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Maize (Zea mays) is a critical crop for global food security and economic stability. However, it is highly vulnerable to various diseases such as northern leaf blight, common rust, and maize lethal necrosis, which can lead to significant crop losses if not detected early. Traditional CNN-based models, while effective in extracting spatial features, often fail to capture subtle multi-scale variations necessary for distinguishing between disease symptoms. These models also suffer from high computational complexity when deeper layers are introduced to handle fine-grained details. Transformer-based models, on the other hand, provide long-range dependencies but come with significant computational overhead, limiting their use in real-time agricultural applications. To overcome these challenges, we propose MSCPNet, a novel architecture that combines a truncated MobileNetV2 backbone with a Multi-Scale Convolutional PoolFormer block. The truncated backbone ensures that only essential layers for general feature extraction are retained, enhancing the model’s adaptability across domains. The Multi-Scale Convolutional PoolFormer block captures both local and global dependencies through parallel convolutional branches of varying kernel sizes, while the PoolFormer module efficiently handles feature aggregation without the heavy computational cost associated with traditional attention mechanisms. This design allows the model to balance computational efficiency and high accuracy, making it highly suitable for real-time maize disease detection. Extensive evaluations on the maize leaf disease classification task yielded outstanding results, with the proposed MSCPNet achieving an accuracy of 97.44%, precision of 96.76%, recall of 97.37%, F1-score of 97.04%, and an MCC of 0.9653, with a model size of 998,084 parameters and 315,258,752 FLOPs. Furthermore, the model was evaluated on the PlantVillage dataset for tomato leaf disease classification, where it achieved an accuracy of 99.32%, precision of 99.32%, recall of 99.33%, F1-score of 99.32%, and an MCC of 0.9925. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of MSCPNet in disease classification across different domains.

This study proposes an advanced method for plant disease detection utilizing a modified depthwise convolutional neural network (CNN) integrated with squeeze-and-excitation (SE) blocks and improved residual skip connections. In light of increasing global challenges related to food security and sustainable agriculture, this research focuses on developing a highly efficient and accurate automated system for identifying plant diseases, thereby contributing to enhanced crop protection and yield optimization. The proposed model is trained on a comprehensive dataset encompassing various plant species and disease categories, ensuring robust performance and adaptability. By evaluating the model with online random images, demonstrate its significant adaptability and effectiveness in overcoming key challenges, such as achieving high accuracy and meeting the practical demands of agricultural applications. The architectural modifications are specifically designed to enhance feature extraction and classification performance, all while maintaining computational efficiency. The evaluation results further highlight the model’s effectiveness, achieving an accuracy of 98% and an F1 score of 98.2%. These findings emphasize the model’s potential as a practical tool for disease identification in agricultural applications, supporting timely and informed decision-making for crop protection.

Vehicular Edge-Cloud Computing (VECC) paradigm has emerged as a viable approach to overcome the inherent resource limitations of vehicles by offloading computationally demanding tasks to remote servers. Despite its potential, existing offloading strategies often result in increased latency and sub-optimal performance due to the concentration of workloads on a limited number of connected Roadside Units (RSUs). Moreover, ensuring data security and optimizing energy usage within this framework remain significant challenges. To address these concerns, this paper proposes a comprehensive framework for VECC systems. A novel load-balancing algorithm is proposed to effectively redistribute vehicles among RSUs, considering factors such as RSUs load, computational capacity, and data rate. Additionally, a robust security mechanism is incorporated using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in conjunction with Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals as encryption keys to enhance data protection during transmission. To further improve system efficiency, a novel caching strategy is introduced, enabling edge servers to store completed tasks, which in turn reduces both latency and energy consumption. An optimization model is also proposed to minimize energy expenditure while ensuring that latency constraints are satisfied during computation offloading. Given the complexity of this problem in large-scale vehicular networks, the study formulates an equivalent reinforcement learning model and employs a deep learning algorithm to derive optimal solutions. Simulation results conclusively demonstrate that the proposed model significantly outperforms existing benchmark techniques in terms of energy savings.

The emergence of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks has sparked a demand for reliable and efficient communication systems. One promising strategy to overcome interference and coverage issues in IIoT setups is leveraging massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology in a cell-free configuration. However, implementing large antenna arrays for such systems can be impractical and expensive, especially in remote or dynamic environments. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a versatile solution, including for communication relays. This study investigates the integration of UAV swarms into cell-free massive MIMO systems for IIoT networks. The proposed approach involves deploying a swarm of UAVs equipped with multiple antennas as aerial base stations to serve ground-based IIoT devices. It examines the benefits of employing UAV swarms, such as expanded coverage, better interference management, and increased flexibility. Additionally, it addresses challenges like UAV mobility, resource allocation, and power consumption. To address these challenges, an algorithm for resource allocation is proposed. This algorithm considers factors like UAV mobility, quality-of-service requirements for IIoT devices, and interference among UAVs. It aims to optimize transmit power and antenna selection for each UAV, ensuring QoS satisfaction and enhancing overall system capacity. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm, indicating improvements in system capacity, coverage, and interference management. Moreover, the findings highlight the trade-offs between system performance and power consumption within the UAV swarm. In essence, this study contributes to understanding the potential of utilizing UAV swarms in cell-free massive MIMO systems for IIoT networks. The proposed resource allocation algorithm offers insights for planning and enhancing such nodes, paving the way for further research and development in this promising field.

Nowadays, it is essential for modern grids to operate at optimal scheduling, this helps in reducing the energy costs, mitigating the pollutant emissions, and making better use of renewable energy resources (RESs) such as photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbine (WT). Therefore, this paper proposes an energy management scheme for microgrid (MG) using recent metaheuristic honey badger algorithm (HBA) to enhance its operation via identifying the optimal scheduling of the installed generation units. HBA has the ability to solve complex optimization problem and avoid stuck in local optima due to balance between the exploration and exploitation phases. The constructed MG composes PV, WT, microturbine (MT), fuel cell (FC), and battery storage system. Operation of PV and WT at their normal generations, operation of WT at its rated power, and operation of PV and WT at their maximum limits are three cases analyzed in this work. Two objective functions are considered which are mitigating the operating cost and minimizing the pollutant emission. The proposed HBA is evaluated via conducting comparison to some reported approaches like Fuzzy self-adaptive particle swarm optimizer (FSAPSO), sparrow search algorithm (SSA), and gravitational search and pattern search algorithm (GSA-PS). Moreover, other programmed approaches of aquila optimizer (AO), Tasmanian devil optimizer (TDO), artificial rabbits optimizer (ARO), coronavirus herd immunity optimizer (CHIO), manta-ray foraging optimizer (MRFO), and dynamic arithmetic optimization approach (DAOA) are implemented and compared to the proposed algorithm. The fetched results proved the robustness and preference of HBA in achieving the best operation of MG in all studied operating conditions.

Plant diseases annually cause damage and loss of much of the crop, if not its complete destruction, and this constitutes a significant challenge for farm owners, governments, and consumers alike. Therefore, identifying and classifying diseases at an early stage is very important in order to sustain local and global food security. In this research, we designed a new method to identify plant diseases by combining transfer learning and Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA). Two state-of-the-art pretrained models have been adopted for extracting features in this study, which are MobileNetV2 and ResNe50V2. Multilayer feature extraction is applied in this study to ensure representations of plant leaves from different levels of abstraction for precise classification. These features are then concatenated and passed to GSA for optimizing them. Finally, optimized features are passed to Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) for final classification. This integration is essential for categorizing 18 different types of infected and healthy leaf samples. The performance of our approach is strengthened by a comparative analysis that incorporates features optimized by the Genetic Algorithm (GA). Additionally, the MLR algorithm is contrasted with K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN). The empirical findings indicate that our model, which has been refined using GSA, achieves very high levels of precision. Specifically, the average precision for MLR is 99.2%, while for KNN it is 98.6%. The resulting results significantly exceed those achieved with GA-optimized features, thereby highlighting the superiority of our suggested strategy. One important result of our study is that we were able to decrease the number of features by more than 50%. This reduction greatly reduces the processing requirements without sacrificing the quality of the diagnosis. This work presents a robust and efficient approach to the early detection of plant diseases. The work demonstrates the utilization of sophisticated computational methods in agriculture, enabling the development of novel data-driven strategies for plant health management, therefore enhancing worldwide food security.

Congestion in the world’s traffic systems is a major issue that has far-reaching repercussions, including wasted time and money due to longer commutes and more frequent stops for gas. The incorporation of contemporary technologies into transportation systems creates opportunities to significantly improve traffic prediction alongside modern academic challenges. Various techniques have been utilized for the purpose of traffic flow prediction, including statistical, machine learning, and deep neural networks. In this paper, a deep neural network architecture based on long short-term memory (LSTM), bi-directional version, and gated recurrent units (GRUs) layers has been structured to build the deep neural network in order to predict the performance of the traffic flow in four distinct junctions, which has a great impact on the Internet of vehicles’ applications. The structure is composed of sixteen layers, five of which are GRU layers and one is a bi-directional LSTM layer. The dataset employed in this work involved four congested junctions. The dataset extended from November 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017. Cleaning and preprocessing operations were performed on the dataset before feeding it to the designed deep neural network in this paper. Results show that the suggested method produced comparable performance with respect to state-of-the-art approaches.

The presence of various maize plant leaf diseases has significantly decreased both the quality and quantity of crop production. In order to take the appropriate steps to prevent the occurrence of plant leaf diseases, it is essential to track and recognize such infections during the planting period. However, correct recognition of numerous maize diseases is difficult to achieve because the currently employed automated solutions are operationally complicated or only effective on samples with plain backgrounds. While real-world scenarios are suffering from huge sample distortions like the effect of noise, clutter in the background, and blurring of the leaf regions that increase the complexity of the recognition procedure. To alleviate the above-listed problems, a deep learning (DL) approach called the MaizeNet is proposed for the correct localization and classification of various maize crop leaf disorders. We have presented an improved Faster-RCNN approach that utilizes the ResNet-50 model with spatial-channel attention as its base network for the computation of deep keypoints which are then localized and categorized into various classes. The proposed work is tested on a standard database named Corn Disease and Severity that contains samples from three different classes of maize plant diseases which are captured under diverse conditions such as complex background, brightness, and color and size variations. The MaizeNet model attains an average accuracy score of 97.89% along with mAP value of 0.94, which is showing the effectiveness of our approach for locating and classifying the numerous types of maize leaf infections.

Agriculture plays the vigorous role in economy as well as it is contemplated to be the mainstay of economic system in emerging countries. Furthermore, it influences the society in huge ways including ancillary livelihoods, anyhow occurring of plant diseases impacts many farmers. Henceforth, erroneous leaf disease identification inclines to menacing effects on plants thereby curtailing product quality, productivity or quantity. To overcome these issues, we have designed Multi-agent DRL and EfficientNet assisted 3D plant leaf disease identification and severity estimation (MULTINET) framework. The main aim of this study is to effectively identify plant leaf diseases and quatify the severity of the disease. The proposed work comprehends of following four consecutive processes. At first, we have performed image pre-treatment for data cleansing using Adaptable LoW Pass Weiner (AWW) filter and then EMbellished Manta-Ray Optimization Algorithm (EMMARO) based data augmentation for enhancing image quality and balance the classes. After that, we have adopted Block Divider Model (BDM) for transfiguring 2D to 3D image which sustenance to navigate the information from multiple perceptive and bargains superior viewpoints from miscellaneous angles. Following that, we have executed dual effective segmentation on 3D image by utilizing Enhanced Deep Q-Network (EnDeep) that embrace of Haar-U-Net (HUNT) Algorithm for appropriate feature extraction and Convolution Feature Attention (CFA) Mechanism for dimensionality reduction. Here, the Multiple Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agents are employed for segmentation and ensuring its accuracy through segmentation reliability checker which accommodates rewards entrenched on its actions. Based on those segmented regions, we have accomplished species detection and disease classification by the proposed Lightweight EfficientNet and Di-attention aided Bilinear-VGG (EBBI) Algorithm. At last, the severity enumeration is performed by contemplating lesions counts and its density. The proposed MULTINET framework is conducted in MATLAB R2020a simulation tool and the performance of proposed work is evaluated in terms of accuracy, precision, sensitivity, F1-score and ROC curve where the proposed work outperforms existing works. The accuracy of the proposed work increases from 19%-29%, precision increases from 19%-28%, sensitivity increases from 31%-38%, F1-score increases from 31%-38%, and ROC curve increases about 0.15–0.22 when compared with the existing works.

The security and reliability of cellular-based wireless IoT networks are often hindered by eavesdropping attacks. Existing approaches have limitations such as ineffective relay selection, untrusted relay nodes, and improper UAV positioning. This article discusses secure and reliable communication in blockchain-enabled cellular-based IoT networks. In this article, we propose a novel approach that ensures the initial level of security to the UAV relays by enrolling the UAV relay nodes to the edge-assisted base stations for initial security and enhances the optimal UAV relay selection using dual-phase optimal relay selection mechanisms. This article performs authentication of UAV relay nodes to enhance security against active eavesdroppers and mitigates the effects of passive eavesdroppers by jointly optimizing power and position based on their actions. This enables eavesdropping to resist secure communication. The proposed approach beats the state-of-the-art algorithm in terms of decreased deployment time and gradually rising efficiency with increasing UEs. The deployment time for the previously presented algorithm is fast expanding, while the proposed integrated deployment algorithm is progressively increasing. The proposed eavesdropping resisted integration technique harvests an overlay complexity tendency due to its hybrid solution, enhancing system stability and minimizing system complexity. We further integrate the blockchain with UAVs in the system and perform authentication and appropriate relay selection in the networks. We will also demonstrate secure and reliable communication in healthcare, transportation, and industry. This paper emphasizes the significance of safe and dependable IoT connectivity and how blockchain technology and appropriate relay selection techniques might be helpful. The results show that the recommended algorithm is superior in terms of both reliability and complexity. When iteration count is minimal, the proposed method and the completely distributed have a comparable but lowest complexity as they outperform one another in different scenarios. Our proposed approach provides a possible solution to existing issues and contributes to the progress of secure and reliable communication in cellular-based wireless IoT networks.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has brought about significant transformations in multiple sectors, including healthcare and navigation systems, by offering essential functionalities crucial for their operations. Nevertheless, there is ongoing debate surrounding the unexplored possibilities of the IoT within the energy industry. The requirement to better the performance of distributed energy systems necessitates transitioning from traditional mission-critical electric smart grid systems to digital twin-based IoT frameworks. Energy storage systems (ESSs) used within nano-grids have the potential to enhance energy utilization, fortify resilience, and promote sustainable practices by effectively storing surplus energy. The present study introduces a conceptual framework consisting of two fundamental modules: (1) Power optimization of energy storage systems (ESSs) in peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. (2) Task orchestration in IoT-enabled environments using digital twin technology. The optimization of energy storage systems (ESSs) aims to effectively manage surplus ESS energy by employing particle swarm optimization (PSO) techniques. This approach is designed to fulfill the energy needs of the ESS itself as well as meet the specific requirements of participating nano-grids. The primary objective of the IoT task orchestration system, which is based on the concept of digital twins, is to enhance the process of peer-to-peer nano-grid energy trading. This is achieved by integrating virtual control mechanisms through orchestration technology combining task generation, device virtualization, task mapping, task scheduling, and task allocation and deployment. The nano-grid energy trading system’s architecture utilizes IoT sensors and Raspberry Pi-based edge technology to enable virtual operation. The evaluation of the proposed study is carried out through the examination of a simulated dataset derived from nano-grid dwellings. This research analyzes the efficacy of optimization approaches in mitigating energy trading costs and optimizing power utilization in energy storage systems (ESSs). The coordination of IoT devices is crucial in improving the system’s overall efficiency.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has established itself as a multibillion-dollar business in recent years. Despite its obvious advantages, the widespread nature of IoT renders it insecure and a potential target for cyber-attacks. Furthermore, these devices broad connectivity and dynamic heterogeneous nature can open up a new surface of attack for refined malware attacks. There is a critical need to protect the IoT environment from such attacks and malware. Therefore this research aims to propose an intelligent, SDN-enabled hybrid framework leveraging Cuda Long Short Term Memory Gated Recurrent Unit (cuLSTMGRU) for efficient threat detection in IoT environments. To properly assess the proposed system, a state-of-the-art IoT-based dataset and standard evaluation metrics were used. The proposed model achieved 99.23 % detection accuracy with a low false-positive rate. For further verification, we compare the proposed model results with two of our constructed models (i.e., cuBLSTM and cuGRUDNN) and current benchmark algorithms. The proposed model outclassed the other models regarding speed efficiency, detection accuracy, precision, and other standard evaluation metrics. Finally, the proposed work employed 10-fold cross-validation to ensure that the results were completely unbiased.

Malware attacks have become very common in recent years. The variety and continuous improvement of malware capabilities threaten any network. Wi-Fi is also not an exception in that context. This paper proposes a model describing the spreading of malware in Wi-Fi networks using an epidemiological mathematical model. This model is built on the characteristics of encryption and authentication in Wi-Fi networks. In addition, we also consider state transitions of devices based on some assumptions about modern malware capabilities. We calculate the basic reproduction number $\boldsymbol {R}_{0}$ and thereby indicate the condition to limit the spread of malware. This spreading model is analyzed through numerical simulation. Besides, for the readers to have an overview of the main threats and the security capabilities of the Wi-Fi devices, we also briefly present security threats and encryption methods used in Wi-Fi.

Internet of Things (IoT) is an instantly exacerbated communication technology that is manifesting miraculous effectuation to revolutionize conventional means of network communication. The applications of IoT are compendiously encompassing our prevalent lifestyle and the integration of IoT with other technologies makes this application spectrum even more latitudinous. However, this admissibility also introduces IoT with a pervasive array of imperative security hazards that demands noteworthy solutions to be swamped. In this scientific study, we proposed Deep Learning (DL) driven Software Defined Networking (SDN) enabled Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to combat emerging cyber threats in IoT. Our proposed model (DNNLSTM) is capable to encounter a tremendous class of common as well as less frequently occurring cyber threats in IoT communications. The proposed model is trained on CICIDS 2018 dataset, and its performance is evaluated on several decisive parameters i.e Accuracy, Precision, Recall, and F1-Score. Furthermore, the designed framework is analytically compared with relevant classifiers, i.e., DNNGRU, and BLSTM for appropriate validation. An exhaustive performance comparison is also conducted between the proposed system and a few preeminent solutions from the literature. The proposed design has circumvented the existing literature with unprecedented performance repercussions such as 99.55% accuracy, 99.36% precision, 99.44% recall, and 99.42% F1-score.

There exist several performance criteria for cryptographically-strong substitution boxes (S-boxes), which are often conflicting with each other. Constructing S-boxes that satisfy multiple criteria with optimal tradeoffs is one of the challenging tasks for cryptographers. In practice, the existing S-box design algorithms are used to optimize performance according to a single performance criterion, mainly the nonlinearity, which usually results in weak scores for other equally-significant criteria. To overcome this problem, a multi-objective optimization-based method is presented in this paper. In this method, $8 \times 8$ S-boxes are constructed satisfying multiple criteria of balancedness, high nonlinearity, low differential uniformity, and low auto-correlation. Multiple objectives are fulfilled by applying the chaos-assisted non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II to introduce the S-boxes. The performance assessment of the proposed method and the comparative analysis with available optimization tools and other state-of-the-art algorithms demonstrate its proficiency in generating significantly-better S-box solutions with good Pareto-optimal security features. Eventually, the S-boxes with minimum nonlinearity (NL) of 110, differential uniformity (DU) as low as 8, and auto-correlation function (ACF) as low as 80 are obtained after the optimization. Furthermore, the obtained Pareto-optimal S-box is utilized to put forward a medical image encryption algorithm for secure telemedicine services. The suggested encryption algorithm uses an S-box to perform the required permutation and diffusion of images. The encryption performance assessment and comparison analyses validate its effectiveness for securing medical imagery data in telemedicine networks.

In this paper, the effective end-to-end secure communication of N-pair cellular network is studied. Promising multiple access scheme known as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and physical layer network coding (PLNC) scheme are employed to improve the spectral and the temporal efficiency respectively. Also, this proposed model uses the physical layer security to ensure the secure wireless communication. It is assumed that the eavesdropper (Eve) tries to trace the confidential message from the legitimate user’s. Hence, they generates the artificial noise (AN) to confuse the Eve. Closed form expression for the end-to-end outage probability of the proposed N-pair NOMA-PLNC wireless network is derived. Further, a closed form expression for the secrecy outage probability of the proposed network is derived using homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP) and Gaussian -Laguerre quadrature. Numerical results are presented to validate theoretical findings. It is noteworthy that uplink performance of the proposed network is better than the network without PLNC scheme.

The accurate estimation of underwater Visible Light Communication (VLC) channel conditions is challenging due to its widespread attenuation and scattering effects. The channel attenuation is a linear function of frequency and causes exponential signal power loss whereas due to the scattering effect, numerous photons are statistically generated as light beams strike water molecules and there arise security concerns. Assuming realistic underwater conditions, this paper investigates the security performance of a typical Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA)-assisted underwater VLC system. It consists of a Floating Vehicle Transmitter (FVT), equipped with multiple Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to transmit the signal to two legitimate near-end and far-end Underwater Vehicles (UVs) in presence of an active/passive eavesdropper. The Channel State Information (CSI) of each transmitting link is estimated with the use of a Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) technique. Furthermore, we propose a LED selection mechanism to select an LED that can achieve the highest secrecy rate defined under the constraints of known and unknown CSI of legitimate and/or eavesdropping links. Using the Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) technique, a novel closed-form secrecy outage probability expressions for the conventional single-LED and multi-LED NOMA-VLC links for both known and unknown CSI scenarios is derived. The security performance of the proposed multi-LED NOMA-VLC system is compared with the conventional single-LED NOMA-VLC system under the effect of air bubbles for both fresh and salty water. Finally, we verify the validity of the numerical results through Monte-carlo simulation analysis.

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based cellular network over a millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency band addresses the necessities of flexible coverage and high data rate in the next-generation network. But, the use of a wide range of antennas and higher propagation loss in mmWave networks results in high power utilization and UAVs are limited by low-capacity onboard batteries. To cut down the energy cost of UAV-aided mmWave networks, Energy Harvesting (EH) is a promising solution. But, it is a challenge to sustain strong connectivity in UAV-based terrestrial cellular networks due to the random nature of renewable energy. With this motivation, this article introduces an intelligent resource allocation using an artificial ecosystem optimizer with a deep learning (IRA-AEODL) technique on UAV networks. The presented IRA-AEODL technique aims to effectually allot the resources in wireless UAV networks. In this case, the IRA-AEODL technique focuses on the maximization of system utility over all users, combined user association, energy scheduling, and trajectory design. To optimally allocate the UAV policies, the stacked sparse autoencoder (SSAE) model is used in the UAV networks. For the hyperparameter tuning process, the AEO algorithm is used for enhancing the performance of the SSAE model. The experimental results of the IRA-AEODL technique are examined under different aspects and the outcomes stated the improved performance of the IRA-AEODL approach over recent state of art approaches.

Fifth generation (5G) networks support ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB). The coexistence of URLLC and eMBB is often organized by non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), giving priority to URLLC and resulting in eMBB quality of service (QoS) degradation. In this paper, we address the issue of joint URLLC and eMBB transmission, focusing on the problem from the perspective of delay-tolerant eMBB. Due to the priority given to URLLC, we assume that an eMBB session may be interrupted if there are no free resources available for URLLC or delayed when a new eMBB session arrives. To make the scheme more flexible, we propose that interrupted and delayed eMBB sessions periodically check for free resources, rather than continuously. To analyze this scenario, we propose a retrial queuing system with two retrial buffers (orbits) for interrupted and delayed eMBB sessions. The stationary probability distribution, provided in matrix form by recursive formulas, is presented. The paper concludes with a numerical example showing that the scheme with two buffers, compared to one buffer, practically doubles the average number of active eMBB sessions while keeping the interruption probability below 0.001. We provide an illustration of the configuration of eMBB retrial rates to meet its QoS requirements.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks offer a wide range of applications in an overload situation, broadcasting and advertising, public safety, disaster management, etc. Providing robust communication services to mobile users (MUs) is a challenging task because of the dynamic characteristics of MUs. Resource allocation, including subchannels, transmit power, and serving users, is a critical transmission problem; further, it is also crucial to improve the coverage and energy efficacy of UAV-assisted transmission networks. This paper presents an Enhanced Slime Mould Optimization with Deep-Learning-based Resource Allocation Approach (ESMOML-RAA) in UAV-enabled wireless networks. The presented ESMOML-RAA technique aims to efficiently accomplish computationally and energy-effective decisions. In addition, the ESMOML-RAA technique considers a UAV as a learning agent with the formation of a resource assignment decision as an action and designs a reward function with the intention of the minimization of the weighted resource consumption. For resource allocation, the presented ESMOML-RAA technique employs a highly parallelized long short-term memory (HP-LSTM) model with an ESMO algorithm as a hyperparameter optimizer. Using the ESMO algorithm helps properly tune the hyperparameters related to the HP-LSTM model. The performance validation of the ESMOML-RAA technique is tested using a series of simulations. This comparison study reports the enhanced performance of the ESMOML-RAA technique over other ML models.

Efficient monitoring and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has increased the need for a variety of data and statistics. The massive increase in data gathering through social networks, traditional business systems, and Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor devices raises real questions regarding the capacity of national statistical systems (NSS) for utilizing big data sources. Further, in this current era, big data is captured through sensor-based systems in public sector organizations. To gauge the capacity of public sector institutions in this regard, this work provides an indicator to monitor the processing capacity of the public sector organizations within the country (Pakistan). Some of the indicators related to measuring the capacity of the NSS were captured through a census-based survey. At the same time, convex logistic principal component analysis was used to develop scores and relative capacity indicators. The findings show that most organizations hesitate to disseminate data due to concerns about data privacy and that public sector organizations’ IT personnel are unable to deal with big data sources to generate official statistics. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can be used to overcome these challenges, such as automating data processing, improving data privacy and security, and enhancing the capabilities of IT human resources. This research helps to design capacity-building initiatives for public sector organizations in weak dimensions, focusing on leveraging AI to enhance the production of quality and reliable statistics.

This paper presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the element interaction model in a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). An analysis of the mathematical model and its numerical solution for the system of boundary device interactions in the traditional configuration of roadside unit (RSU) placement using single- and dual-channel connection between on-board units (OBU) and RSU is given. In addition, the model efficiency is improved using a clustering approach. The efficiency evaluation is based on calculating the percentage of unprocessed requests generated by OBUs during their mobility, the average power consumption and the magnitude of the delay in transmitting and processing the generated requests in the OBU–RSU system. The traditional and cluster models are compared. The results obtained in this paper show that each of the proposed models can be effectively implemented in mobile nodes and will significantly reduce the overall expected query processing time to improve the organization and algorithmic support of VANET. Along with this, it is shown that the developed approach allows for efficient power consumption when combining RSUs into clusters with a shared cache. The novelty of solving the problems is due to the lack of a comprehensive model that allows the distribution and prediction of the parameters and resources of the system for different computational tasks, which is essential when implementing and using V2X technology to solve the problems of complex management of VANET elements.

Image segmentation has been one of the most active research areas in the last decade. The traditional multi-level thresholding techniques are effective for bi-level thresholding because of their resilience, simplicity, accuracy, and low convergence time, but these traditional techniques are not effective in determining the optimal multi-level thresholding for image segmentation. Therefore, an efficient version of the search and rescue optimization algorithm (SAR) based on opposition-based learning (OBL) is proposed in this paper to segment blood-cell images and solve problems of multi-level thresholding. The SAR algorithm is one of the most popular meta-heuristic algorithms (MHs) that mimics humans’ exploration behavior during search and rescue operations. The SAR algorithm, which utilizes the OBL technique to enhance the algorithm’s ability to jump out of the local optimum and enhance its search efficiency, is termed mSAR. A set of experiments is applied to evaluate the performance of mSAR, solve the problem of multi-level thresholding for image segmentation, and demonstrate the impact of combining the OBL technique with the original SAR for improving solution quality and accelerating convergence speed. The effectiveness of the proposed mSAR is evaluated against other competing algorithms, including the L’evy flight distribution (LFD), Harris hawks optimization (HHO), sine cosine algorithm (SCA), equilibrium optimizer (EO), gravitational search algorithm (GSA), arithmetic optimization algorithm (AOA), and the original SAR. Furthermore, a set of experiments for multi-level thresholding image segmentation is performed to prove the superiority of the proposed mSAR using fuzzy entropy and the Otsu method as two objective functions over a set of benchmark images with different numbers of thresholds based on a set of evaluation matrices. Finally, analysis of the experiments’ outcomes indicates that the mSAR algorithm is highly efficient in terms of the quality of the segmented image and feature conservation, compared with the other competing algorithms.

Chemotherapy is a widely used cancer treatment method globally. However, cancer cells can develop resistance towards single-drug-based chemotherapy if it is infused for extended periods, resulting in treatment failure in many cases. To address this issue, oncologists have progressed towards using multi-drug chemotherapy (MDC). This method considers different drug concentrations for cancer treatment, but choosing incorrect drug concentrations can adversely affect the patient’s body. Therefore, it is crucial to recognize the trade-off between drug concentrations and their adverse effects. To address this issue, a closed-loop multi-drug scheduling based on Fractional Order Internal-Model-Control Proportional Integral (IMC-FOPI) Control is proposed. The proposed scheme combines the benefits of fractional PI and internal model controllers. Additionally, the parameters of IMC-FOPI are optimally tuned using a random walk-based Moth-flame optimization. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with PI and Two degrees of freedom PI (2PI) controllers for drug concentration control at the tumor site. The results reveal that the proposed control scheme improves the settling time by 43% and 21% for VX, 54% and 48 % for VY, and 48% and 40% for VZ, respectively, compared to PI and 2PI. Therefore, it can be concluded that the proposed control scheme is more efficient in scheduling multi-drug than conventional controllers.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that is escalating day by day and requires 24/7 continuous management. It may cause many complications, precisely when a patient moves, which may risk their and other drivers’ and pedestrians’ lives. Recent research shows diabetic drivers are the main cause of major road accidents. Several wireless non-invasive health monitoring sensors, such as wearable continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) sensors, in combination with machine learning approaches at cloud servers, can be beneficial for monitoring drivers’ diabetic conditions on travel to reduce the accident rate. Furthermore, the emergency condition of the driver needs to be shared for the safety of life. With the emergence of the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET), vehicles can exchange useful information with nearby vehicles and roadside units that can be further communicated with health monitoring sources via GPS and Internet connectivity. This work proposes a novel approach to the health care of drivers’ diabetes monitoring using wearable sensors, machine learning, and VANET technology. Several machine learning (ML) algorithms assessed the proposed prediction model using the cross-validation method. Performance metrics precision, recall, accuracy, F1-score, sensitivity, specificity, MCC, and AROC are used to validate our method. The result shows random forest (RF) outperforms and achieves the highest accuracy compared to other algorithms and previous approaches ranging from 90.3% to 99.5%.

Advances in semiconductor technology and wireless sensor networks have permitted the development of automated inspection at diverse scales (machine, human, infrastructure, environment, etc.). However, automated identification of road cracks is still in its early stages. This is largely owing to the difficulty obtaining pavement photographs and the tiny size of flaws (cracks). The existence of pavement cracks and potholes reduces the value of the infrastructure, thus the severity of the fracture must be estimated. Annually, operators in many nations must audit thousands of kilometers of road to locate this degradation. This procedure is costly, sluggish, and produces fairly subjective results. The goal of this work is to create an efficient automated system for crack identification, extraction, and 3D reconstruction. The creation of crack-free roads is critical to preventing traffic deaths and saving lives. The proposed method consists of five major stages: detection of flaws after processing the input picture with the Gaussian filter, contrast adjustment, and ultimately, threshold-based segmentation. We created a database of road cracks to assess the efficacy of our proposed method. The result obtained are commendable and outperform previous state-of-the-art studies.

Modern vehicle communication development is a continuous process in which cutting-edge security systems are required. Security is a main problem in the Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET). Malicious node detection is one of the critical issues found in the VANET environment, with the ability to communicate and enhance the mechanism to enlarge the field. The vehicles are attacked by malicious nodes, especially DDoS attack detection. Several solutions are presented to overcome the issue, but none are solved in a real-time scenario using machine learning. During DDoS attacks, multiple vehicles are used in the attack as a flood on the targeted vehicle, so communication packets are not received, and replies to requests do not correspond in this regard. In this research, we selected the problem of malicious node detection and proposed a real-time malicious node detection system using machine learning. We proposed a distributed multi-layer classifier and evaluated the results using OMNET++ and SUMO with machine learning classification using GBT, LR, MLPC, RF, and SVM models. The group of normal vehicles and attacking vehicles dataset is considered to apply the proposed model. The simulation results effectively enhance the attack classification with an accuracy of 99%. Under LR and SVM, the system achieved 94 and 97%, respectively. The RF and GBT achieved better performance with 98% and 97% accuracy values, respectively. Since we have adopted Amazon Web Services, the network’s performance has improved because training and testing time do not increase when we include more nodes in the network.

The most popular approach for smoothing renewable power generation fluctuations is to use a battery energy storage system. The lead-acid battery is one of the most used types, due to several advantages, such as its low cost. However, the precision of the model parameters is crucial to a reliable and accurate model. Therefore, determining actual battery storage model parameters is required. This paper proposes an optimal identification strategy for extracting the parameters of a lead-acid battery. The proposed identification strategy-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm is applied to a Shepherd model. The bald eagle search algorithm (BES) based identification strategy provided excellent performance in extracting the battery’s unknown parameters. As a result, the proposed identification strategy’s total voltage error has been reduced to 2.182 × 10−3, where the root mean square error (RMSE) between the model and the data is 6.26 × 10−5. In addition, the optimization efficiency achieved 85.32% using the BES algorithm, which approved its efficiency.

The monitoring of underwater aquatic habitats and pipeline leakages and disaster prevention are assisted by the construction of an underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN). The deployment of underwater sensors consumes energy and causes delay when transferring the gathered sensed data via multiple hops. The consumption of energy and delays are minimized by means of an autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV). This work addresses the idea of reducing energy and delay by incorporating an AUVs-assisted, three-dimensional UWSN (3D-UWSN) called DEDG 3D-UWSN. Energy in the sensor nodes is saved by clustering and scheduling; on the other hand, the delay is minimized by the movement of the AUV and inter-cluster routing. In clustering, multi-objective spotted hyena optimization (MO-SHO) is applied for the selection of the best sensor for the cluster head, which is responsible for assigning sleep schedules for members. According to the total number of members, an equal half of the members is provided with sleep slots based on the energy and hop counts. The redundancy in the gathered data is eliminated by measuring the Hassanat distance. Then, the moving AUV is able to predict its movement by the di-factor actor–critic path prediction method. The mid-point among the four heads is determined so that the AUV can collect data from four heads at a time. In cases where the waiting time of the CH is exceeded, three-step, inter-cluster routing is executed. The three steps are the discovery of possible routes, ignoring the longest paths and validating the filtered path with a fuzzy–LeNet method. In this 3D-UWSN, the sensed data are not always normal, and, hence, a weighted method is presented to transfer emergency events by selecting forwarders. This work is implemented on Network Simulator version 3.26 to test the results. It achieves better efficiency in terms of data collection delay, end-to-end delay, AUV tour length, network lifetime, number of alive nodes and energy consumption.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have emerged as prime technologies due to their compatible size and flexible architecture. UAV technology offers services in vast application such as inter-UAV communication, wireless sensors, and the future Internet of Things (IoT) due to its compatible architecture. A UAV’s speed varies while roaming, which may increase the risk of a connection failure. Various routing schemes have provided solutions to address this essential issue for three-dimensional (3D) UAV-based networks. The main category of UAV routing schemes is position-based routing schemes, which choose the best route based on the UAV’s location. However, position-based routing has the drawback that it depends on exact positioning and tracking. An efficient routing scheme can resolve the significant issue associated with UAV mobility in a 3D environment. This paper aims to address the issues of static preloaded location values by presenting a hybrid routing scheme named the Position-Monitor-based Hybrid Routing Protocol (PMHRP), which takes advantage of both geographic and topology-based routing protocols. The PMHRP establishes the shortest possible route based on a UAV’s Global Positioning System (GPS). Moreover, the proposed protocol utilizes the links for data forwarding. Furthermore, a disaster-based UAV scenario is adopted to provide connections to IoT devices. A detailed comparison analysis shows the proposed scheme’s extreme performance and results in up to 65% to 73% better packet delivery ratio (PDR) than batch mark schemes under standard 3D UAV scenarios. Compared to earlier work, the proposed scheme reduces the average delay by up to 68% to 75%. Further proposed routing schemes offer 70% to 72% more throughput than the existing routing schemes, and NRL (%) is 42% to 49% lower than the existing routing schemes. This happens because of the global routing information available at each UAV which is provided by the position head coordinator (PHC) UAV in the proposed work.

A heterogeneous vehicular network (HetVNET) is a promising network architecture that combines multiple network technologies such as IEEE 802.11p, dedicated short-range communication (DSRC), and third/fourth generation cellular networks (3G/4G). In this network area, vehicle users can use wireless fidelity access points (Wi-Fi APs) to offload 4G long-term evolution (4G-LTE) networks. However, when using Wi-Fi APs, the vehicles must organize themselves and select an appropriate mobile gateway (MGW) to communicate to the cellular infrastructure. Researchers are facing the problem of selecting the best MGW vehicle to aggregate vehicle traffic and reduce LTE load in HetVNETs when the Wi-Fi APs are unavailable for offloading. The selection process utilizes extra network overhead and complexity due to the frequent formation of clusters in this highly dynamic environment. In this study, we proposed a non-cluster adaptive QoS-aware gateway selection (AQAGS) scheme that autonomously picks a limited number of vehicles to act as LTE gateways based on the LTE network’s load status and vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) application’s QoS requirements. The present AQAGS scheme focuses on highway scenarios. The proposed scheme was evaluated using simulation of Urban mobility (SUMO) and network simulator version 2 (NS2) simulators and benchmarked with the clustered and non-clustered schemes. A comparison was made based on the end-to-end delay, throughput, control packet overhead (CPO), and packet delivery ratio (PDR) performance metrics over Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) applications. Using VoIP, the AQAGS scheme achieved a 26.7% higher PDR compared with the other schemes.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) is an essential piece of medical equipment that helps diagnose various heart-related conditions in patients. An automated diagnostic tool is required to detect significant episodes in long-term ECG records. It is a very challenging task for cardiologists to analyze long-term ECG records in a short time. Therefore, a computer-based diagnosis tool is required to identify crucial episodes. Myocardial infarction (MI) and conduction disorders (CDs), sometimes known as heart blocks, are medical diseases that occur when a coronary artery becomes fully or suddenly stopped or when blood flow in these arteries slows dramatically. As a result, several researchers have utilized deep learning methods for MI and CD detection. However, there are one or more of the following challenges when using deep learning algorithms: (i) struggles with real-life data, (ii) the time after the training phase also requires high processing power, (iii) they are very computationally expensive, requiring large amounts of memory and computational resources, and it is not easy to transfer them to other problems, (iv) they are hard to describe and are not completely understood (black box), and (v) most of the literature is based on the MIT-BIH or PTB databases, which do not cover most of the crucial arrhythmias. This paper proposes a new deep learning approach based on machine learning for detecting MI and CDs using large PTB-XL ECG data. First, all challenging issues of these heart signals have been considered, as the signal data are from different datasets and the data are filtered. After that, the MI and CD signals are fed to the deep learning model to extract the deep features. In addition, a new custom activation function is proposed, which has fast convergence to the regular activation functions. Later, these features are fed to an external classifier, such as a support vector machine (SVM), for detection. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated by the experimental findings, which show that it improves satisfactorily with an overall accuracy of 99.20% when using a CNN for extracting the features with an SVM classifier.

One of the most promising research areas in the healthcare industry and the scientific community is focusing on the AI-based applications for real medical challenges such as the building of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems for breast cancer. Transfer learning is one of the recent emerging AI-based techniques that allow rapid learning progress and improve medical imaging diagnosis performance. Although deep learning classification for breast cancer has been widely covered, certain obstacles still remain to investigate the independency among the extracted high-level deep features. This work tackles two challenges that still exist when designing effective CAD systems for breast lesion classification from mammograms. The first challenge is to enrich the input information of the deep learning models by generating pseudo-colored images instead of only using the input original grayscale images. To achieve this goal two different image preprocessing techniques are parallel used: contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) and Pixel-wise intensity adjustment. The original image is preserved in the first channel, while the other two channels receive the processed images, respectively. The generated three-channel pseudo-colored images are fed directly into the input layer of the backbone CNNs to generate more powerful high-level deep features. The second challenge is to overcome the multicollinearity problem that occurs among the high correlated deep features generated from deep learning models. A new hybrid processing technique based on Logistic Regression (LR) as well as Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is presented and called LR-PCA. Such a process helps to select the significant principal components (PCs) to further use them for the classification purpose. The proposed CAD system has been examined using two different public benchmark datasets which are INbreast and mini-MAIS. The proposed CAD system could achieve the highest performance accuracies of 98.60% and 98.80% using INbreast and mini-MAIS datasets, respectively. Such a CAD system seems to be useful and reliable for breast cancer diagnosis.

Radio communication systems are very widely present in our current smart lifestyles. It consists of two ends, which can carry the transmitter’s information to the receptor. Before installing any radio communication system, it is necessary to analyze the link resources. Hence, this analysis allows the determination of the received radio communication strength to prove if it is sufficient for the link to work correctly and assure a high quality of service. For this reason, new services and technologies are integrated. The objective of the present work is to improve the performance of the radio communication link of 4G systems. The study is based on real measurements using the drive test. The data collected by the drive test are analyzed to increase the performance of the radio communication. Based on this data analysis, recommendations and suggestions are issued for improving the radio communication link. The obtained results indicate a significant amelioration in the performance of the radio communication link.

The spreading of accidental or malicious misinformation on social media, specifically in critical situations, such as real-world emergencies, can have negative consequences for society. This facilitates the spread of rumors on social media. On social media, users share and exchange the latest information with many readers, including a large volume of new information every second. However, updated news sharing on social media is not always true.In this study, we focus on the challenges of numerous breaking-news rumors propagating on social media networks rather than long-lasting rumors. We propose new social-based and content-based features to detect rumors on social media networks. Furthermore, our findings show that our proposed features are more helpful in classifying rumors compared with state-of-the-art baseline features. Moreover, we apply bidirectional LSTM-RNN on text for rumor prediction. This model is simple but effective for rumor detection. The majority of early rumor detection research focuses on long-running rumors and assumes that rumors are always false. In contrast, our experiments on rumor detection are conducted on real-world scenario data set. The results of the experiments demonstrate that our proposed features and different machine learning models perform best when compared to the state-of-the-art baseline features and classifier in terms of precision, recall, and F1 measures.