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As the applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) expand, reliable communication between UAVs and ground control stations is crucial for successful missions. However, adverse weather conditions caused by atmospheric gases, clouds, fog, rain, and turbulence pose challenges by degrading communication signals. Although, some recent studies have explored the nature of signal attenuation caused by atmospheric weather variations, studies that compare the attenuation from various weather conditions and analyze the effect on available bandwidth are missing. This work aimed to address this research gap by thoroughly investigating the impact of atmospheric weather conditions on the bandwidth available for UAV communications. Quantitative and qualitative performance analyses were performed for various weather conditions using metrics such as attenuation and the bit error rate of the received signals associated with different modulation schemes and frequencies, using a linearly segmented attenuation model. The results indicate that atmospheric gases and clouds/fog affect wireless signal propagation; however, the effect of rain on the propagation distances and operating frequencies considered in this study was the most severe. Based on the influence of power transmission, operating frequency, modulation schemes, distance, and adverse weather conditions on the bit error rate and bandwidth suboptimization, we propose an algorithm to select the maximum operating frequency for reliable UAV link operation.

Precise positioning of sensors is critical for the performance of various applications in the Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks. The efficiency of these networks heavily depends on the precision of sensor node locations. Among various localization approaches, DV-Hop is highly recommended for its simplicity and robustness. However, despite its popularity, DV-Hop suffers from significant accuracy issues, primarily due to its reliance on average hop size for distance estimation. This limitation often results in substantial localization errors, compromising the overall network effectiveness. To address this gap, we developed an enhanced DV-Hop approach that integrates the cuckoo search algorithm (CS). Our solution improves the accuracy of node localization by introducing a normalized average hop size calculation and leveraging the optimization capabilities of CS. This hybrid approach refines the distance estimation process, significantly reducing the errors inherent in traditional DV-Hop. Findings from simulations reveal that the developed approach surpasses the accuracy of both the original DV-Hop and multiple other current localization methods, providing a more precise and reliable localization method for IoT and WSN applications.

The rapid expansion in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) across various sectors, such as surveillance, agriculture, disaster management, and infrastructure inspection, highlights the growing need for robust navigation systems. However, this growth also exposes critical vulnerabilities, particularly in UAV package delivery operations, where intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) poses significant security and safety threats. This paper addresses IEMI attacks targeting inertial measurement units (IMUs) in UAVs, focusing on their susceptibility to medium-power electromagnetic interference. Our approach combines a comprehensive literature review and QuickField simulation with experimental validation using a commercially available 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) IMU sensor. We propose a hardware-based electromagnetic shielding solution using mu-metal to mitigate IEMI’s impact on sensor performance. The study combines experimental testing with simulations to evaluate the shielding effectiveness under controlled conditions. The results of the measurements showed that medium-power IEMI significantly distorted IMU sensor readings, but our proposed shielding method effectively reduces the impact, improving sensor reliability. We demonstrate the mechanisms by which medium-power IEMI disrupts sensor operation, offering insights for future research directions. These findings also highlight the importance of integrating hardware-based shielding solutions to safeguard UAV systems against electromagnetic threats.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) poses a significant challenge in mental healthcare due to difficulties in accurate diagnosis and timely identification. This study explores the potential of machine learning models trained on EEG-based features for depression detection. Six models and six feature selection techniques were compared, highlighting the crucial role of feature selection in enhancing classifier performance. This study investigates the six feature selection methods: Elastic Net, Mutual Information (MI), Chi-Square, Forward Feature Selection with Stochastic Gradient Descent (FFS-SGD), Support Vector Machine-based Recursive Feature Elimination (SVM-RFE), and Minimal-Redundancy-Maximal-Relevance (mRMR). These methods were combined with six diverse classifiers: Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Categorical Boosting (CatBoost), and Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM). The results demonstrate the substantial impact of feature selection on model performance. SVM-RFE with SVM achieved the highest accuracy (93.54%) and F1 score (95.29%), followed by Logistic Regression with an accuracy of 92.86% and F1 score of 94.84%. Elastic Net also delivered strong results, with SVM and Logistic Regression both achieving 90.47% accuracy. Other feature selection methods yielded lower performance, emphasizing the importance of selecting appropriate feature selection and machine learning algorithms. These findings suggest that careful selection and application of feature selection techniques can significantly enhance the accuracy of EEG-based depression detection.

The integration of edge computing with IoT (EC-IoT) systems provides significant improvements in addressing security and privacy challenges in IoT networks. This paper examines the combination of EC-IoT and artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting practical strategies to improve data and network security. The published literature has suggested decentralized and reliable trust measurement mechanisms and security frameworks designed explicitly for IoT-enabled systems. Therefore, this paper reviews the latest attack models threatening EC-IoT systems and their impacts on IoT networks. It also examines AI-based methods to counter these security threats and evaluates their effectiveness in real-world scenarios. Finally, this survey aims to guide future research by stressing the need for scalable, adaptable, and robust security solutions to address evolving threats in EC-IoT environments, focusing on the integration of AI to enhance the privacy, security, and efficiency of IoT systems while tackling the challenges of scalability and resource limitations.

Modern systems and devices, including unmanned aerial systems (UASs), autonomous vehicles, and other unmanned and autonomous systems, commonly rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). Cellular mobile devices rely on GPS for PNT and location-based services. Many of these systems cannot function correctly without GPS; however, GPS signals are susceptible to a wide variety of signal-related disruptions and cyberattacks. GPS threat detection and mitigation have received significant attention recently. There are many surveys and systematic reviews in the literature related to GPS security; however, many existing reviews only briefly discuss GPS security within a larger discussion of cybersecurity. Other reviews focus on niche topics related to GPS security. There are no existing comprehensive reviews of GPS security issues in the literature. This paper fills that gap by providing a comprehensive treatment of GPS security, with an emphasis on UAS applications. This paper provides an overview of the threats to GPS and the state-of-the-art techniques for attack detection and countermeasures. Detection and mitigation approaches are categorized, and the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches are identified. This paper also provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art on alternative positioning and navigation techniques in GPS-disrupted environments, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches. Finally, this paper identifies gaps in existing research and future research directions.

Steel structures are susceptible to corrosion due to their exposure to the environment. Currently used non-destructive techniques require inspector involvement. Inaccessibility of the defective part may lead to unnoticed corrosion, allowing the corrosion to propagate and cause catastrophic structural failure over time. Autonomous corrosion detection is essential for mitigating these problems. This study investigated the effect of the type of encoder–decoder neural network and the training strategy that works the best to automate the segmentation of corroded pixels in visual images. Models using pre-trained DesnseNet121 and EfficientNetB7 backbones yielded 96.78% and 98.5% average pixel-level accuracy, respectively. Deeper EffiecientNetB7 performed the worst, with only 33% true-positive values, which was 58% less than ResNet34 and the original UNet. ResNet 34 successfully classified the corroded pixels, with 2.98% false positives, whereas the original UNet predicted 8.24% of the non-corroded pixels as corroded when tested on a specific set of images exclusive to the investigated training dataset. Deep networks were found to be better for transfer learning than full training, and a smaller dataset could be one of the reasons for performance degradation. Both fully trained conventional UNet and ResNet34 models were tested on some external images of different steel structures with different colors and types of corrosion, with the ResNet 34 backbone outperforming conventional UNet.

The deployment of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, for transmission line inspections, has brought attention to the potential impact of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) on UAV operations. This work describes a mathematical model based on the finite elements method (FEM), designed to examine the electric and magnetic fields produced by extra-high voltage (EHV) conductors. The current study extends the analysis to encompass both electric and magnetic fields and evaluates the safe distances for UAVs operating near 345 kV, 500 kV, and 765 kV transmission lines. The electromagnetic environment around these EHV transmission lines was simulated using electrostatic, magnetostatic, and transient magnetic modules within the QuickField software 6.6. Electric and magnetic profiles were estimated using 2D finite element analysis, including a numerical simulation for phase-to-phase fault EMFs for the above transmission lines. These results were then cross-verified with theoretical calculations at specific intervals and further validated using the EMFACDC analytical method developed by the International Telecommunication Union. This comprehensive assessment concludes that precise distance considerations are necessary to ensure UAV safety during power line inspections, mitigating potential risks from EMF interference.

With the rapid advancements and notable achievements across various application domains, Machine Learning (ML) has become a vital element within the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Among these use cases is IoT security, where numerous systems are deployed to identify or thwart attacks, including intrusion detection systems (IDSs), malware detection systems (MDSs), and device identification systems (DISs). Machine Learning-based (ML-based) IoT security systems can fulfill several security objectives, including detecting attacks, authenticating users before they gain access to the system, and categorizing suspicious activities. Nevertheless, ML faces numerous challenges, such as those resulting from the emergence of adversarial attacks crafted to mislead classifiers. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the body of knowledge about adversarial attacks and defense mechanisms, with a particular focus on three prominent IoT security systems: IDSs, MDSs, and DISs. The paper starts by establishing a taxonomy of adversarial attacks within the context of IoT. Then, various methodologies employed in the generation of adversarial attacks are described and classified within a two-dimensional framework. Additionally, we describe existing countermeasures for enhancing IoT security against adversarial attacks. Finally, we explore the most recent literature on the vulnerability of three ML-based IoT security systems to adversarial attacks.

Recently, the precise location of sensor nodes has emerged as a significant challenge in the realm of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The accurate determination of geographical coordinates for detected events holds pivotal importance in these applications. Despite DV-Hop gaining popularity due to its cost-effectiveness, feasibility, and lack of additional hardware requirements, it remains hindered by a relatively notable localization error. To overcome this limitation, our study introduces three new localization approaches that combine DV-Hop with Chicken Swarm Optimization (CSO). The primary objective is to improve the precision of DV-Hop-based approaches. In this paper, we compare the efficiency of the proposed localization algorithms with other existing approaches, including several algorithms based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), while considering random network topologies. The simulation results validate the efficiency of our proposed algorithms. The proposed HW-DV-HopCSO algorithm achieves a considerable improvement in positioning accuracy compared to those of existing models.

Machine learning techniques have emerged as a transformative force, revolutionizing various application domains, particularly cybersecurity. The development of optimal machine learning applications requires the integration of multiple processes, such as data pre-processing, model selection, and parameter optimization. While existing surveys have shed light on these techniques, they have mainly focused on specific application domains. A notable gap that exists in current studies is the lack of a comprehensive overview of machine learning architecture and its essential phases in the cybersecurity field. To address this gap, this survey provides a holistic review of current studies in machine learning, covering techniques applicable to any domain. Models are classified into four categories: supervised, semi-supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning. Each of these categories and their models are described. In addition, the survey discusses the current progress related to data pre-processing and hyperparameter tuning techniques. Moreover, this survey identifies and reviews the research gaps and key challenges that the cybersecurity field faces. By analyzing these gaps, we propose some promising research directions for the future. Ultimately, this survey aims to serve as a valuable resource for researchers interested in learning about machine learning, providing them with insights to foster innovation and progress across diverse application domains.

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in interest in deepfakes, a fast-developing field at the nexus of artificial intelligence and multimedia. These artificial media creations, made possible by deep learning algorithms, allow for the manipulation and creation of digital content that is extremely realistic and challenging to identify from authentic content. Deepfakes can be used for entertainment, education, and research; however, they pose a range of significant problems across various domains, such as misinformation, political manipulation, propaganda, reputational damage, and fraud. This survey paper provides a general understanding of deepfakes and their creation; it also presents an overview of state-of-the-art detection techniques, existing datasets curated for deepfake research, as well as associated challenges and future research trends. By synthesizing existing knowledge and research, this survey aims to facilitate further advancements in deepfake detection and mitigation strategies, ultimately fostering a safer and more trustworthy digital environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic causes a world catastrophe, but it also creates many research opportunities at the same time. Because of the COVID-19, people try to keep social distances and avoid the "hotspots" as much as possible. However, it is easier said than done since coronavirus is everywhere. This research uses incremental direction searches to find a "best" route to stay away from COVID-19 when traveling. Incremental direction searches are a progressive search, which finds the next changing direction as the subject moves. It begins the searching as soon as the subject starts moving. Intersection-by-intersection, possible directions away from the current path may be found and immediately presented. This immediate feedback allows the searching to take appropriate actions such as selecting a specific direction or terminating the searching. Preliminary experiment results show the proposed method is effective, but many details need to be filled in before it is put to work.

Information technology (IT) is to use computing equipment such as computers and smartphones to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data or information. It may be the most widely used technology nowadays because no other technologies affect our daily lives as the IT does. At the same time, the IT brings a plethora of opportunities like new jobs and challenges such as digital divide with it. People do not want to miss the opportunities and like to well prepare for the challenges, but it is not easy to foresee the opportunities and challenges. However, just like the history repeating itself all the time, the same can be applied to the IT as each IT milestone creates many new opportunities and challenges. This article first reviews the previous IT milestones and their corresponding opportunities and challenges, and then tries to predict the upcoming IT milestone and its opportunities and challenges based on the previous milestones. Therefore, readers can prepare themselves for the opportunities and challenges when the next IT milestone happens.

Smartphones have become extremely popular in these days. People use smartphones to perform their daily activities like making phone calls, sending short messages, connecting with others, and browsing the mobile Internet. Although smartphones are indispensable devices, people are not familiar with how they are made of, how they function, and how capable they could be. It is because smartphones are intrinsically complicated and smartphone computing is related to several separate subjects such as mobile computing, mobile data management, and mobile payment and security. This article tries to fill the gap by giving an insight on smartphones including four themes: (i) smartphone status, which gives the current status of smartphones, (ii) smartphone anatomy, which shows the internal structures of smartphones, (iii) smartphone computing, which introduces smartphone app development, and (iv) current issues of smartphone computing research. Finally, further information for more smartphone-computing research will also be given.

Intrusion Detection Systems are expected to detect and prevent malicious activities in a network, such as a smart grid. However, they are the main systems targeted by cyber-attacks. A number of approaches have been proposed to classify and detect these attacks, including supervised machine learning. However, these models require large labeled datasets for training and testing. Therefore, this paper compares the performance of supervised and unsupervised learning models in detecting cyber-attacks. The benchmark of CICDDOS 2019 was used to train, test, and validate the models. The supervised models are Gaussian Naïve Bayes, Classification and Regression Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, C-Support Vector Machine, Light Gradient Boosting, and Alex Neural Network. The unsupervised models are Principal Component Analysis, K-means, and Variational Autoencoder. The performance comparison is made in terms of accuracy, probability of detection, probability of misdetection, probability of false alarm, processing time, prediction time, training time per sample, and memory size. The results show that the Alex Neural Network model outperforms the other supervised models, while the Variational Autoencoder model has the best results compared to unsupervised models.

GPS spoofing attacks are a severe threat to unmanned aerial vehicles. These attacks manipulate the true state of the unmanned aerial vehicles, potentially misleading the system without raising alarms. Several techniques, including machine learning, have been proposed to detect these attacks. Most of the studies applied machine learning models without identifying the best hyperparameters, using feature selection and importance techniques, and ensuring that the used dataset is unbiased and balanced. However, no current studies have discussed the impact of model parameters and dataset characteristics on the performance of machine learning models; therefore, this paper fills this gap by evaluating the impact of hyperparameters, regularization parameters, dataset size, correlated features, and imbalanced datasets on the performance of six most commonly known machine learning techniques. These models are Classification and Regression Decision Tree, Artificial Neural Network, Random Forest, Logistic Regression, Gaussian Naïve Bayes, and Support Vector Machine. Thirteen features extracted from legitimate and simulated GPS attack signals are used to perform this investigation. The evaluation was performed in terms of four metrics: accuracy, probability of misdetection, probability of false alarm, and probability of detection. The results indicate that hyperparameters, regularization parameters, correlated features, dataset size, and imbalanced datasets adversely affect a machine learning model’s performance. The results also show that the Classification and Regression Decision Tree classifier has an accuracy of 99.99%, a probability of detection of 99.98%, a probability of misdetection of 0.2%, and a probability of false alarm of 1.005%, after removing correlated features and using tuned parameters in a balanced dataset. Random Forest can achieve an accuracy of 99.94%, a probability of detection of 99.6%, a probability of misdetection of 0.4%, and a probability of false alarm of 1.01% in similar conditions.

People used physical meetings and gatherings to collaborate with others in the past. However, this physical collaboration no longer works during a pandemic because people are required to keep social distance, stay away from the crowd, and even work or study at home. A new way of collaboration using mobile and wireless computing, like Zoom, Slack, and Teams, has started to flourish. Mobile and wireless computing does facilitate virtual collaboration without doubt, but it also brings new concerns like security and privacy issues, which do not occur often during physical meetings or gatherings. A secure and privacy-preserved remote environment is essential for the confidential information shared over the virtual platforms because the cloud-based tools have the threat of unauthorized access and data jeopardizing. This article discusses various issues related to using mobile and wireless computing to facilitate virtual collaboration during a pandemic, and how and what technologies are used to preserve user privacy while participating virtual collaboration and make mobile and wireless computing more secure.

Unmanned aerial vehicles are prone to several cyber-attacks, including Global Positioning System spoofing. Several techniques have been proposed for detecting such attacks. However, the recurrence and frequent Global Positioning System spoofing incidents show a need for effective security solutions to protect unmanned aerial vehicles. In this paper, we propose two dynamic selection techniques, Metric Optimized Dynamic selector and Weighted Metric Optimized Dynamic selector, which identify the most effective classifier for the detection of such attacks. We develop a one-stage ensemble feature selection method to identify and discard the correlated and low importance features from the dataset. We implement the proposed techniques using ten machine-learning models and compare their performance in terms of four evaluation metrics: accuracy, probability of detection, probability of false alarm, probability of misdetection, and processing time. The proposed techniques dynamically choose the classifier with the best results for detecting attacks. The results indicate that the proposed dynamic techniques outperform the existing ensemble models with an accuracy of 99.6%, a probability of detection of 98.9%, a probability of false alarm of 1.56%, a probability of misdetection of 1.09%, and a processing time of 1.24 s.

Since the introduction of iPhone in 2007, many location-based services (LBSs) have been created and new LBSs are found every day. This research proposes yet another LBS, which is practical and was not found before to the best of authors' knowledge. The problem is described as follows. It happens all the times while several groups of people are traveling towards a destination, they lose contact from each other on the way. This research tries to have the groups travel as closely as possible until they reach the destination. It uses a method of minimum covering ellipses to find whether the groups are separated by more than a threshold/distance. If they are, the system will find a convenient rendezvous for all groups by using a method of geometric median. After meeting at the rendezvous, the groups reset the service and continue their journey. By using this LBS, travelers do not need to worry about losing connections with others. This method can also be applied to the problem of finding a convenient meeting place for mobile users.

This paper proposes a kind of location-based research, human travel route prediction, which is to predict the track of a subject's future movements. The proposed method works as follows. The mobile user sends his/her current route along with several dummy routes to the server by using a 3D route matrix, which encodes a set of routes. The server restores the routes from the 3D matrix and matches the restored routes to the saved routes. The predicted route is found as the trunk of the tree, which is built by superimposing the matching results. The server then sends the predicted routes back to the user, who will apply the predicted route to a real-world problem such as traffic control and planning. Preliminary experimental results show the proposed method successfully predicts human travel routes based on current and previous routes. User privacy is also rigorously protected by using a simple method of dummy routes.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is an intermediary stage condition between healthy people and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and other dementias. AD is a progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative disorder, which is a significant threat to people, age 65 and older. Although MCI does not always lead to AD, an early diagnosis at the stage of MCI can be very helpful in identifying people who are at risk of AD. Moreover, the early diagnosis of MCI can lead to more effective treatment, or at least, significantly delay the disease’s progress, and can lead to social and financial benefits. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which has become a significant tool for the diagnosis of MCI and AD, can provide neuropsychological data for analyzing the variance in brain structure and function. MCI is divided into early and late MCI (EMCI and LMCI) and sadly, there is no clear differentiation between the brain structure of healthy people and MCI patients, especially in the EMCI stage. This paper aims to use a deep learning approach, which is one of the most powerful branches of machine learning, to discriminate between healthy people and the two types of MCI groups based on MRI results. The convolutional neural network (CNN) with an efficient architecture was used to extract high-quality features from MRIs to classify people into healthy, EMCI, or LMCI groups. The MRIs of 600 individuals used in this study included 200 control normal (CN) people, 200 EMCI patients, and 200 LMCI patients. This study randomly selected 70 percent of the data to train our model and 30 percent for the test set. The results showed the best overall classification between CN and LMCI groups in the sagittal view with an accuracy of 94.54 percent. In addition, 93.96 percent and 93.00 percent accuracy were reached for the pairs of EMCI/LMCI and CN/EMCI, respectively.

The advancements in digital communication technology have made communication between humans more accessible and instant. However, personal and sensitive information may be available online through social networks and online services that lack the security measures to protect this information. Communication systems are vulnerable and can easily be penetrated by malicious users through social engineering attacks. These attacks aim at tricking individuals or enterprises into accomplishing actions that benefit attackers or providing them with sensitive data such as social security number, health records, and passwords. Social engineering is one of the biggest challenges facing network security because it exploits the natural human tendency to trust. This paper provides an in-depth survey about the social engineering attacks, their classifications, detection strategies, and prevention procedures.

Cognitive radio technology has the potential to address the shortage of available radio spectrum by enabling dynamic spectrum access. Since its introduction, researchers have been working on enabling this innovative technology in managing the radio spectrum. As a result, this research field has been progressing at a rapid pace and significant advances have been made. To help researchers stay abreast of these advances, surveys and tutorial papers are strongly needed. Therefore, in this paper, we aimed to provide an in-depth survey on the most recent advances in spectrum sensing, covering its development from its inception to its current state and beyond. In addition, we highlight the efficiency and limitations of both narrowband and wideband spectrum sensing techniques as well as the challenges involved in their implementation. TV white spaces are also discussed in this paper as the first real application of cognitive radio. Last but by no means least, we discuss future research directions. This survey paper was designed in a way to help new researchers in the field to become familiar with the concepts of spectrum sensing, compressive sensing, and machine learning, all of which are the enabling technologies of the future networks, yet to help researchers further improve the efficiently of spectrum sensing.

Cognitive radio technology addresses the problem of spectrum scarcity by allowing secondary users to use the vacant spectrum bands without causing interference to the primary users. However, several attacks could disturb the normal functioning of the cognitive radio network. Primary user emulation attacks are one of the most severe attacks in which a malicious user emulates the primary user signal characteristics to either prevent other legitimate secondary users from accessing the idle channels or causing harmful interference to the primary users. There are several proposed approaches to detect the primary user emulation attackers. However, most of these techniques assume that the primary user location is fixed, which does not make them valid when the primary user is mobile. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on the Kalman filter framework for detecting the primary user emulation attacks with a non-stationary primary user. Several experiments have been conducted and the advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through the simulation results.

Sensing the wideband spectrum is an important process for next-generation wireless communication systems. Spectrum sensing primarily aims at detecting unused spectrum holes over wide frequency bands so that secondary users can use them to meet their requirements in terms of quality-of-service. However, this sensing process requires a great deal of time, which is not acceptable for timely communications. In addition, the sensing measurements are often affected by uncertainty. In this paper, we propose an approach based on Bayesian compressive sensing to speed up the process of sensing and to handle uncertainty. This approach takes only a few measurements using a Toeplitz matrix, recovers the wideband signal from a few measurements using Bayesian compressive sensing via fast Laplace prior, and detects either the presence or absence of the primary user using an autocorrelation-based detection method. The proposed approach was implemented using GNU Radio software and Universal Software Radio Peripheral units and was tested on real-world signals. The results show that the proposed approach speeds up the sensing process by minimizing the number of samples while achieving the same performance as Nyquist-based sensing techniques regarding both the probabilities of detection and false alarm.

Cognitive radio is an intelligent wireless solution that aims to enhance the access to the radio spectrum. In this technology, secondary users sense the radio spectrum, select the best channel among a pool of free channels, and determine the optimal transmission parameters to meet their quality-of-service requirements while maximizing the spectral efficiency. Over the past decade, several channel-ranking mechanisms have been proposed. However, these mechanisms consider only the remaining idle time of the channel and exclude some crucial parameters. This convincingly demonstrates a strong need for a new channel quality-ranking model that jointly considers several parameters to select the best communication channel for transmission. This paper proposes a utility model that integrates several important parameters for ranking channels. First, we underline the importance of the process of the channel quality ranking. Then, we describe a multi-attributes, utility-based, channel quality-ranking model. Finally, we describe a series of experiments and their results, which show that our model effectively ranks the best communication channels first.

A location-based service is a service based on the geographical position of a mobile handheld device like a smartphone. This research proposes location-based research, which uses location information to find route anomalies, a common problem of daily life. For example, an alert should be generated when a deliveryman does not follow his regular route to make deliveries. Different kinds of route anomalies are discussed and various methods for detecting the anomalies are proposed in this paper. The proposed method based on a linear route representation finds the matched routes from a set of stored routes as the current route is entered location by location. Route matching is made easy by comparing the current location to linear routes. An alert is generated when no matched routes exist. Preliminary experimental results show the proposed methods are effective and easy to use.