The importance of body area sensor networks (BASNs) is increasing day by day because of their increasing use in Internet of things (IoT)-enabled healthcare application services. They help humans in improving their quality of life by continuously monitoring various vital signs through biosensors strategically placed on the human body. However, BASNs face serious challenges, in terms of the short life span of their batteries and unreliable data transmission, because of the highly unstable and unpredictable channel conditions of tiny biosensors located on the human body. These factors may result in poor data gathering quality in BASNs. Therefore, a more reliable data transmission mechanism is greatly needed in order to gather quality data in BASN-based healthcare applications. Therefore, this study proposes a novel, multiobjective, lion mating optimization inspired routing protocol, called self-organizing multiobjective routing protocol (SARP), for BASN-based IoT healthcare applications. The proposed routing scheme significantly reduces local search problems and finds the best dynamic cluster-based routing solutions between the source and destination in BASNs. Thus, it significantly improves the overall packet delivery rate, residual energy, and throughput with reduced latency and packet error rates in BASNs. Extensive simulation results validate the performance of our proposed SARP scheme against the existing routing protocols in terms of the packet delivery ratio, latency, packet error rate, throughput, and energy efficiency for BASN-based health monitoring applications.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
A number of health databases is now available in Malaysia, but few are accessible to the general public. However, recently a service was launched nationwide via a videotex system to also target the Malaysia public. This service is provided by the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in collaboration with several Malaysian Government ministries and agencies. Access to health information via videotex, be it medical, pharmaceutical or environmental is viewed as an effective means of on-line information dissemination. It provides not only rapid retrieval but is also economical and interactive, particularly suitable for a developing country.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks/organization & administration*
Over-the-air dissemination of code updates in wireless sensor networks have been researchers' point of interest in the last few years, and, more importantly, security challenges toward the remote propagation of code updating have occupied the majority of efforts in this context. Many security models have been proposed to establish a balance between the energy consumption and security strength, having their concentration on the constrained nature of wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes. For authentication purposes, most of them have used a Merkle hash tree to avoid using multiple public cryptography operations. These models mostly have assumed an environment in which security has to be at a standard level. Therefore, they have not investigated the tree structure for mission-critical situations in which security has to be at the maximum possible level (e.g., military applications, healthcare). Considering this, we investigate existing security models used in over-the-air dissemination of code updates for possible vulnerabilities, and then, we provide a set of countermeasures, correspondingly named Security Model Requirements. Based on the investigation, we concentrate on Seluge, one of the existing over-the-air programming schemes, and we propose an improved version of it, named Seluge++, which complies with the Security Model Requirements and replaces the use of the inefficient Merkle tree with a novel method. Analytical and simulation results show the improvements in Seluge++ compared to Seluge.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Industrialization has led to a huge demand for a network control system to monitor and control multi-loop processes with high effectiveness. Due to these advancements, new industrial wireless sensor network (IWSN) standards such as ZigBee, WirelessHART, ISA 100.11a wireless, and Wireless network for Industrial Automation-Process Automation (WIA-PA) have begun to emerge based on their wired conventional structure with additional developments. This advancement improved flexibility, scalability, needed fewer cables, reduced the network installation and commissioning time, increased productivity, and reduced maintenance costs compared to wired networks. On the other hand, using IWSNs for process control comes with the critical challenge of handling stochastic network delays, packet drop, and external noises which are capable of degrading the controller performance. Thus, this paper presents a detailed study focusing only on the adoption of WirelessHART in simulations and real-time applications for industrial process monitoring and control with its crucial challenges and design requirements.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
A novel hybrid Harris Hawk-Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm (HHAOA) for optimizing the Industrial Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) and real-time pressure process control was proposed in this research article. The proposed algorithm uses inspiration from Harris Hawk Optimization and the Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm to improve position relocation problems, premature convergence, and the poor accuracy the existing techniques face. The HHAOA algorithm was evaluated on various benchmark functions and compared with other optimization algorithms, namely Arithmetic Optimization Algorithm, Moth Flame Optimization, Sine Cosine Algorithm, Grey Wolf Optimization, and Harris Hawk Optimization. The proposed algorithm was also applied to a real-world industrial wireless mesh network simulation and experimentation on the real-time pressure process control system. All the results demonstrate that the HHAOA algorithm outperforms different algorithms regarding mean, standard deviation, convergence speed, accuracy, and robustness and improves client router connectivity and network congestion with a 31.7% reduction in Wireless Mesh Network routers. In the real-time pressure process, the HHAOA optimized Fractional-order Predictive PI (FOPPI) Controller produced a robust and smoother control signal leading to minimal peak overshoot and an average of a 53.244% faster settling. Based on the results, the algorithm enhanced the efficiency and reliability of industrial wireless networks and real-time pressure process control systems, which are critical for industrial automation and control applications.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
Sensing and communication coverage are among the most important trade-offs in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) design. A minimum bound of sensing coverage is vital in scheduling, target tracking and redeployment phases, as well as providing communication coverage. Some methods measure the coverage as a percentage value, but detailed information has been missing. Two scenarios with equal coverage percentage may not have the same Quality of Coverage (QoC). In this paper, we propose a new coverage measurement method using Delaunay Triangulation (DT). This can provide the value for all coverage measurement tools. Moreover, it categorizes sensors as 'fat', 'healthy' or 'thin' to show the dense, optimal and scattered areas. It can also yield the largest empty area of sensors in the field. Simulation results show that the proposed DT method can achieve accurate coverage information, and provides many tools to compare QoC between different scenarios.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks/instrumentation*
The key concerns to enhance the lifetime of IoT-enabled Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (IoT-UWSNs) are energy-efficiency and reliable data delivery under constrained resource. Traditional transmission approaches increase the communication overhead, which results in congestion and affect the reliable data delivery. Currently, many routing protocols have been proposed for UWSNs to ensure reliable data delivery and to conserve the node's battery with minimum communication overhead (by avoiding void holes in the network). In this paper, adaptive energy-efficient routing protocols are proposed to tackle the aforementioned problems using the Shortest Path First (SPF) with least number of active nodes strategy. These novel protocols have been developed by integrating the prominent features of Forward Layered Multi-path Power Control One (FLMPC-One) routing protocol, which uses 2-hop neighbor information, Forward Layered Multi-path Power Control Two (FLMPC-Two) routing protocol, which uses 3-hop neighbor information and 'Dijkstra' algorithm (for shortest path selection). Different Packet Sizes (PSs) with different Data Rates (DRs) are also taken into consideration to check the dynamicity of the proposed protocols. The achieved outcomes clearly validate the proposed protocols, namely: Shortest Path First using 3-hop neighbors information (SPF-Three) and Breadth First Search with Shortest Path First using 3-hop neighbors information (BFS-SPF-Three). Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed protocols in terms of minimum Energy Consumption (EC) and Required Packet Error Rate (RPER) with a minimum number of active nodes at the cost of affordable delay.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
The global expansion of the Visual Internet of Things (VIoT)'s deployment with multiple devices and sensor interconnections has been widespread. Frame collusion and buffering delays are the primary artifacts in the broad area of VIoT networking applications due to significant packet loss and network congestion. Numerous studies have been carried out on the impact of packet loss on Quality of Experience (QoE) for a wide range of applications. In this paper, a lossy video transmission framework for the VIoT considering the KNN classifier merged with the H.265 protocols. The performance of the proposed framework was assessed while considering the congestion of encrypted static images transmitted to the wireless sensor networks. The performance analysis of the proposed KNN-H.265 protocol is compared with the existing traditional H.265 and H.264 protocols. The analysis suggests that the traditional H.264 and H.265 protocols cause video conversation packet drops. The performance of the proposed protocol is estimated with the parameters of frame number, delay, throughput, packet loss ratio, and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) on MATLAB 2018a simulation software. The proposed model gives 4% and 6% better PSNR values than the existing two methods and better throughput.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging and promising wireless technology aimed to improve traffic safety and provide comfort to road users. However, the high mobility of vehicles and frequent topology changes pose a considerable challenge to the reliable delivery of safety applications. Clustering is one of the control techniques used in VANET to make the frequent topology changes less dynamic. Nevertheless, research has shown that most of the existing clustering algorithms focus on cluster head (CH) election with very few addressing other critical issues such as cluster formation and maintenance. This has led to unstable clusters which could affect the timely delivery of safety applications. In this study, enhanced weight-based clustering algorithm (EWCA) was developed to address these challenges. We considered any vehicle moving on the same road segment with the same road ID and within the transmission range of its neighbour to be suitable for the cluster formation process. This was attributed to the fact that all safety messages are expected to be shared among the vehicles within the vicinity irrespective of their relative speedto avoid any hazardous situation. To elect a CH, we identified some metrics on the basis of the vehicle mobility information. Each vehicle was associated with a predefined weight value based on its relevance. A vehicle with the highest weight value was elected as the primary cluster head (PCH). We also introduced a secondary cluster head (SeCH) as a backup to the PCH to improve the cluster stability. SeCH took over the leadership whenever the PCH was not suitable for continuing with the leadership. The simulation results of the proposed approach showed a better performance with an increase of approximately40%- 45% in the cluster stability when compared with the existing approaches. Similarly, cluster formation messages were significantly minimized, hence reducing the communication overhead to the system and improving the reliable delivery of the safety applications.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) constitute a subset of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) responsible for monitoring vital sign-related data of patients and accordingly route this data towards a sink. In routing sensed data towards sinks, WBSNs face some of the same routing challenges as general WSNs, but the unique requirements of WBSNs impose some more constraints that need to be addressed by the routing mechanisms. This paper identifies various issues and challenges in pursuit of effective routing in WBSNs. Furthermore, it provides a detailed literature review of the various existing routing protocols used in the WBSN domain by discussing their strengths and weaknesses.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Body Area Networks (BANs) consist of various sensors which gather patient's vital signs and deliver them to doctors. One of the most significant challenges faced, is the design of an energy-efficient next hop selection algorithm to satisfy Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for different healthcare applications. In this paper, a novel efficient next hop selection algorithm is proposed in multi-hop BANs. This algorithm uses the minimum hop count and a link cost function jointly in each node to choose the best next hop node. The link cost function includes the residual energy, free buffer size, and the link reliability of the neighboring nodes, which is used to balance the energy consumption and to satisfy QoS requirements in terms of end to end delay and reliability. Extensive simulation experiments were performed to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm using the NS-2 simulator. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm provides significant improvement in terms of energy consumption, number of packets forwarded, end to end delay and packet delivery ratio compared to the existing routing protocol.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in deploying large populations of microsensors that collaborate in a distributed manner to gather and process sensory data and deliver them to a sink node through wireless communications systems. Currently, there is a lot of interest in data routing for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) due to their unique challenges compared to conventional routing in wired networks. In WSNs, each data routing approach follows a specific goal (goals) according to the application. Although the general goal of every data routing approach in WSNs is to extend the network lifetime and every approach should be aware of the energy level of the nodes, data routing approaches may focus on one (or some) specific goal(s) depending on the application. Thus, existing approaches can be categorized according to their routing goals. In this paper, the main goals of data routing approaches in sensor networks are described. Then, the best known and most recent data routing approaches in WSNs are classified and studied according to their specific goals.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Proxy Mobile IPv6 is a network-based localized mobility management protocol that supports mobility without mobile nodes' participation in mobility signaling. The details of user authentication procedure are not specified in this standard, hence, many authentication schemes have been proposed for this standard. In 2013, Chuang et al., proposed an authentication method for PMIPv6, called SPAM. However, Chuang et al.'s Scheme protects the network against some security attacks, but it is still vulnerable to impersonation and password guessing attacks. In addition, we discuss other security drawbacks such as lack of revocation procedure in case of loss or stolen device, and anonymity issues of the Chuang et al.'s scheme. We further propose an enhanced authentication method to mitigate the security issues of SPAM method and evaluate our scheme using BAN logic.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Cognitive radio (CR) enables unlicensed users (or secondary users, SUs) to sense for and exploit underutilized licensed spectrum owned by the licensed users (or primary users, PUs). Reinforcement learning (RL) is an artificial intelligence approach that enables a node to observe, learn, and make appropriate decisions on action selection in order to maximize network performance. Routing enables a source node to search for a least-cost route to its destination node. While there have been increasing efforts to enhance the traditional RL approach for routing in wireless networks, this research area remains largely unexplored in the domain of routing in CR networks. This paper applies RL in routing and investigates the effects of various features of RL (i.e., reward function, exploitation, and exploration, as well as learning rate) through simulation. New approaches and recommendations are proposed to enhance the features in order to improve the network performance brought about by RL to routing. Simulation results show that the RL parameters of the reward function, exploitation, and exploration, as well as learning rate, must be well regulated, and the new approaches proposed in this paper improves SUs' network performance without significantly jeopardizing PUs' network performance, specifically SUs' interference to PUs.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Decreasing the route rediscovery time process in reactive routing protocols is challenging in mobile ad hoc networks. Links between nodes are continuously established and broken because of the characteristics of the network. Finding multiple routes to increase the reliability is also important but requires a fast update, especially in high traffic load and high mobility where paths can be broken as well. The sender node keeps re-establishing path discovery to find new paths, which makes for long time delay. In this paper we propose an improved multipath routing protocol, called Receiver-based ad hoc on demand multipath routing protocol (RB-AOMDV), which takes advantage of the reliability of the state of the art ad hoc on demand multipath distance vector (AOMDV) protocol with less re-established discovery time. The receiver node assumes the role of discovering paths when finding data packets that have not been received after a period of time. Simulation results show the delay and delivery ratio performances are improved compared with AOMDV.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are single-hop network systems, where sensors gather the body's vital signs and send them directly to master nodes (MNs). The sensors are distributed in or on the body. Therefore, body posture, clothing, muscle movement, body temperature, and climatic conditions generally influence the quality of the wireless link between sensors and the destination. Hence, in some cases, single hop transmission ('direct transmission') is not sufficient to deliver the signals to the destination. Therefore, we propose an emergency-based cooperative communication protocol for WBAN, named Critical Data-based Incremental Cooperative Communication (CD-ICC), based on the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA standard but assuming a lognormal shadowing channel model. In this paper, a complete study of a system model is inspected in the terms of the channel path loss, the successful transmission probability, and the outage probability. Then a mathematical model is derived for the proposed protocol, end-to-end delay, duty cycle, and average power consumption. A new back-off time is proposed within CD-ICC, which ensures the best relays cooperate in a distributed manner. The design objective of the CD-ICC is to reduce the end-to-end delay, the duty cycle, and the average power transmission. The simulation and numerical results presented here show that, under general conditions, CD-ICC can enhance network performance compared to direct transmission mode (DTM) IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA and benchmarking. To this end, we have shown that the power saving when using CD-ICC is 37.5% with respect to DTM IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA and 10% with respect to MI-ICC.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Recently, Pulse Coupled Oscillator (PCO)-based travelling waves have attracted substantial attention by researchers in wireless sensor network (WSN) synchronization. Because WSNs are generally artificial occurrences that mimic natural phenomena, the PCO utilizes firefly synchronization of attracting mating partners for modelling the WSN. However, given that sensor nodes are unable to receive messages while transmitting data packets (due to deafness), the PCO model may not be efficient for sensor network modelling. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposed a new scheme called the Travelling Wave Pulse Coupled Oscillator (TWPCO). For this, the study used a self-organizing scheme for energy-efficient WSNs that adopted travelling wave biologically inspired network systems based on phase locking of the PCO model to counteract deafness. From the simulation, it was found that the proposed TWPCO scheme attained a steady state after a number of cycles. It also showed superior performance compared to other mechanisms, with a reduction in the total energy consumption of 25%. The results showed that the performance improved by 13% in terms of data gathering. Based on the results, the proposed scheme avoids the deafness that occurs in the transmit state in WSNs and increases the data collection throughout the transmission states in WSNs.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
The rapid expansion of wireless monitoring and surveillance applications in several domains reinforces the trend of exploiting emerging technologies such as the cognitive radio. However, these technologies have to adjust their working concepts to consider the common characteristics of conventional wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The cognitive radio sensor network (CRSN), still an immature technology, has to deal with new networks that might have different types of data, traffic patterns, or quality of service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we design and model a new cognitive radio-based medium access control (MAC) algorithm dealing with the heterogeneous nature of the developed networks in terms of either the traffic pattern or the required QoS for the node applications. The proposed algorithm decreases the consumed power on several fronts, provides satisfactory levels of latency and spectrum utilization with efficient scheduling, and manages the radio resources for various traffic conditions. An intensive performance evaluation is conducted to study the impact of key parameters such as the channel idle time length, node density, and the number of available channels. The performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm shows a better performance than the comparable protocols. Moreover, the results manifest that the proposed algorithm is suitable for real time monitoring applications.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks*
Routing in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANET) is a bit complicated because of the nature of the high dynamic mobility. The efficiency of routing protocol is influenced by a number of factors such as network density, bandwidth constraints, traffic load, and mobility patterns resulting in frequency changes in network topology. Therefore, Quality of Service (QoS) is strongly needed to enhance the capability of the routing protocol and improve the overall network performance. In this paper, we introduce a statistical framework model to address the problem of optimizing routing configuration parameters in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication. Our framework solution is based on the utilization of the network resources to further reflect the current state of the network and to balance the trade-off between frequent changes in network topology and the QoS requirements. It consists of three stages: simulation network stage used to execute different urban scenarios, the function stage used as a competitive approach to aggregate the weighted cost of the factors in a single value, and optimization stage used to evaluate the communication cost and to obtain the optimal configuration based on the competitive cost. The simulation results show significant performance improvement in terms of the Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Normalized Routing Load (NRL), Packet loss (PL), and End-to-End Delay (E2ED).
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks
Covert channels are not new in computing systems, and have been studied since their first definition four decades ago. New platforms invoke thorough investigations to assess their security. Now is the time for Android platform to analyze its security model, in particular the two key principles: process-isolation and the permissions system. Aside from all sorts of malware, one threat proved intractable by current protection solutions, that is, collusion attacks involving two applications communicating over covert channels. Still no universal solution can countermeasure this sort of attack unless the covert channels are known. This paper is an attempt to reveal a new covert channel, not only being specific to smartphones, but also exploiting an unusual resource as a vehicle to carry covert information: sensors data. Accelerometers generate signals that reflect user motions, and malware applications can apparently only read their data. However, if the vibration motor on the device is used properly, programmatically produced vibration patterns can encode stolen data and hence an application can cause discernible effects on acceleration data to be received and decoded by another application. Our evaluations confirmed a real threat where strings of tens of characters could be transmitted errorless if the throughput is reduced to around 2.5-5 bps. The proposed covert channel is very stealthy as no unusual permissions are required and there is no explicit communication between the colluding applications.
Matched MeSH terms: Computer Communication Networks/trends*