UV absorption is widely used for characterizing proteins structures. The mapping of UV spectra to atomic structure of proteins relies on expensive theoretical simulations, circumventing the heavy computational cost which involves repeated quantummechanical simulations of excited-state properties of many fluctuating protein geometries, which has been a long-time challenge. Here we show that a neural network machine-learning technique can predict electronic absorption spectra of N-methylacetamide (NMA), which is a widely used model system for the peptide bond. Using ground-state geometric parameters and charge information as descriptors, we employed a neural network to predict transition energies, ground-state, and transition dipole moments of many molecular-dynamics conformations at different temperatures, in agreement with time-dependent density-functional theory calculations. The neural network simulations are nearly 3,000× faster than comparable quantum calculations. Machine learning should provide a cost-effective tool for simulating optical properties of proteins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications induces the need for easy integration of third-party peripherals, which is restricted in present IoT devices. In this paper, we present a novel plug-and-play (PnP) solution for the above stated problem. The proposed PnP solution, named SensPnP, is the combination of embedded hardware and firmware that has the capability of integrating third-party embedded sensors with the IoT devices without any prior information about the sensors and the Internet. We present an architecture of a PnP-enabled IoT device, which supports heterogeneous embedded peripheral communication protocols. A novel embedded protocol detection approach for enabling seamless integration of sensor with IoT device is proposed. To enable sensor communication, we propose an algorithm for automatic driver management of the connected sensor with an IoT device. This is achieved through a low-cost and low power switching and identification hardware with a light-weight identification and driver management firmware stack. To show the effectiveness of the proposed solution, we practically implemented a prototype in a real test-bed. The analysis of the PnP time, protocol identification time, the memory footprint, lifetime, and overall cost of the proposed PnP solution under different operating conditions establishes superiority of its circuitry and firmware. Experimental results show that SensPnP requires minimal memory footprint, reduced energy consumption, and reduced PnP time compared to the existing solutions. Additionally, the overall cost analysis shows that the cost of SensPnP is noticeably less compared to existing solutions. Thus, the cost-efficiency of SensPnP makes it more acceptable to the consumers when compared with existing solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To accommodate the proliferation of heterogeneous network models and protocols, the use of semantic technologies to enable an abstract treatment of networks is proposed. Network adapters are employed to lift network specific data into a semantic representation. Semantic reasoning integrates the disparate network models and protocols into a common data model by making intelligent inferences from low‐level network and device details. Automatic discovery of new devices, monitoring of device state, and invocation of device actions in a generic fashion that is agnostic of network types is enabled. A prototype system called SNoMAC is described that employs the proposed approach operating over UPnP, TR‐069, and heterogeneous sensors. These sensors are integrated by means of a sensor middleware named SIXTH that augments the capabilities of SNoMAC to allow for intelligent management and configuration of a wide variety of sensor devices. A major benefit of this approach is that the addition of new models, protocols, or sensor types merely involves the development of a new network adapter based on an ontology. Additionally, the semantic representation of the network and associated data allows for a variety of client interfaces to facilitate human input to the management and monitoring of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind energy is one of the most attractive and one of the fastest growing sources of green energy in the world. With the expansion of wind parks, there is a growing need for an efficient coordination of the diverse energy production systems, as well as a tighter coupling between the production and the consumer side of the grid. Current grid operators have unnecessarily high costs due to the lack of an integrated management system toward a diverse set of proprietary network protocols, complex and error prone operation of the networks, as well as rigid security mechanisms. Network softwarization concepts, that is, SDN and NFV, offer great potential for reducing capital and operational expenditures by providing simplified network management and automated control. Recent works have demonstrated the feasibility of achieving stringent industrial-grade quality of service and fine grain security control with SDN and NFV. In this article, we provide an insight into wind park communication network requirements, analyze the technological benefits of the network softwarization, and demonstrate the economic profits in a case study of a typical Northwestern Europe wind park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]