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The increasing availability of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is driving a shift away from traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. Subsequently, the demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Systems (EVCS) is rising, leading to the significant growth of EVCS as public and private charging infrastructure. The cybersecurity-related risks in EVCS have significantly increased due to the growing network of EVCS. In this context, this paper presents a cybersecurity risk analysis of the network of EVCS. Firstly, the recent advancements in the EVCS network, recent EV adaptation trends, and charging use cases are described as a background of the research area. Secondly, cybersecurity aspects in EVCS have been presented considering infrastructure and protocol-centric vulnerabilities with possible cyber-attack scenarios. Thirdly, threats in EVCS have been validated with real-time data-centric analysis of EV charging sessions. The paper also highlights potential open research issues in EV cyber research as new knowledge for domain researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern and new integrated technologies have changed the traditional systems by using more advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence methods, new generation standards, and smart and intelligent devices. The new integrated networks like the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G standards offer various benefits and services. However, these networks have suffered from multiple object detection, localization, and classification issues. Conventional Neural Networks (CNN) and their variants have been adopted for object detection, classification, and localization in IoT networks to create autonomous devices to make decisions and perform tasks without human intervention and helpful to learn in-depth features. Motivated by these facts, this paper investigates existing object detection and recognition techniques by using CNN models used in IoT networks. This paper presents a Conventional Neural Networks for 5G-Enabled Internet of Things Network (CNN-5GIoT) model for moving and static objects in IoT networks after a detailed comparison. The proposed model is evaluated with existing models to check the accuracy of real-time tracking. The proposed model is more efficient for real-time object detection and recognition than conventional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicles are no longer stand-alone mechanical entities due to the advancements in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication-centric Internet of Connected Vehicles (IoV) frameworks. However, the advancement in connected vehicles leads to another serious security threat, online vehicle hijacking, where the steering control of vehicles can be hacked online. The feasibility of traditional security solutions in IoV environments is very limited, considering the intermittent network connectivity to cloud servers and vehicle-centric computing capability constraints. In this context, this paper presents a Blockchain-enabled Security Architecture for a connected vehicular Fog networking Environment (B-SAFE). Firstly, blockchain security and vehicular fog networking are introduced as preliminaries of the framework. Secondly, a three-layer architecture of B-SAFE is presented, focusing on vehicular communication, blockchain at fog nodes, and the cloud as trust and reward management for vehicles. Thirdly, details of the blockchain implementation at fog nodes is presented, along with a flowchart and algorithm. The performance of the evaluation of the proposed framework B-SAFE attests to the benefits in terms of trust, reward points, and threshold calculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploring sensing, computing, and communication capabilities on vehicles, vehicular cyber-physical systems (VCPS) are promising solutions to provide road safety and traffic efficiency in intelligent transportation systems. Due to high mobility and sparse network density, VCPS could be severely affected by intermittent connectivity. In this paper, we propose a trajectory-driven opportunistic routing (TDOR) protocol, which is primarily applied for sparse networks, e.g., delay/disruption tolerant networks (DTNs). With geographic routing protocol designed in DTNs, existing works primarily consider the proximity to destination as a criterion for next-hop selections. Differently, by utilizing GPS information of on-board vehicle navigation system to help with data transmission, TDOR selects the relay node based on the proximity to trajectory. This aims to provide reliable and efficient message delivery, i.e., high delivery ratio and low-transmission overhead. TDOR is more immune to disruptions, due to unfavorable mobility of intermediate nodes. Performance evaluation results show TDOR outperforms well-known opportunistic geographic routing protocols, and achieves much lower routing overhead for comparable delivery ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing popularization of Electric Vehicle (EVs), Electro-mobility (in terms of where to charge EV) has become an increasingly important research problem in smart cities. One of the major concerns is the anxiety of EVs, as drivers may suffer from discomfort due to long charging time. In this paper, we leverage the battery switch technology to provide an even faster charging than plug-in charging service, by cycling switchable (fully recharged) batteries at Charging Stations (CSs). Upon that, a cost-efficient Publish/Subscribe (P/S) system is provisioned, to facilitate the design of distributed charging manner for privacy guarantee. The proposed communication framework utilizes Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)-functioned Road Side Units (RSUs) to bridge, process, and aggregate the information flow between CSs and EVs. We further design an advanced reservation-based charging system, in which the knowledge of EVs' reservations is utilized to predict how likely a CS will be congested. This benefits to a smart transportation planning on where to charge, in order to improve charging comfort. Results show the advantage of our enabling technology comparing to other benchmark solutions, in terms of minimized waiting time for the battery switch (as the benefit for EV drivers), and a higher number of batteries switched (as the benefit for CSs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicular localization has witnessed significant attention due to the growing number of location-based services in vehicular cyber physical systems (VCPS). In vehicular localization, GPS outage is a challenging issue considering the growing urbanization including high rise buildings, multilevel flyovers and bridges. GPS-free and GPS-assisted cooperative localization techniques have been suggested in the literature for GPS outage. Due to the cost of infrastructure in GPS-free techniques, and the absence of location aware neighbors in cooperative techniques, efficient and scalable localization is a challenging task in VCPS. In this context, this paper proposes a geometry-based localization for GPS outage in VCPS (GeoLV). It is a GPS-assisted localization which reduces location-aware neighbor constraint of cooperative localization. GeoLV utilizes mathematical geometry to estimate vehicle location focusing on vehicular dynamics and road trajectory. The static and dynamic relocations are performed to reduce the impact of GPS outage on location-based services. A case study based comparative performance evaluation has been carried out to assess the efficiency and scalability of GeoLV. It is evident from the results that GeoLV handles both shorter and longer GPS outage problem better than the state-of-the-art techniques in VCPS. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Geographic routing is one of the most investigated themes by researchers for reliable and efficient dissemination of information in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). Recently, different Geographic Distance Routing (GEDIR) protocols have been suggested in the literature. These protocols focus on reducing the forwarding region towards destination to select the Next Hop Vehicles (NHV). Most of these protocols suffer from the problem of elevated one-hop link disconnection, high end-to-end delay and low throughput even at normal vehicle speed in high vehicle density environment. This paper proposes a Geographic Distance Routing protocol based on Segment vehicle, Link quality and Degree of connectivity (SLD-GEDIR). The protocol selects a reliable NHV using the criteria segment vehicles, one-hop link quality and degree of connectivity. The proposed protocol has been simulated in NS-2 and its performance has been compared with the state-of-the-art protocols: P-GEDIR, J-GEDIR and V-GEDIR. The empirical results clearly reveal that SLD-GEDIR has lower link disconnection and end-to-end delay, and higher throughput as compared to the state-of-the-art protocols. It should be noted that the performance of the proposed protocol is preserved irrespective of vehicle density and speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-vehicle communication has become an integral part of today's driving environment considering the growing add-ons of sensor-centric communication and computing devices inside a vehicle for a range of purposes including vehicle monitoring, physical wiring reduction, and driving efficiency. However, related literature on cyber security for in-vehicle communication systems is still lacking potential dedicated solutions for in-vehicle cyber risks. Existing solutions are mainly relying on protocol-specific security techniques and lacking an overall security framework for in-vehicle communication. In this context, this paper critically explores the literature on cyber security for in-vehicle communication focusing on technical architecture, methodologies, challenges, and possible solutions. In-vehicle communication network architecture is presented considering key components, interfaces, and related technologies. The protocols for in-vehicle communication have been classified based on their characteristics, and usage type. Security solutions for in-vehicle communication have been critically reviewed considering machine learning, cryptography, and port-centric techniques. A multi-layer secure framework is also developed as a protocol and use case-independent in-vehicle communication solution. Finally, open challenges and future dimensions of research for in-vehicle communication cyber security are highlighted as observations and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a non-localization routing protocol for underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs), namely, the triangle metric based multi-layered routing protocol (TM2RP). The main idea of the proposed TM2RP is to utilize supernodes along with depth information and residual energy to balance the energy consumption between sensors. Moreover, TM2RP is the first multi-layered and multi-metric pressure routing protocol that considers link quality with residual energy to improve the selection of next forwarding nodes with more reliable and energy-efficient links. The aqua-sim package based on the ns-2 simulator was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed TM2RP. The obtained results were compared to other similar methods such as depth based routing (DBR) and multi-layered routing protocol (MRP). Simulation results showed that the proposed protocol (TM2RP) obtained better outcomes in terms of energy consumption, network lifetime, packet delivery ratio, and end-to-end delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric vehicles (EVs) are being introduced by different manufacturers, thanks to their environment-friendly perspective to alleviate CO2 pollution. In this paper, the proposed EV charging management scheme enables pre-empted charging service for heterogeneous EVs (depends on different charging capabilities, brands, etc.). Particularly, the anticipated EVs’ charging reservations information, including their arrival time and expected charging time at charging stations (CSs), are brought for planning CS-selection (where to charge). Along with applying ubiquitous cellular network communication to deliver (delay tolerant) EVs’ charging reservations, we further study the feasibility of applying opportunistic vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication with delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) nature, due primarily to its flexibility and cost-efficiency in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Evaluation results under the realistic Helsinki city scenario show that applying the V2V-based charging reservation is promisingly cost-efficient in terms of communication overhead, while achieving a comparable charging performance to apply cellular network communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) provides solutions to relieves overload cloudlet nodes, reduces service latency during peak times, and saves energy for battery-powered cloudlet nodes by offloading user tasks to a vehicle (vehicular node) by exploiting the under-utilized computation resources of nearby vehicular node. However, the wide deployment of VFC still confronts several critical challenges: lack of energy-latency tradeoff and efficient resource allocation mechanisms. In this paper, we address the challenges and provide an Energy-efficient dynamic Computation Offloading and resources allocation Scheme (ECOS) to minimize energy consumption and service latency. We first formulate the ECOS problem as a joint energy and latency cost minimization problem while satisfying vehicular node mobility and end-to-end latency deadline constraints. We then propose an ECOS scheme with three phases. In the first phase, we propose an overload cloudlet node detection policy based on resource utilization. In the second phase, we propose a computational offloading selection policy to select a task from an overloaded cloudlet node for offloading, which minimizes offloading cost and the risk of overload. Next, we propose a heuristic approach to solve the resource allocation problem between the vehicular node and selected user tasks for energy-latency tradeoff. Extensive simulations have been conducted under realistic highway and synthetic scenarios to examine the ECOS scheme's performance. In comparison, our proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of energy-saving, service latency, and joint energy-latency cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle malfunctions have a direct impact on both human and road safety, making vehicle network security an important and critical challenge. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have grown to be indispensable in recent years for enabling intelligent transport systems, guaranteeing traffic safety, and averting collisions. However, because of numerous types of assaults, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and Denial of Service (DoS), VANETs have significant difficulties. A powerful Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) is required to overcome these security issues. This research presents an innovative method for creating an AI-based NIDS that uses Deep Learning methods. The suggested model specifically incorporates the Self Attention-Based Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (SA-BiLSTM) for classification and the Cascaded Convolution Neural Network (CCNN) for learning high-level features. The Multi-variant Gradient-Based Optimization algorithm (MV-GBO) is applied to improve CCNN and SA-BiLSTM further to enhance the model's performance. Additionally, information gained using MV-GBO-based feature extraction is employed to enhance feature learning. The effectiveness of the proposed model is evaluated on reliable datasets such as KDD-CUP99, ToN-IoT, and VeReMi, which are utilized on the MATLAB platform. The proposed model achieved 99% accuracy on all the datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Todays' Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications majorly depend on either limited neighbouring traffic data or crowd sourced stale traffic data. Enabling big traffic data analytics in ITS environments is a step closer towards utilizing significant traffic patterns and trends for making more precise and intelligent decisions particularly in connected autonomous vehicular environments. Towards this end, this paper presents a Traffic Aware Data Offloading (TRADING) approach for big traffic data centric ITS applications in connected autonomous vehicular environments. Specifically, TRADING balances offloading data traffic among gateways focusing on vehicular traffic and network status in the vicinity of gateways. In addition, TRADING mitigates the effect of gateway advertisement overhead to liberate the transmission channels for traffic big data transmission. The performance of TRADING is comparatively evaluated in a realistic simulation environment by considering gateway access overhead, load distribution among gateways, data offloading delay, and data offloading success ratio. The comparative performance evaluation results show some significant developments towards enabling big traffic data centric ITS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In recent years, various types of applications have emerged from Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) for safety, infotainment, rescue and security purposes. Safety applications have their own strict communication requirements, and they require reliable and timely data communication within networks. Due to a variety of network applications, safety applications have been negatively impacted by communication channel congestion issues. Channel congestion leads to packet loss, delay and unreliability issues, and has a serious impact on vehicular traffic, including road accidents, road jams, and wrong traffic decisions. In addressing these issues, this paper's authors have proposed a Dynamic Congestion Control Scheme (DCCS) as a means of reliable and timely data delivery, in safety applications. The proposed scheme is designed for communication channels, as a means of broadcasting safety messages, and to ensure the reliable and timely delivery of messages to all neighbours in a network. The DCCS scheme is designed for inter-vehicle communication, without fixed infrastructure. Comprehensive simulation is conducted, in order to evaluate the performance of a proposed scheme, and to compare it with other state of the art schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining durable connectivity during data forwarding in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks has witnessed significant attention in the past few decades with the aim of supporting most modern applications of intelligent transportation systems. Various techniques for next hop vehicle selection have been suggested in the literature. Most of these techniques are based on selection of next hop vehicles from fixed forwarding region with two or three metrics including speed, distance and direction, and avoid many other parameters of urban environments. In this context, this paper proposes a Multi-metric Geographic Routing (M-GEDIR) technique for next hop selection. It selects next hop vehicles from dynamic forwarding regions, and considers major parameters of urban environments including, received signal strength, future position of vehicles, and critical area vehicles at the border of transmission range, apart from speed, distance and direction. The performance of M-GEDIR is evaluated carrying out simulations on realistic vehicular traffic environments. In the comparative performance evaluation, analysis of results highlight the benefit of the proposed geographic routing as compared to the state-of-the-art routing protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing in VANETs (CC-V) has been investigated into two major themes of research including vehicular cloud computing (VCC) and vehicle using cloud (VuC). VCC is the realization of autonomous cloud among vehicles to share their abundant resources. VuC is the efficient usage of conventional cloud by on-road vehicles via a reliable Internet connection. Recently, a number of advancements have been made to address the issues and challenges in VCC and VuC. This paper qualitatively reviews CC-V with the emphasis on layered architecture, network component, taxonomy, and future challenges. Specifically, a four-layered architecture for CC-V is proposed including perception, coordination, artificial intelligence and smart application layers. Three network components of CC-V, namely, vehicle, connection, and computation are explored with their cooperative roles. A taxonomy for CC-V is presented considering major themes of research in the area including design of architecture, data dissemination, security, and applications. Related literature on each theme is critically investigated with comparative assessment of recent advances. Finally, some open research challenges are identified as future issues. The challenges are the outcome of the critical and qualitative assessment of the literature on CC-V. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) has witnessed significant attention from both academia and industries in research and development, due to the growing number of applications for wide range of purposes including commercial, scientific, environmental and military. Some of the major applications include pollution monitoring, tactical surveillance, tsunami warnings and offshore exploration. Efficient communication among sensors in UWSNs is a challenging task due to the harsh environments and peculiar characteristics of UWSNs. Therefore, design of routing protocol for efficient communication among sensors and sink is one of the fundamental research themes in UWSNs. In this context, this paper proposes a location-free Reliable and Energy efficient Pressure-Based Routing (RE-PBR) protocol for UWSNs. RE-PBR considers three parameters including link quality, depth and residual energy for balancing energy consumption and reliable data delivery. Specifically, link quality is estimated using triangle metric method. A light weight information acquisition algorithm is developed for efficient knowledge discovery of the network. Multi-metric data forwarding algorithm is designed based on route cost calculation which utilizes residual energy and link quality. Simulations are carried out in NS-2 with Aqua-Sim package to evaluate the performance of RE-PBR. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with the stat-of-the-art techniques: DBR and EEDBR. The comprehensive performance evaluation attests the benefit of RE-PBR as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption, end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Network lifetime maximization has received continuous attention as green computing in wireless sensor networks. Recently, controlled mobility–based green computing has witnessed significant attention from academia and industrial research labs. It is due to the growing number of sensor‐based services in mobility friendly nonhostile environments in our daily life. The intelligent mobility–aided repositioning of sensors is significantly challenging considering the critical constraints including irregular power depletion, static normal sensors, the correlation between sensor position, and coverage and connectivity. In this context, this paper proposes a network lifetime maximization framework based on balanced tree node switching. Specifically, a balanced tree–based network model for wireless sensor networks is designed focusing on energy consumption of sensor nodes in tree‐based networks. The problem of lifetime maximization in tree‐based network is identified considering energy loss rate, path load, and balancing factor. Two node‐shifting algorithms are developed, namely, energy‐based shifting and load‐based shifting for balancing tree‐based network in terms of energy. Analytical and simulation experiment–based comparative performance evaluation attests the benefit of the proposed framework as compared to the state‐of‐the‐art techniques considering a number of energy‐oriented metrics for wireless networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With continually increased attention on electric vehicles (EVs) due to environment impact, public charging stations (CSs) for EVs will become common. However, due to the limited electricity of battery, EV drivers may experience discomfort for long charging waiting time during their journeys. This often happens when a large number of (on-the-move) EVs are planning to charge at the same CS, but it has been heavily overloaded. With this concern, in an EV charging management system, we focus on CS-selection decision making and propose a scheme to manage EVs’ charging plans, to minimize drivers’ trip duration through intermediate charging at CSs. The proposed scheme jointly considers EVs’ anticipated charging reservations (including arrival time and expected charging time) and parking duration at CSs. Furthermore, by tackling mobility uncertainty that EVs may not reach their planned CSs on time (due to traffic jams on the road), a periodical reservation updating mechanism is designed to adjust their charging plans. Results under the Helsinki city scenario with realistic EV and CS characteristics show the advantage of our proposal, in terms of minimized drivers’ trip duration, as well as charging performance at the EV and CS sides. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As one of the key drivers of smart grid, EVs are environment-friendly to alleviate CO2 pollution. Big data analytics could enable the move from Internet of EVs, to optimized EV charging in smart transportation. In this article, we propose a MECbased system, in line with a big data-driven planning strategy, for CS charging. The GC as cloud server further facilitates analytics of big data, from CSs (service providers) and on-the-move EVs (mobile clients), to predict the charging availability of CSs. Mobility-aware MEC servers interact with opportunistically encountered EVs to disseminate CSs' predicted charging availability, collect EVs' driving big data, and implement decentralized computing on data mining and aggregation. The case study shows the benefits of the MEC-based system in terms of communication efficiency (with repeated monitoring of a traffic jam) concerning the long-term popularity of EVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy efficiency is a significant characteristic of battery-run devices such as sensors, RFID and mobile phones. In the present scenario, this is the most prominent requirement that must be served while introducing a communication protocol for an IoT environment. IoT network success and performance enhancement depend heavily on optimization of energy consumption that enhance the lifetime of IoT nodes and the network. In this context, this paper presents a comprehensive review on energy efficiency techniques used in IoT environments. The techniques proposed by researchers have been categorized based on five different layers of the energy architecture of IoT. These five layers are named as sensing, local processing and storage, network/communication, cloud processing and storage, and application. Specifically, the significance of energy efficiency in IoT environments is highlighted. A taxonomy is presented for the classification of related literature on energy efficient techniques in IoT environments. Following the taxonomy, a critical review of literature is performed focusing on major functional models, strengths and weaknesses. Open research challenges related to energy efficiency in IoT are identified as future research directions in the area. The survey should benefit IoT industry practitioners and researchers, in terms of augmenting the understanding of energy efficiency and its IoT-related trends and issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research paper, the spatial distributions of five different services—Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Video Conferencing (VC), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Electronic Mail—are investigated using three different approaches: circular, random, and uniform approaches. The amount of each service varies from one to another. In certain distinct settings, which are collectively referred to as mixed applications, a variety of services are activated and configured at predetermined percentages. These services run simultaneously. Furthermore, this paper has established a new algorithm to assess both the real-time and best-effort services of the various IEEE 802.11 technologies, describing the best networking architecture as either a Basic Service Set (BSS), an Extended Service Set (ESS), or an Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS). Due to this fact, the purpose of our research is to provide the user or client with an analysis that suggests a suitable technology and network configuration without wasting resources on unnecessary technologies or requiring a complete re-setup. In this context, this paper presents a network prioritization framework for enabling smart environments to determine an appropriate WLAN standard or a combination of standards that best supports a specific set of smart network applications in a specified environment. A network QoS modeling technique for smart services has been derived for assessing best-effort HTTP and FTP, and the real-time performance of VoIP and VC services enabled via IEEE 802.11 protocols in order to discover more optimal network architecture. A number of IEEE 802.11 technologies have been ranked by using the proposed network optimization technique with separate case studies for the circular, random, and uniform geographical distributions of smart services. The performance of the proposed framework is validated using a realistic smart environment simulation setting, considering both real-time and best-effort services as case studies with a range of metrics related to smart environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has witnessed significant attentions in research and product development due to the growing number of sensor-based applications in healthcare domain. Design of efficient and effective Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is one of the fundamental research themes in WBAN. Static on-demand slot allocation to patient data is the main approach adopted in the design of MAC protocol in literature, without considering the type of patient data specifically the level of severity on patient data. This leads to the degradation of the performance of MAC protocols considering effectiveness and traffic adjustability in realistic medical environments. In this context, this paper proposes a Traffic Priority-Aware MAC (TraPy-MAC) protocol for WBAN. It classifies patient data into emergency and non-emergency categories based on the severity of patient data. The threshold value aided classification considers a number of parameters including type of sensor, body placement location, and data transmission time for allocating dedicated slots patient data. Emergency data are not required to carry out contention and slots are allocated by giving the due importance to threshold value of vital sign data. The contention for slots is made efficient in case of non-emergency data considering threshold value in slot allocation. Moreover, the slot allocation to emergency and non-emergency data are performed parallel resulting in performance gain in channel assignment. Two algorithms namely, Detection of Severity on Vital Sign data (DSVS), and ETS Slots allocation based on the Severity on Vital Sign (ETS-SVS) are developed for calculating threshold value and resolving the conflicts of channel assignment, respectively. Simulations are performed in ns2 and results are compared with the state-of-the-art MAC techniques. Analysis of results attests the benefit of TraPy-MAC in comparison with the state-of-the-art MAC in channel assignment in realistic medical environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN) is considered a promising technology for collecting valuable data from underwater areas, particularly for aiding military operations and environmental predictions. UWSNs consist of underwater sensor nodes that have limited energy and use acoustics for communication. Routing in underwater sensor nodes is one of the challenging issues in UWSNs because of the need to forward data packets with minimal energy consumption and a high packet delivery ratio. Selecting the next forwarding nodes is one of the key components of routing in UWSNs and has a direct effect on energy consumption and the packet delivery ratio. Therefore, this problem has gained much attention from the research community with the intent of enhancing the performance of UWSNs. This paper qualitatively reviews routing protocols for UWSNs, focusing on the next-hop selection method and its strengths and weaknesses. A taxonomy is presented for reviewing routing protocols under different categories of the classification. A summary of the qualitative investigation is presented highlighting aims, the next-hop selection method, metrics, and priority considerations. A comprehensive investigation is carried out focusing on energy, link quality, void awareness, reliability, and shortest path characteristics. Finally, we discuss potential future research directions in UWSNs for forwarding node selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years, the Internet of things (IoT) has recently gained attention in developing various smart city applications such as smart healthcare, smart supply chain, smart home, smart grid, etc. The existing literature focuses on the smart healthcare system as a public emergency service (PES) to provide timely treatment to the patient. However, little attention is given to a distributed smart fire brigade system as a PES to protect human life and properties from severe fire damage. The traditional PES are developed on a centralised system, which requires high computation and does not ensure timely service fulfilment. Furthermore, these traditional PESs suffer from a lack of trust, transparency, data integrity, and a single point of failure issue. In this context, this paper proposes a Blockchain-Enabled Secure and Trusted (BEST) framework for PES in the smart city environment. The BEST framework focuses on providing a fire brigade service as a PES to the smart home based on IoT device information to protect it from serious fire damage. Further, we used two edge computing servers, an IoT controller and a service controller. The IoT and service controller are used for local storage and to enhance the data processing speed of PES requests and PES fulfilments, respectively. The IoT controller manages an access control list to keep track of registered IoT gateways and their IoT devices, avoiding misguiding the PES department. The service controller utilised the queue model to handle the PES requests based on the minimum service queue length. Further, various smart contracts are designed on the Hyperledger Fabric platform to automatically call a PES either in the presence or absence of the smart-home owner under uncertain environmental conditions. The performance evaluation of the proposed BEST framework indicates the benefits of utilising the distributed environment and the smart contract logic. The various simulation results are evaluated in terms of service queue length, utilisation, actual arrival time, expected arrival time, number of PES departments, number of PES providers, and end-to-end delay. These simulation results show the effectiveness and feasibility of the BEST framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed rapid development and great indignation burgeoning in the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) field. This growth of UAV-related research contributes to several challenges, including inter-communication from vehicle to vehicle, transportation coverage, network information gathering, network interworking effectiveness, etc. Due to ease of usage, UAVs have found novel applications in various areas such as agriculture, defence, security, medicine, and observation for traffic-monitoring applications. This paper presents an innovative drone system by designing and developing a blended-wing-body (BWB)-based configuration for next-generation drone use cases. The proposed method has several benefits, including a very low interference drag, evenly distributed load inside the body, and less radar signature compared to the state-of-the-art configurations. During the entire procedure, a standard design approach was followed to optimise the BWB framework for next-generation use cases by considering the typically associated parameters such as vertical take-off and landing and drag and stability of the BWB. Extensive simulation experiments were performed to carry out a performance analysis of the proposed model in a software-based environment. To further confirm that the model design of the BWB-UAV is fit to execute the targeted missions, the real-time working environments were tested through advanced numerical simulation and focused on avoiding cost and unwanted wastages. To enhance the trustworthiness of this said computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, grid convergence test-based validation was also conducted. Two different grid convergence tests were conducted on the induced velocity of the Version I UAV and equivalent stress of the Version II UAV. Finite element analysis-based computations were involved in estimating structural outcomes. Finally, the mesh quality was obtained as 0.984 out of 1. The proposed model is very cost-effective for performing a different kind of manoeuvring activities with the help of its unique design at reasonable mobility speed and hence can be modelled for high-speed-based complex next-generation use cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An identity management system is essential in any organisation to provide quality services to each authenticated user. The smart healthcare system should use reliable identity management to ensure timely service to authorised users. Traditional healthcare uses a paper-based identity system which is converted into centralised identity management in a smart healthcare system. Centralised identity management has security issues such as denial of service attacks, single-point failure, information breaches of patients, and many privacy issues. Decentralisedidentity management can be a robust solution to these security and privacy issues. We proposed a Self-Sovereign identity management system for the smart healthcare system (SSI-SHS), which manages the identity of each stakeholder, including medical devices or sensors, in a decentralisedmanner in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) Environment. The proposed system gives the user complete control of their data at each point. Further, we analysed the proposed identity management system against Allen and Cameron's identity management guidelines. We also present the performance analysis of SSI as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the continuous advancements in wireless communication in terms of quality of communication and affordability of the technology, the application area of Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) significantly growing particularly in military and disaster management. Considering the sensitivity of the application areas, security in terms of detection of Denial of Service (DoS) and intrusion has become prime concern in research and development in the area. The security systems suggested in the past has state recognition problem where the system is not able to accurately identify the actual state of the network nodes due to the absence of clear definition of states of the nodes. In this context, this paper proposes a framework based on Finite State Machine (FSM) for denial of service and intrusion detection in MANETs. In particular, an Interruption Detection system for Adhoc On-demand Distance Vector (ID-AODV) protocol is presented based on finite state machine. The packet dropping and sequence number attacks are closely investigated and detection systems for both types of attacks are designed. The major functional modules of ID-AODV includes network monitoring system, finite state machine and attack detection model. Simulations are carried out in network simulator NS-2 to evaluate the performance of the proposed framework. A comparative evaluation of the performance is also performed with the state-of-the-art techniques: RIDAN and AODV. The performance evaluations attest the benefits of proposed framework in terms of providing better security for denial of service and intrusion detection attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustering is a promising technique for optimizing energy consumption in sensor-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Uneven distribution of cluster heads (CHs) across the network, repeatedly choosing the same IoT nodes as CHs and identifying cluster heads in the communication range of other CHs are the major problems leading to higher energy consumption in IoT networks. In this paper, using fuzzy logic, bio-inspired chicken swarm optimization (CSO) and a genetic algorithm, an optimal cluster formation is presented as a Hybrid Intelligent Optimization Algorithm (HIOA) to minimize overall energy consumption in an IoT network. In HIOA, the key idea for formation of IoT nodes as clusters depends on finding chromosomes having a minimum value fitness function with relevant network parameters. The fitness function includes minimization of inter- and intra-cluster distance to reduce the interface and minimum energy consumption over communication per round. The hierarchical order classification of CSO utilizes the crossover and mutation operation of the genetic approach to increase the population diversity that ultimately solves the uneven distribution of CHs and turnout to be balanced network load. The proposed HIOA algorithm is simulated over MATLAB2019A and its performance over CSO parameters is analyzed, and it is found that the best fitness value of the proposed algorithm HIOA is obtained though setting up the parameters   p o p s i z e = 60 , number of rooster   N r = 0.3 , number of hen's N h = 0.6 and swarm updating frequency θ = 10 . Further, comparative results proved that HIOA is more effective than traditional bio-inspired algorithms in terms of node death percentage, average residual energy and network lifetime by 12%, 19% and 23%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postquantum cryptography for elevating security against attacks by quantum computers in the Internet of Everything (IoE) is still in its infancy. Most postquantum based cryptosystems have longer keys and signature sizes and require more computations that span several orders of magnitude in energy consumption and computation time, hence the sizes of the keys and signature are considered as another aspect of security by green design. To address these issues, the security solutions should migrate to the advanced and potent methods for protection against quantum attacks and offer energy efficient and faster cryptocomputations. In this context, a novel security framework Lightweight Postquantum ID-based Signature (LPQS) for secure communication in the IoE environment is presented. The proposed LPQS framework incorporates a supersingular isogeny curve to present a digital signature with small key sizes which is quantum-resistant. To reduce the size of the keys, compressed curves are used and the validation of the signature depends on the commutative property of the curves. The unforgeability of LPQS under an adaptively chosen message attack is proved. Security analysis and the experimental validation of LPQS are performed under a realistic software simulation environment to assess its lightweight performance considering embedded nodes. It is evident that the size of keys and the signature of LPQS is smaller than that of existing signature-based postquantum security techniques for IoE. It is robust in the postquantum environment and efficient in terms of energy and computations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerial ad-hoc networks have the potential to enable smart services while maintaining communication between the ground system and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Previous research has focused on enabling aerial data-centric smart services while integrating the benefits of aerial objects such as UAVs in hostile and non-hostile environments. Quality of service (QoS) provisioning in UAV-assisted communication is a challenging research theme in aerial ad-hoc networks environments. Literature on aerial ad hoc networks lacks cooperative service-oriented modeling for distributed network environments, relying on costly static base station-oriented centralized network environments. Towards this end, this paper proposes a quality of service provisioning framework for a UAV-assisted aerial ad hoc network environment (QSPU) focusing on reliable aerial communication. The UAV's aerial mobility and service parameters are modelled considering highly dynamic aerial ad-hoc environments. UAV-centric mobility models are utilized to develop a complete aerial routing framework. A comparative performance evaluation demonstrates the benefits of the proposed aerial communication framework. It is evident that QSPU outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of a number of service-oriented performance metrics in a UAV-assisted aerial ad-hoc network environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charging management for EVs on the move has become an increasingly important research problem in smart cities. Major technical challenges include the selection of charging stations to guide charging plans, and the design of cost-efficient communication infrastructure between the power grid and EVs. In this article, we first present a brief review on state-of-the-art EV charging management schemes. Next, by incorporating battery switch technology to enable fast charging service, a publish/subscribe communication framework is provisioned to support the EV charging service. After that, we develop a fully distributed charging management scheme with consideration of urban travel uncertainties, for example, traffic congestion and drivers' preferences. This would benefit from low privacy sensitivity, as EVs' status information will not be released through management. Results demonstrate a guidance for the provisioning of a P/S communication framework to improve EV drivers' experience, for example, charging waiting time and total trip duration. Also, the benefit of a P/S communication framework is reflected in terms of the communication efficiency. Open research issues in this emerging area are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Heterogeneous vehicular communication on the Internet of connected vehicle (IoV) environment is an emerging research theme toward achieving smart transportation. It is an evolution of the existing vehicular ad hoc network architecture due to the increasingly heterogeneous nature of the various existing networks in road traffic environments that need to be integrated. The existing literature on vehicular communication is lacking in the area of network optimization for heterogeneous network environments. In this context, this paper proposes a heterogeneous network model for IoV and service-oriented network optimization. The network model focuses on three key networking entities: vehicular cloud, heterogeneous communication, and smart use cases as clients. Most traffic-related data–oriented computations are performed at cloud servers for making intelligent decisions. The connection component enables handoff-centric network communication in heterogeneous vehicular environments. The use-case-oriented smart traffic services are implemented as clients for the network model. The model is tested for various service-oriented metrics in heterogeneous vehicular communication environments with the aim of affirming several service benefits. Future challenges and issues in heterogeneous IoV environments are also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, various routingmetrics such as throughput, end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, path duration, and so forth have been used to evaluate the performance of routing protocols in VANETs. Among these routing metrics, path duration is one of the most influential metrics. Highly mobile vehicles cause frequent topology change in vehicular network environment that ultimately affects the path duration. In this paper, we have derived a mathematical model to estimate path duration using border node-based most forward progress within radius (B-MFR), a position based routing protocol. The mathematical model for estimation of path duration consists of probability of finding next-hop node in forwarding region, estimation of expected number of hops, probability distribution of velocity of nodes, and link duration between each intermediate pair of nodes. The analytical results for the path duration estimation model have been obtained using MATLAB. The model for path duration estimation has been simulated in NS2. Each of the analytical results has been verified through respective simulation results. The result analysis clearly reveals that path duration increases with the increase in transmission range and node density and decreases with the increase in the number of hops in the path and velocity of the nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with designing and numerically implementing a V2X (Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure) control system architecture for a platoon of autonomous vehicles. The V2X control architecture integrates the well-known Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) for a platoon of Autonomous Driving Vehicles (ADVs) with Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) Communication. The main aim is to address practical implementation issues of such a system as well as the safety and security concerns for traffic environments. To this end, we first investigated a channel estimation model for V2I communication. We employed the IEEE 802.11p vehicular standard and calculated path loss, Packet Error Rate (PER), Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), and throughput between transmitter and receiver end. Next, we carried out several case studies to evaluate the performance of the proposed control system with respect to its response to: (i) the communication infrastructure; (ii) its sensitivity to an emergency, inter-vehicular gap, and significant perturbation; and (iii) its performance under the loss of communication and changing driving environment. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed control model. The model is collision-free for an infinite length of platoon string on a single lane road-driving environment. It also shows that it can work during a lack of communication, where the platoon vehicles can make their decision with the help of their own sensors. V2X Enabled Intelligent Driver Model (VX-IDM) performance is assessed and compared with the state-of-the-art models considering standard parameter settings and metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, green computing has received significant attention for Internet of Things (IoT) environments due to the growing computing demands under tiny sensor enabled smart services. The related literature on green computing majorly focuses on a cover set approach that works efficiently for target coverage, but it is not applicable in case of area coverage. In this paper, we present a new variant of a cover set approach called a grouping and sponsoring aware IoT framework (GS-IoT) that is suitable for area coverage. We achieve non-overlapping coverage for an entire sensing region employing sectorial sensing. Non-overlapping coverage not only guarantees a sufficiently good coverage in case of large number of sensors deployed randomly, but also maximizes the life span of the whole network with appropriate scheduling of sensors. A deployment model for distribution of sensors is developed to ensure a minimum threshold density of sensors in the sensing region. In particular, a fast converging grouping (FCG) algorithm is developed to group sensors in order to ensure minimal overlapping. A sponsoring aware sectorial coverage (SSC) algorithm is developed to set off redundant sensors and to balance the overall network energy consumption. GS-IoT framework effectively combines both the algorithms for smart services. The simulation experimental results attest to the benefit of the proposed framework as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of various metrics for smart IoT environments including rate of overlapping, response time, coverage, active sensors, and life span of the overall network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new non-stationary (NS) geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) is presented for developing and testing the communication systems of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) applications, which considers the three-dimensional (3D) scattering environments and allows 3D velocity as well. In this paper, the proposed GBSM for NS V2V channels allowed 3D velocity variations and was more suitable for actual V2V communications because it provided smoother transitions between the consecutive channel segments. The time-variant channel coefficient and the channel parameters, i.e., Doppler frequencies, path delay and power, angle of arrival (AoA), and angle of departure (AoD), were analyzed and derived. Likewise, the theoretical statistical properties as the probability density function (PDF), the auto-correlation function (ACF), and Doppler power spectral density (DPSD) were also analyzed and derived under the von Mises–Fisher (VMF) distribution. Finally, the theoretical and measured results were well coordinated alongside the implemented results, which confirmed the feasibility of the introduced model along with the theoretical expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs), disseminating Emergency Messages (EMs) to a maximum number of vehicles with low latency and low packet loss is critical for road safety. However, avoiding the broadcast storm and dealing with large-scale dissemination of EMs in urban VANETs, particularly at intersections, are the challenging tasks. The problems become even more challenging in a dense network. We propose an Effective Emergency Message Dissemination Scheme (EEMDS) for urban VANETs. The scheme is based on our mobility metrics to avoid communication overhead and to maintain a stable cluster structure. Every vehicle takes into account its direction angle and path loss factor for selecting a suitable cluster head. Moreover, we introduce estimated link stability to choose a suitable relay vehicle that reduces the number of rebroadcasts and communication congestion in the network. Simulation results show that EEMDS provides an acceptable end-to-end delay, information coverage, and packet delivery ratio compared to the eminent EM dissemination schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has shown a relatively low case fatality rate in young healthy individuals, with the majority of this group being asymptomatic or having mild symptoms. However, the severity of the disease among the elderly as well as in individuals with underlying health conditions has caused significant mortality rates worldwide. Understanding this variance amongst different sectors of society and modelling this will enable the different levels of risk to be determined to enable strategies to be applied to different groups. Long-established compartmental epidemiological models like SIR and SEIR do not account for the variability encountered in the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 disease across different population groups. The objective of this study is to investigate how a reduction in the exposure of vulnerable individuals to COVID-19 can minimise the number of deaths caused by the disease, using the UK as a case study. To overcome the limitation of long-established compartmental epidemiological models, it is proposed that a modified model, namely SEIR-v, through which the population is separated into two groups regarding their vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2 is applied. This enables the analysis of the spread of the epidemic when different contention measures are applied to different groups in society regarding their vulnerability to the disease. A Monte Carlo simulation (100,000 runs) along the proposed SEIR-v model is used to study the number of deaths which could be avoided as a function of the decrease in the exposure of vulnerable individuals to the disease. The results indicate a large number of deaths could be avoided by a slight realistic decrease in the exposure of vulnerable groups to the disease. The mean values across the simulations indicate 3681 and 7460 lives could be saved when such exposure is reduced by 10% and 20% respectively. From the encouraging results of the modelling a number of mechanisms are proposed to limit the exposure of vulnerable individuals to the disease. One option could be the provision of a wristband to vulnerable people and those without a smartphone and contact-tracing app, filling the gap created by systems relying on smartphone apps only. By combining very dense contact tracing data from smartphone apps and wristband signals with information about infection status and symptoms, vulnerable people can be protected and kept safer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) have witnessed significant R&D attention in both academia and industry due to their growing application domains, such as border security, freight via sea or river, natural petroleum production and the fishing industry. Considering the deep underwater-oriented access constraints, energy-centric communication for the lifetime maximization of tiny sensor nodes in UWSNs is one of the key research themes in this domain. Existing literature on green UWSNs are majorly adapted from the existing techniques in traditional wireless sensor network relying on geolocation and the quality of service-centric underwater relay node selection, without paying much attention to the dynamic underwater network environments. To this end, this paper presents an adapted whale and wolf optimization-based energy and delay-centric green underwater networking framework (W-GUN). It focuses on exploiting dynamic underwater network characteristics by effectively utilizing underwater whale-centric optimization in relay node selection. Firstly, an underwater relay node optimization model is mathematically derived, focusing on underwater whale dynamics for incorporating realistic underwater characteristics in networking. Secondly, the optimization model is used to develop an adapted whale and grey wolf optimization algorithm for selecting optimal and stable relay nodes for centric underwater communication paths. Thirdly, a complete workflow of the W-GUN framework is presented with an optimization flowchart. The comparative performance evaluation attests to the benefits of the proposed framework and is compared to state-of-the-art techniques considering various metrics related to underwater network environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]