The Security and Privacy in 5G and 6G networks

The standardization of fifth generation (5G) communications has been completed, and the 5G network should be commercially launched in 2020. As a result, the visioning and planning of 6G communications has begun, with an aim to provide communication services for the future demands of the 2030s. Here, we provide a vision for 6G that could serve as a research guide in the post-5G era. We suggest that human-centric mobile communications will still be the most important application of 6G and the 6G network should be human centric. Thus, high security, secrecy and privacy should be key features of 6G and should be given particular attention by the wireless research community. To support this vision, we provide a systematic framework in which potential application scenarios of 6G are anticipated and subdivided. We subsequently define key potential features of 6G and discuss the required communication technologies. We also explore the issues beyond communication technologies that could hamper research and deployment of 6G.

The innovations provided by sixth generation wireless communication (6G) as compared to fifth generation (5G) are considered in this article based on analysis of related works. With the aim of achieving diverse performance improvements for the various 6G requirements, five 6G core services are identified. Two centricities and eight key performance indices (KPIs) are detailed to describe these services, then enabling technologies to fulfill the KPIs are discussed. A 6G architecture is proposed as an integrated system of the enabling technologies and is then illustrated using four typical urban application scenarios. Potential challenges in the development of 6G technology are then discussed and possible solutions are proposed. Finally, opportunities for exploring 6G are analyzed in order to guide future research.

6G wireless networks improve on 5G by further increasing reliability, speeding up the networks and increasing the available bandwidth. These evolutionary enhancements, together with a number of revolutionary improvements such as high-precision 3D localization, ultra-high reliability and extreme mobility, introduce a new generation of 6G-native applications. Such application can be based on, for example, distributed, ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ultra-reliable, low-latency Internet of Things (IoT). Along with the enhanced connectivity and novel applications, privacy and security of the networks and the applications must be ensured. Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain provide one solution for application security and privacy, but introduce their own set of security and privacy risks. In this work, we discuss the opportunities and challenges related to blockchain usage in 6G, and map out possible directions for overtaking the challenges.

The next generation of telecommunication networks will integrate the latest developments and emerging advancements in telecommunications connectivity infrastructures. In this article, we discuss the transformation and convergence of the fifth-generation (5G) mobile network and the internet of things technologies, toward the emergence of the smart sixth-generation (6G) networks which will employ AI to optimize and automate their operation.

A new visualization user experience is expected to be empowered with XR technologies. XR accommodates a wide range of computerized reality technology, such as AR (Augmented Reality), MR (Mixed Reality), and VR (Virtual Reality). XR is providing more immerse and entertaining user experience. The number of devices increases and it is leveraging a wide range of applications. As consumer XR applications start to grow, it is important to understand the privacy threats. The author describes privacy threats in XR. First, the author discusses privacy threat elements. Second, the author describes a 3-dimensional model of privacy threats in XR. It clarifies the XR-specific privacy threats in addition to other sensor API-enabled applications.

With the development of Cyber Physical Systems, privacy issues become an important topics in the past few years. It is worthwhile to apply differential privacy, one of the most influential privacy definitions, in cyber physical system. However, as the essential idea of differential privacy is to release query results rather than entire datasets, a large volume of noise has to be introduced. To provide high quality services we need to decrease the correlation between large sets of queries, while to predict on newly entered queries. This paper transfers the data publishing problem in cyber physical systems to a machine learning problem, in which a prediction model will be shared with clients. The predict model is used to answer current submitted queries and predict results for newly entered queries from the public.

The development of the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks is gaining momentum to connect almost all aspects of life through the network with much higher speed, very low latency and ubiquitous connectivity. Due to its crucial role in our lives, the network must secure its users, components, and services. The security threat landscape of 5G has grown enormously due to the unprecedented increase in types of services and in the number of devices. Therefore, security solutions if not developed yet must be envisioned already to cope with diverse threats on various services, novel technologies, and increased user information accessible by the network. This paper outlines the 5G network threat landscape, the security vulnerabilities in the new technological concepts that will be adopted by 5G, and provides either solutions to those threats or future directions to cope with those security challenges. We also provide a brief outline of the post-5G cellular technologies and their security vulnerabilities which is referred to as future generations (XG) in this paper. In brief, this paper highlights the present and future security challenges in wireless networks, mainly in 5G, and future directions to secure wireless networks beyond 5G.

5G is a revolutionary technology in mobile telecommunications that promises to be 20x faster than today’s 4G technology. The novel characteristics of 5G can be exploited to support new business models and services that require seamless interactions among multiple parties that may include mobile operators, enterprises, telecom providers, government regulators, and infrastructure providers. Meanwhile, blockchain technology has evolved as an enabling, disruptive, and transformational technology that has started to be adopted across many industry vertical domains. Blockchain has been increasingly used to register, authenticate and validate assets and transactions, govern interactions, record data and manage the identification among multiple parties, in a trusted, decentralized, and secure manner. In this paper, we discuss and highlight how blockchain can be leveraged for 5G networks. First, an overview of blockchain capabilities as well as smart contracts, decentralized storage and trusted oracles are presented. Second, potential opportunities in which blockchain features are used to enable 5G services are outlined. Third, examples of system integration architecture and sequence flow diagrams to illustrate how blockchain along with other supporting decentralized technologies can support and facilitate such opportunities are discussed. Finally, key challenges and open research problems are identified and discussed.

Cellular-connected UAVs will inevitably be integrated into future cellular networks as new aerial mobile users. Providing cellular connectivity to UAVs will enable a myriad of applications ranging from online video streaming to medical delivery. However, to enable reliable wireless connectivity for the UAVs as well as secure operation, various challenges need to be addressed such as interference management, mobility management and handover, cyber-physical attacks, and authentication. In this article, the goal is to expose the wireless and security challenges that arise in the context of UAV-based delivery systems, UAV-based real-time multimedia streaming, and UAV-enabled intelligent transportation systems. To address such challenges, ANN-based solution schemes are introduced. The introduced approaches enable UAVs to adaptively exploit wireless system resources while guaranteeing secure operation in real time. Preliminary simulation results show the benefits of the introduced solutions for each of the aforementioned cellular-connected UAV application use cases.

Machine learning-based solutions have been successfully employed for the automatic detection of malware on Android. However, machine learning models lack robustness to adversarial examples, which are crafted by adding carefully chosen perturbations to the normal inputs. So far, the adversarial examples can only deceive detectors that rely on syntactic features (e.g., requested permissions, API calls, etc.), and the perturbations can only be implemented by simply modifying application’s manifest. While recent Android malware detectors rely more on semantic features from Dalvik bytecode rather than manifest, existing attacking/defending methods are no longer effective. In this paper, we introduce a new attacking method that generates adversarial examples of Android malware and evades being detected by the current models. To this end, we propose a method of applying optimal perturbations onto Android APK that can successfully deceive the machine learning detectors. We develop an automated tool to generate the adversarial examples without human intervention. In contrast to existing works, the adversarial examples crafted by our method can also deceive recent machine learning-based detectors that rely on semantic features such as control-flow-graph. The perturbations can also be implemented directly onto APK’s Dalvik bytecode rather than Android manifest to evade from recent detectors. We demonstrate our attack on two state-of-the-art Android malware detection schemes, MaMaDroid and Drebin. Our results show that the malware detection rates decreased from 96% to 0% in MaMaDroid, and from 97% to 0% in Drebin, with just a small number of codes to be inserted into the APK.

URLLC is one category of service to be provided by next-generation wireless networks. Motivated by increasing security concerns in such networks, this article focuses on physical layer security in the context of URLLC. The physical layer security technique mainly uses transmission designs based on the intrinsic randomness of the wireless medium to achieve secrecy. As such, physical layer security is of a lower complexity and incurs less latency than traditional cryptography. In this article, we first introduce appropriate performance metrics for evaluating physical layer security in URLLC and investigate the trade-off between latency, reliability, and security. We then identify the key challenging problems for achieving physical layer security in URLLC, and discuss the role that channel state information can have in providing potential solutions to these problems. Finally, we present our recommendations on future research directions in this emerging area.

This paper considers physical layer security enhancement mechanisms that utilize simultaneous beamforming and jamming in visible light communication systems with a randomly located eavesdropper under the assumption that there are multiple light-emitting diode (LED) transmitters and one intended user. When an eavesdropper with an augmented front-end receiver is present, the jamming is very useful for preventing the eavesdropper from wiretapping the information since it is not possible to extract only the information component from the received signal if the jamming signal is random. Thus, in this paper, an optimization problem is formulated with a focus on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio for the legitimate link, and it is solved by a heuristic method called the concave-convex procedure. Then, a ternary scheme is proposed, which is less complicated than the full (joint) scheme, and it is optimized by adopting a formulation based on an assignment problem, the solution of which is effectively obtained by the so-called tabu search procedure. In addition, the problem of maximizing the average secrecy rate is investigated by utilizing a continuous LED model, which significantly relaxes the complication that rises from calculating the expectation with respect to the location of the eavesdropper. Our analysis and simulation results show that the proposed simultaneous beamforming and jamming strategies (both joint and ternary) are good proxies for maximizing the average secrecy rate by utilizing the statistical information on the eavesdropper’s random location.

Blockchain and AI are promising techniques for next-generation wireless networks. Blockchain can establish a secure and decentralized resource sharing environment. AI can be explored to solve problems with uncertain, time-variant, and complex features. Both of these techniques have recently seen a surge in interest. The integration of these two techniques can further enhance the performance of wireless networks. In this article, we first propose a secure and intelligent architecture for next-generation wireless networks by integrating AI and blockchain into wireless networks to enable flexible and secure resource sharing. Then we propose a blockchain empowered content caching problem to maximize system utility, and develop a new caching scheme by utilizing deep reinforcement learning. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

5G wireless communications technology is being launched, with many smart applications being integrated. However, 5G specifications meagre the requirements of new emerging technologies forcefully. These include data rate, capacity, latency, reliability, resources sharing, and energy/bit. To meet these challenging demands, research is focusing on 6G wireless communications enabling different technologies and emerging new applications. In this paper, the latest research work on 6G technologies and applications is summarized, and the associated research challenges are discussed.

In this article, we introduce a new multiple-access method, delta-orthogonal multiple access (D-OMA), for massive access in future 6G cellular networks. D-OMA is based on the concept of distributed large coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission-enabled nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) using partially overlapping subbands for NOMA clusters. We demonstrate the performance of this scheme in terms of outage capacity for different degrees of NOMA subband overlapping. In addition, we propose a novel D-OMA-based physical-layer security scheme to enhance security provisioning in both uplink and downlink wireless access networks. Finally, we discuss practical implementation issues and open challenges for optimizing D-OMA.

The rapid growth of consumer unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is creating promising new business opportunities for cellular operators. On the one hand, UAVs can be connected to cellular networks as new types of user equipment, therefore generating significant revenues for the operators that can guarantee their stringent service requirements. On the other hand, UAVs offer the unprecedented opportunity to realize UAV-mounted flying base stations (BSs) that can dynamically reposition themselves to boost coverage, spectral efficiency, and user quality of experience. Indeed, the standardization bodies are currently exploring possibilities for serving commercial UAVs with cellular networks. Industries are beginning to trial early prototypes of flying BSs or user equipments, while academia is in full swing researching mathematical and algorithmic solutions to address interesting new problems arising from flying nodes in cellular networks. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of all of these developments promoting smooth integration of UAVs into cellular networks. Specifically, we survey: 1) the types of consumer UAVs currently available off-the-shelf; 2) the interference issues and potential solutions addressed by standardization bodies for serving aerial users with the existing terrestrial BSs; 3) the challenges and opportunities for assisting cellular communications with UAV-based flying relays and BSs; 4) the ongoing prototyping and test bed activities; 5) the new regulations being developed to manage the commercial use of UAVs; and 6) the cyber-physical security of UAV-assisted cellular communications.

Ambient backscatter employs existing radio frequency (RF) signals in the environment to support sustainable and independent communications, thereby providing a new set of applications that promote the Internet of Things (IoT). However, nondirectional forms of communication are prone to information leakage. In order to ensure the security of the IoT communication system, in this paper, we propose a machine learning based antenna design scheme, which achieves directional communication from the relay tag to the receiving reader by combining patch antenna with log-periodic dual-dipole antenna (LPDA). A multiobjective genetic algorithm optimizes the antenna side lobe, gain, standing wave ratio, and return loss, with a goal of limiting the number of large side lobes and reduce the side lobe level (SLL). The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed antenna design is well suited for practical applications in physical layer security communication, where signal-to-noise ratio of the wiretap channel is reduced, communication quality of the main channel is ensured, and information leakage is prevented.

While 5G is being commercialized worldwide, research institutions around the world have started to look beyond 5G and 6G is expected to evolve into green networks, which deliver high Quality of Service and energy efficiency. To meet the demands of future applications, significant improvements need to be made in mobile network architecture. We envision 6G undergoing unprecedented breakthrough and integrating traditional terrestrial mobile networks with emerging space, aerial and underwater networks to provide anytime anywhere network access. This paper presents a detailed survey on wireless evolution towards 6G networks. In this survey, the prime focus is on the new architectural changes associated with 6G networks, characterized by ubiquitous 3D coverage, introduction of pervasive AI and enhanced network protocol stack. Along with this, we discuss related potential technologies that are helpful in forming sustainable and socially seamless networks, encompassing terahertz and visible light communication, new communication paradigm, blockchain and symbiotic radio. Our work aims to provide enlightening guidance for subsequent research of green 6G.

As the wireless and mobile world is turning its interest into beyond 5G development, industry and research community are gradually taking up this colossal challenge. This paper discusses the readiness and capacity needed to develop beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G technology and their associated businesses and applications. The wireless landscape is analyzed in different timeframes covering roughly the period between 2020 and 2030, the decade where B5G and 6G are expected to be fully developed. After discussing relevant trends and key requirements needed to develop B5G and 6G in general, the paper will consider, as a particular example, the current development and readiness of Finland. With a strong background in 5G, Finland is one of the first countries to start doing 6G development following a large research project where key industrial and academic players of the country participate. Hopefully, the conceived developing path to 6G presented in this paper will serve a motivational guide to other developers.

Thanks to recent enormous advance of mobile and vehicular technology, it is highly expected that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used for various applications in smart cities as well as the number of flying UAVs in the sky is increasing explosively. However, such a proliferation of UAVs accompanies additional critical issues to be considered for efficient, secure use of UAVs. One of important issues should be the privacy of people. When the UAVs fly to perform specific objectives, minimizing movements of UAVs is an important issue to minimize mission completion time and to maximize the network lifetime of UAVs. To do so, one intuitive solution is that UAVs may pass through private area of citizens whereas people do not want any penetration into own area without a permission. For those situations, we may take into account a compromise so that people can decide whether they give a differential, temporal permission for each UAV to access their areas depending on specific benefits by use of UAVs or emergent situation for public safety. In this study, we introduce a framework for privacy preserving movements of UAVs with differential UAVs’ permissions given by citizens, which is called as UAVs’ differential privacy preserving movements (UDiPP). Then, using integer linear programming, we formally define a problem whose objective is to minimize total movements of UAVs with preserving privacy of citizens. To solve the problem, we propose a novel approach with a creation of UDiPP graph and then evaluate its performance through extensive simulations.

The recent upsurge of diversified mobile applications, especially those supported by AI, is spurring heated discussions on the future evolution of wireless communications. While 5G is being deployed around the world, efforts from industry and academia have started to look beyond 5G and conceptualize 6G. We envision 6G to undergo an unprecedented transformation that will make it substantially different from the previous generations of wireless cellular systems. In particular, 6G will go beyond mobile Internet and will be required to support ubiquitous AI services from the core to the end devices of the network. Meanwhile, AI will play a critical role in designing and optimizing 6G architectures, protocols, and operations. In this article, we discuss potential technologies for 6G to enable mobile AI applications, as well as AI-enabled methodologies for 6G network design and optimization. Key trends in the evolution to 6G will also be discussed.

The relentless growth of wireless applications and data traffic continues to accentuate the long felt need for decentralized, self-managed, and cooperative network architectures. Enlightened by the power of blockchain technology, we propose a blockchain radio access network (B-RAN) architecture and develop decentralized, secure, and efficient mechanisms to manage network access and authentication among inherently trustless network entities. We further identify promising advanced functions made possible by adopting blockchain for open radio access networks. Our test results demonstrate the benefits of the B-RAN architecture. We also present a number of challenges and future research directions.

Edge computing, a key part of the upcoming 5G mobile networks and future 6G technologies, promises to distribute cloud applications while providing more bandwidth and reducing latencies [1]. The promises are delivered by moving application-specific computations between the cloud, the data producing devices, and the network infrastructure compo- nents at the edges of wireless and fixed networks. In stark contrast, current artificial intelligence (AI) and in particular machine learning (ML) methods assume computations are conducted in a homogeneous cloud with ample computa- tional and data storage resources available. Currently, AI’s cloud-centric architectural model requires transmitting data from the end-user devices to the cloud, consuming significant data transmission resources and introducing latencies.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the emerging research area of mobile molecular communication. In mobile molecular communication, sender and receiver bionanomachines as well as associated nodes in the environment exhibit dynamic behavior in the sense that they are mobile and communicate while they move. This paper presents a model of mobile bionanomachines and uses the model to discuss how groups of such bionanomachines working in unison can provide useful functionalities. This paper illustrates several functionalities by applying mobile molecular communication to the concept of cooperative drug delivery. Unsolved research challenges in this area are outlined and discussed.

The upcoming fifth generation (5G) of wireless networks is expected to lay a foundation of intelligent networks with the provision of some isolated artificial intelligence (AI) operations. However, fully intelligent network orchestration and management for providing innovative services will only be realized in Beyond 5G (B5G) networks. To this end, we envisage that the sixth generation (6G) of wireless networks will be driven by on-demand self-reconfiguration to ensure a many-fold increase in the network performance and service types. The increasingly stringent performance requirements of emerging networks may finally trigger the deployment of some interesting new technologies, such as large intelligent surfaces, electromagnetic-orbital angular momentum, visible light communications, and cell-free communications, to name a few. Our vision for 6G is a massively connected complex network capable of rapidly responding to the users’ service calls through real-time learning of the network state as described by the network edge (e.g., base-station locations and cache contents), air interface (e.g., radio spectrum and propagation channel), and the user-side (e.g., battery-life and locations). The multi-state, multi-dimensional nature of the network state, requiring the real-time knowledge, can be viewed as a quantum uncertainty problem. In this regard, the emerging paradigms of machine learning (ML), quantum computing (QC), and quantum ML (QML) and their synergies with communication networks can be considered as core 6G enablers. Considering these potentials, starting with the 5G target services and enabling technologies, we provide a comprehensive review of the related state of the art in the domains of ML (including deep learning), QC, and QML and identify their potential benefits, issues, and use cases for their applications in the B5G networks. Subsequently, we propose a novel QC-assisted and QML-based framework for 6G communication networks while articulating its challenges and potential enabling technologies at the network infrastructure, network edge, air interface, and user end. Finally, some promising future research directions for the quantum- and QML-assisted B5G networks are identified and discussed.

Automated valet parking, deemed as a key milestone on the way to autonomous driving, has great potential to improve the “last-mile” driving experience for users. On the other hand, it triggers serious risks on vehicle theft and location privacy leakage. To address these issues, we propose a secure and privacy-preserving automated valet parking protocol for self-driving vehicles. The proposed protocol is characterized by extending anonymous authentication to support two-factor authentication with mutual traceability for reducing the risks of vehicle theft and preventing the privacy leakage of users in automated valet parking. Specifically, based on one-time password and secure mobile devices, two-factor authentication is achieved between vehicles and smartphones to ensure vehicle security in remote pickup. By exploiting the BBS+ signature and the Cuckoo filter, user location privacy is protected against the curious parking lots and service providers. In addition, the traceable tags are designed to enable a trusted authority to identify the vehicles and users for localizing a stolen or missing vehicle and preventing the slandering of greedy users. Finally, formal security analysis on the proposed protocol is given to show that the authentication, anonymity, and traceability can be reduced to standard hard assumptions, and performance evaluation demonstrates the proposed protocol is efficient and practical to be implemented in autonomous driving era.

The ongoing deployment of 5G cellular systems is continuously exposing the inherent limitations of this system, compared to its original premise as an enabler for Internet of Everything applications. These 5G drawbacks are spurring worldwide activities focused on defining the next-generation 6G wireless system that can truly integrate far-reaching applications ranging from autonomous systems to extended reality. Despite recent 6G initiatives (one example is the 6Genesis project in Finland), the fundamental architectural and performance components of 6G remain largely undefined. In this article, we present a holistic, forward-looking vision that defines the tenets of a 6G system. We opine that 6G will not be a mere exploration of more spectrum at high-frequency bands, but it will rather be a convergence of upcoming technological trends driven by exciting, underlying services. In this regard, we first identify the primary drivers of 6G systems, in terms of applications and accompanying technological trends. Then, we propose a new set of service classes and expose their target 6G performance requirements. We then identify the enabling technologies for the introduced 6G services and outline a comprehensive research agenda that leverages those technologies. We conclude by providing concrete recommendations for the roadmap toward 6G. Ultimately, the intent of this article is to serve as a basis for stimulating more out-of-the-box research around 6G.

Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become alternative approaches in wireless networks beside conventional approaches such as model based solution concepts. Whereas traditional design concepts include the modelling of the behaviour of the underlying processes, AI based approaches allow to design network functions by learning from input data which is supposed to get mapped to specific outputs (training). Additionally, new input/output relations can be learnt during the deployement phase of the function (online learning) and make AI based solutions flexible, in order to react to new situations. Especially, new introduced use cases such as Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) and Massive Machine Type Communications (MMTC) in 5G make this approach necessary, as the network complexity is further enhanced compared to networks mainly designed for human driven traffic (4G, 5G xMBB). The focus of this paper is to illustrate exemplary applications of AI techniques at the Physical Layer (PHY) of future wireless systems and therfore they can be seen as candidate technologies for e.g. 6G systems.

The current development of 5G networks represents a breakthrough in the design of communication networks, for its ability to provide a single platform enabling a variety of different services, from enhanced mobile broadband communications, automated driving, Internet-of-Things, with its huge number of connected devices, etc. Nevertheless, looking at the current development of technologies and new services, it is already possible to envision the need to move beyond 5G with a new architecture incorporating new services and technologies. The goal of this paper is to motivate the need to move to a sixth generation (6G) of mobile communication networks, starting from a gap analysis of 5G, and predicting a new synthesis of near future services, like hologram interfaces, ambient sensing intelligence, a pervasive introduction of artificial intelligence and the incorporation of technologies, like TeraHertz (THz) or Visible Light Communications (VLC), 3-dimensional coverage.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication is the rising technology for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based relay networks for the abundant bandwidth and short wavelength. However, the secrecy performance of mmWave SWIPT UAV-based relay systems has not been investigated so far. In this paper, we consider secure transmissions of mmWave SWIPT UAV-based relay systems in the presence of multiple independent homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP) eavesdroppers. Different from most existing works considering a free-space path loss model, the air-to-ground channels are modeled as Nakagami-m small-scale fading, and the effects of blockage to mmWave links on the ground and the 3D antenna gain model are considered. The closed-form expressions of the average achievable secrecy rate and energy coverage probability for amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relay protocols under power splitting (PS) SWIPT policy are derived to reveal the impact of various parameters on system performance. The simulation results show that there is the optimal UAV position to maximize the secrecy rate and the optimal position is closer to the node whose transmit power is relatively small. Furthermore, different carrier frequencies are suitable for different eavesdropping node density.

As a powerful tool, the vehicular network has been built to connect human communication and transportation around the world for many years to come. However, with the rapid growth of vehicles, the vehicular network becomes heterogeneous, dynamic, and large scaled, which makes it difficult to meet the strict requirements, such as ultralow latency, high reliability, high security, and massive connections of the next-generation (6G) network. Recently, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) technique to make both the vehicle and wireless communication highly efficient and adaptable. Naturally, employing ML into vehicular communication and network becomes a hot topic and is being widely studied in both academia and industry, paving the way for the future intelligentization in 6G vehicular networks. In this article, we provide a survey on various ML techniques applied to communication, networking, and security parts in vehicular networks and envision the ways of enabling AI toward a future 6G vehicular network, including the evolution of intelligent radio (IR), network intelligentization, and self-learning with proactive exploration.

While 5G is being tested worldwide and anticipated to be rolled out gradually in 2019, researchers around the world are beginning to turn their attention to what 6G might be in 10+ years time, and there are already initiatives in various countries focusing on the research of possible 6G technologies. This article aims to extend the vision of 5G to more ambitious scenarios in a more distant future and speculates on the visionary technologies that could provide the step changes needed for enabling 6G.

The capability of short message service (SMS) of Beidou navigation system (BDS) is an advantage over the GPS. Text-only SMS hinders the applicability of BDS. The global voice chat has been designed & tested over the BDS SMS, which can transmit voices of 2 seconds in a single 78-byte message. Field tests have been completed between two sites far apart over 2,500 km, one in the city of Xi’an and the other onboard a ship in the South China Sea. Results have shown that the voice chat over the BDS SMS is available to any subscriber even he cannot type a single word. More than 90% of interaction time is saved and authentication security is enhanced. The global voice chat is an effective supplement to the outdoor emergency communication systems nowadays.

With the advancement of mobile crowd sensing systems and vehicular ad hoc networks, the human-carried mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, smart navigators, and smart tablets) equipped with a variety of sensors (such as GPS, accelerometer, and compass) can work together to collect sensory data consequently delivered to the cloud for processing purposes, which supports a wide range of promising applications such as traffic monitoring, path planning, and real-time navigation. To ensure the authenticity and privacy of data, privacy-preserving truth discovery has attracted much attention since it can find reliable information among uneven quality of data collected from mobile users, while protecting both the confidentiality of users’ raw sensory data and reliability. However, these methods always incur tremendous overhead and require all participants to keep online for interacting frequently with the cloud server. In this paper, we design an efficient and privacy-preserving truth discovery (EPTD) approach in mobile crowd sensing systems, which can tolerate users offline at any stage, while guaranteeing practical efficiency and accuracy under working process. More notably, our EPTD is the first solution to resolve the problem that users must be online all times during the truth discovery under a single cloud server setting. Moreover, we design a double-masking protocol to ensure the strong security of users’ privacy even if the cloud server colludes with multiple users. Extensive experiments conducted on real-world mobile crowd sensing systems also demonstrate the high performance of our proposed scheme compared with existing models.

With the fast development of smart terminals and emerging new applications (e.g., real-time and interactive services), wireless data traffic has drastically increased, and current cellular networks (even the forthcoming 5G) cannot completely match the quickly rising technical requirements. To meet the coming challenges, the sixth generation (6G) mobile network is expected to cast the high technical standard of new spectrum and energy-efficient transmission techniques. In this article, we sketch the potential requirements and present an overview of the latest research on the promising techniques evolving to 6G, which have recently attracted considerable attention. Moreover, we outline a number of key technical challenges as well as the potential solutions associated with 6G, including physical-layer transmission techniques, network designs, security approaches, and testbed developments.

A key enabler for the intelligent information society of 2030, 6G networks are expected to provide performance superior to 5G and satisfy emerging services and applications. In this article, we present our vision of what 6G will be and describe usage scenarios and requirements for multi-terabyte per second (Tb/s) and intelligent 6G networks. We present a large-dimensional and autonomous network architecture that integrates space, air, ground, and underwater networks to provide ubiquitous and unlimited wireless connectivity. We also discuss artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for autonomous networks and innovative air-interface design. Finally, we identify several promising technologies for the 6G ecosystem, including terahertz (THz) communications, very-large-scale antenna arrays [i.e., supermassive (SM) multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO)], large intelligent surfaces (LISs) and holographic beamforming (HBF), orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing, laser and visible-light communications (VLC), blockchain-based spectrum sharing, quantum communications and computing, molecular communications, and the Internet of Nano-Things.

Privacy preserving in machine learning is a crucial issue in industry informatics since data used for training in industries usually contain sensitive information. Existing differentially private machine learning algorithms have not considered the impact of data correlation, which may lead to more privacy leakage than expected in industrial applications. For example, data collected for traffic monitoring may contain some correlated records due to temporal correlation or user correlation. To fill this gap, in this article, we propose a correlation reduction scheme with differentially private feature selection considering the issue of privacy loss when data have correlation in machine learning tasks. The proposed scheme involves five steps with the goal of managing the extent of data correlation, preserving the privacy, and supporting accuracy in the prediction results. In this way, the impact of data correlation is relieved with the proposed feature selection scheme, and moreover the privacy issue of data correlation in learning is guaranteed. The proposed method can be widely used in machine learning algorithms, which provide services in industrial areas. Experiments show that the proposed scheme can produce better prediction results with machine learning tasks and fewer mean square errors for data queries compared to existing schemes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has attracted a large amount of attention in recent years. However, several new problems, such as privacy violations, security issues, or effectiveness, have been emerging. Differential privacy has several attractive properties that make it quite valuable for AI, such as privacy preservation, security, randomization, composition, and stability. Therefore, this paper presents differential privacy mechanisms for multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, and knowledge transfer based on those properties, which proves that current AI can benefit from differential privacy mechanisms. In addition, the previous usage of differential privacy mechanisms in private machine learning, distributed machine learning, and fairness in models is discussed, bringing several possible avenues to use differential privacy mechanisms in AI. The purpose of this paper is to deliver the initial idea of how to integrate AI with differential privacy mechanisms and to explore more possibilities to improve AIs performance.

Resiliency against eavesdropping and other security threats has become one of the key design considerations for communication systems. As wireless systems become ubiquitous, there is an increasing need for security protocols at all levels, including software (such as encryption), hardware (such as trusted platform modules) and the physical layer (such as wave-front engineering). With the inevitable shift to higher carrier frequencies, especially in the terahertz range (above 100 gigahertz), an important consideration is the decreased angular divergence (that is, the increased directionality) of transmitted signals, owing to the reduced effects of diffraction on waves with shorter wavelengths. In recent years, research on wireless devices and systems that operate at terahertz frequencies has ramped up markedly. These high-frequency, narrow-angle broadcasts present a more challenging environment for eavesdroppers compared to the wide-area broadcasts used at lower frequencies. However, despite the widespread assumption of improved security for high-frequency wireless data links, the possibility of terahertz eavesdropping has not yet been characterized. A few recent studies have considered the issue at lower frequencies, but generally with the idea that the eavesdropper’s antenna must be located within the broadcast sector of the transmitting antenna, leading to the conclusion that eavesdropping becomes essentially impossible when the transmitted signal has sufficiently high directionality. Here we demonstrate that, contrary to this expectation, an eavesdropper can intercept signals in line-of-sight transmissions, even when they are transmitted at high frequencies with narrow beams. The eavesdropper’s techniques are different from those for lower-frequency transmissions, as they involve placing an object in the path of the transmission to scatter radiation towards the eavesdropper. We also discuss one counter-measure for this eavesdropping technique, which involves characterizing the backscatter of the channel. We show that this counter-measure can be used to detect some, although not all, eavesdroppers. Our work highlights the importance of physical-layer security in terahertz wireless networks and the need for transceiver designs that incorporate new counter-measures.

LiFi (Light-fidelity) is known as a networked visible light communication (VLC) system, which is able to deliver high speed broadband services to a large number of mobile users with multiple access and mobility support. In order to achieve this VLC-based network, a reliable high speed uplink connection is essential and wireless infrared (IR) communication is found to be a promising solution. However, it is challenging to use unidirectional wireless IR transmitters and receivers to achieve reliable uplink connections. In order to enhance the uplink channel quality in LiFi systems, we propose a transmitter and receiver design with omnidirectional characteristics. The proposed designs have been validated by experiments. In addition, simulation studies show that by using the proposed transmitter/receiver, the quality and the robustness of the LiFi uplink channel can be improved.

Mobile networking to achieve the ultra-low latency goal of 1 msec enables massive operation of autonomous vehicles and other intelligent mobile machines, and emerges as one of the most critical technologies beyond 5G mobile communications and state-of-the-art vehicular networks. Introducing fog computing and proactive network association, realizing virtual cell by integrating open-loop radio transmission and error control, and innovating anticipatory mobility management through machine learning, opens a new avenue toward ultra-low latency mobile networking.

Conceptually, the blockchain is a distributed database containing records of transactions that are shared among participating members. Each transaction is confirmed by the consensus of a majority of the members, making fraudulent transactions unable to pass collective confirmation. Once a record is created and accepted by the blockchain, it can never be altered or disappear. Nowadays the blockchain technology is considered as the most significant invention after the Internet. If the latter connects people to realize on-line business processes, the former could decide the trust problem by peer-to-peer networking and public-key cryptography. The purpose of this paper is to consider on distinct use cases at the all-pervasive impact of the blockchain technology and look at this as an inalienable part of our daily life.

This paper describes how distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) can be used to enforce social contracts and to orchestrate the behavior of agents trying to access a shared resource. The first part of this paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of using DLTs architectures to implement certain control systems in an Internet of Things (IoT) setting and then focuses on a specific type of DLT based on a directed acyclic graph. In this setting, we propose a set of delay differential equations to describe the dynamical behavior of the Tangle, an IoT-inspired directed acyclic graph designed for the cryptocurrency IOTA. The second part proposes an application of DLTs as a mechanism for dynamic deposit pricing, wherein the deposit of digital currency is used to orchestrate access to a network of shared resources. The pricing signal is used as a mechanism to enforce the desired level of compliance according to a predetermined set of rules. After presenting an illustrative example, we analyze the control system and provide sufficient conditions for the stability of the network.

The Blockchain is the newest and perspective technology in modern economy. This technology can help to solve different kind of problems in the industrial sphere, such as trust, transparency, security and reliability of data processing. In theory, the use of Blockchain technology shows great and positive results, but what can say about practice? In this paper the description of the Blockchain technology, and it advantages and disadvantages are analyzed. Many already implemented applications of Blockchain technology were studied, as well as affected success or problems factors during the implementations. This paper aim is to analyze conveniences and difficulties, related to the Blockchain integration and implementation in the different fields of modern industry.

Quantum information processing exploits the quantum nature of information. It offers fundamentally new solutions in the field of computer science and extends the possibilities to a level that cannot be imagined in classical communication systems. For quantum communication channels, many new capacity definitions were developed in comparison to classical counterparts. A quantum channel can be used to realize classical information transmission or to deliver quantum information, such as quantum entanglement. Here we review the properties of the quantum communication channel, the various capacity measures and the fundamental differences between the classical and quantum channels

The next-generation wireless networks are evolving into very complex systems because of the very diversified service requirements, heterogeneity in applications, devices, and networks. The network operators need to make the best use of the available resources, for example, power, spectrum, as well as infrastructures. Traditional networking approaches, i.e., reactive, centrally-managed, one-size-fits-all approaches, and conventional data analysis tools that have limited capability (space and time) are not competent anymore and cannot satisfy and serve that future complex networks regarding operation and optimization cost effectively. A novel paradigm of proactive, self-aware, self-adaptive, and predictive networking is much needed. The network operators have access to large amounts of data, especially from the network and the subscribers. Systematic exploitation of the big data dramatically helps in making the system smart, intelligent, and facilitates efficient as well as cost-effective operation and optimization. We envision data-driven next-generation wireless networks, where the network operators employ advanced data analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence. We discuss the data sources and strong drivers for the adoption of the data analytics, and the role of ML, artificial intelligence in making the system intelligent regarding being self-aware, self-adaptive, proactive and prescriptive. A set of network design and optimization schemes are presented concerning data analytics. This paper concludes with a discussion of challenges and the benefits of adopting big data analytics, ML, and artificial intelligence in the next-generation communication systems.

In this article, we propose a blockchain verification protocol as a method for enabling and securing spectrum sharing in moving cognitive radio (CR) networks. The spectrum-sharing mechanism is used as a medium-access protocol for accessing wireless bandwidth among competing CRs. We introduce a virtual currency, called Specoins, for payment to access the spectrum. An auction mechanism based on a first-come-first-served queue is used, with the price for the spectrum advertised by each primary user in a decentralized fashion. The blockchain protocol facilitates the transactions between primary and secondary users and is used to validate and save each user’s virtual wallet. Also important for mobile networks, the blockchain serves as a distributed database that is visible by all participating parties, and any node can volunteer to update the blockchain. The volunteer nodes are called miners, and they are awarded with Specoins. We propose diverse methods to exchange the Specoins to make leasing possible even by CRs that are not miners. We show the improvement of the proposed algorithm compared with the conventional Aloha medium-access protocol in terms of spectrum usage. This difference is investigated using small-scale fading variation in the wireless channel to compare the performance of our secure method with the conventional medium access used in vehicular communications. The secure blockchain verification protocol is not only secure but also outperforms the conventional system in moderate cases of small-scale fading. In the case of severe small-scale fading, the blockchain protocol will outperform the conventional system if multipath diversity is not used.

Blockchain has many benefits including decentralization, availability, persistency, consistency, anonymity, auditability and accountability, and it also covers a wide spectrum of applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services, reputation system, Internet of Things, sharing economy to public and social services. Not only may blockchain be regarded as a by-product of Bitcoin cryptocurrency systems, but also it is a type of distributed ledger technologies through using a trustworthy, decentralized log of totally ordered transactions. By summarizing the literature of blockchain, it is found that more and more important research is to develop basic theory, for example, mathematical models (Markov processes, queueing theory and game models) for mining management and consensus mechanism, performance analysis and optimization of blockchain systems. In this paper, we develop queueing theory of blockchain systems and provide system performance evaluation. To do this, we design a Markovian batch-service queueing system with two different service stages, which are suitable to well express the mining process in the miners pool and the building of a new blockchain. By using the matrix-geometric solution, we obtain a system stable condition and express three key performance measures: (a) The average number of transactions in the queue, (b) the average number of transactions in a block, and (c) the average transaction-confirmation time. Finally, we use numerical examples to verify computability of our theoretical results. Although our queueing model here is simple only under exponential or Poisson assumptions, our analytic method will open a series of potentially promising research in queueing theory of blockchain systems.

Providing ubiquitous connectivity to diverse device types is the key challenge for 5G and beyond 5G (B5G). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to be an important component of the upcoming wireless networks that can potentially facilitate wireless broadcast and support high rate transmissions. Compared to the communications with fixed infrastructure, UAV has salient attributes, such as flexible deployment, strong line-of-sight connection links, and additional design degrees of freedom with the controlled mobility. In this paper, a comprehensive survey on UAV communication toward 5G/B5G wireless networks is presented. We first briefly introduce essential background and the space-air-ground integrated networks, as well as discuss related research challenges faced by the emerging integrated network architecture. We then provide an exhaustive review of various 5G techniques based on UAV platforms, which we categorize by different domains, including physical layer, network layer, and joint communication, computing, and caching. In addition, a great number of open research problems are outlined and identified as possible future research directions.

Network functions virtualization (NFV), along with software-defined networking (SDN), drives a new change in networking infrastructure with respect to designing, deploying, and managing various network services. In particular, NFV has potential to significantly reduce the hardware cost, greatly improve operational efficiency, and dramatically shorten the development lifecycle of network service. It also makes network functions and services much more adaptive and scalable. Despite the promising advantages of NFV, security remains to be one of the vital concerns and potential hurdle, as attack surface becomes unclear and defense line turns to be blurred in the virtualization environment. This survey is therefore devoted to analyzing NFV from a security perspective. We first analyze security threats of five well-defined NFV use cases, with an objective to establishing a comprehensive layer-specific threat taxonomy. Second, we conduct in-depth comparative studies on several security mechanisms that are applied in traditional scenarios and in NFV environments. The purpose is to analyze their implicit relationships with NFV performance objectives in terms of feasibility, agility, effectiveness, and so on. Third, based on the established threat taxonomy and the analyzed security mechanisms, we provide a set of recommendations on securing NFV based services, along with the analysis on the state-of-the-art security countermeasures. A resulting holistic security framework is intended to lay a foundation for NFV service providers to deploy adaptive, scalable, and cost-effective security hardening based on their particular needs. Some future research directions are finally discussed.

The fifth generation of cellular mobile communication networks is on the horizon and aims to integrate new vertical markets. In this article, we discuss professional wireless audio systems used for live productions as a future use case for 5G. Wireless live audio productions require high communication reliability as well as ultra-low signal delay. Furthermore, these services demand strict synchronization of devices to function properly. The need for low latency and for precise time and phase synchronization goes beyond what is currently under discussion in the context of URLLC. We seize on this aspect, discuss how isochronous data transmission can be implemented and integrated into 5G networks, and show similarities with other 5G verticals such as industrial automation.

The blockchain is emerging as one of the most propitious and ingenious technologies of cybersecurity. In its germinal state, the technology has successfully replaced economic transaction systems in various organizations and has the potential to revamp heterogeneous business models in different industries. Although it promises a secure distributed framework to facilitate sharing, exchanging, and the integration of information across all users and third parties, it is important for the planners and decision makers to analyze it in depth for its suitability in their industry and business applications. The blockchain should be deployed only if it is applicable and provides security with better opportunities for obtaining increased revenue and reductions in cost. This article presents an overview of this technology for the realization of security across distributed parties in an impregnable and transparent way.

Blockchain technology, founded a decade ago, has created a technological and innovative boost among industry and academia. Blockchain is a type of a decentralized distributed ledger where encrypted transactions of digital assets are recorded in an incorruptible manner. Numerous benefits and applications of Blockchains have resulted in it becoming increasingly popular among a broad spectrum of businesses. This research paper is based on the literature synthesis carried out on blockchain technology and its applications. Blockchain consists of several unique features such as decentralization, anonymity, security, immutability, trust among others. These features emphasise and fascinate users to adopt blockchain in various other industries. A public blockchain is open to any user who wishes to transact while a private blockchain is more controlled by its users. In a public blockchain miners validate the transactions and until most nodes reach consensus, the transactions will not be recorded in the block. In a private blockchain, a permissioned member of the blockchain would validate the transaction. Blockchain has revolutionized many industries by identifying various markets and opportunities and introducing various blockchain applications. Whereas Blockchain 1.0 was initially used for cryptocurrencies, Blockchain 2.0 is recognized for economic, market and financial applications and Blockchain 3.0 for applications beyond currency, finance and markets. This research intends to use Blockchain 3.0 applications where decentralized accounting process used in blockchains, will be applied to the purpose of accounting embodied carbon in construction supply chains.

The development of light detection and ranging, Radar, camera, and other advanced sensor technologies inaugurated a new era in autonomous driving. However, due to the intrinsic limitations of these sensors, autonomous vehicles are prone to making erroneous decisions and causing serious disasters. At this point, networking and communication technologies can greatly make up for sensor deficiencies, and are more reliable, feasible and efficient to promote the information interaction, thereby improving autonomous vehicle’s perception and planning capabilities as well as realizing better vehicle control. This paper surveys the networking and communication technologies in autonomous driving from two aspects: intra- and inter-vehicle. The intra-vehicle network as the basis of realizing autonomous driving connects the on-board electronic parts. The inter-vehicle network is the medium for interaction between vehicles and outside information. In addition, we present the new trends of communication technologies in autonomous driving, as well as investigate the current mainstream verification methods and emphasize the challenges and open issues of networking and communications in autonomous driving.

With the technological advancement and convergence of satellite communications, the Internet, and mobile wireless networking, the STIN has been envisioned. In this article, we introduce a potential architecture of STIN that integrates the extended space network, the Internet, and mobile wireless networks to provide comprehensive services and global anytime anywhere network access. The extended space network, being the most complex component of STIN, consists of the space-backbone of several GEO satellites, the terrestrial backbone of data centers and ground access nodes, and the space access network comprised of various satellites at different orbits and other space objects. We present a number of key technical challenges associated with STIN, including physical-layer transmission technologies, network protocols, routing, resource management, security, and test-bed development.

The emergence of MCS technologies provides a cost-efficient solution to accommodate large-scale sensing tasks. However, despite the potential benefits of MCS, there are several critical issues that remain to be solved, such as lack of incentive-compatible mechanisms for recruiting participants, lack of data validation, and high traffic load and latency. This motivates us to develop robust mobile crowd sensing (RMCS), a framework that integrates deep learning based data validation and edge computing based local processing. First, we present a comprehensive state-of-the-art literature review. Then, the conceptual design architecture of RMCS and practical implementations are described in detail. Next, a case study of smart transportation is provided to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed RMCS framework. Finally, we identify several open issues and conclude the article.

Greenhouse gas emission by the increasing number of vehicles have become a significant problem in modern cities. To save energy and protect environment, recommending fuel-efficient routes to drivers becomes a promising way to alleviate this issue. To this end, in this paper, we present a novel fuel-efficient path-planning framework called GreenPlanner, which contains two phases. In the first phase, we build a personalized fuel consumption model (PFCM) for each driver, based on the individual driving behaviors and the physical features (e.g., traffic lights, stop signs, road network topology) along the routes. In the second phase, with the real-time traffic information collected via the mobile crowdsensing manner, we are able to estimate and compare the cost fuel among different routes for a given driver, and recommend him/her with the most fuel-efficient one. We evaluate the two-phase framework using the real-world datasets, consisting of road network, POI, the GPS trajectory data and the OBD-II data generated by 559 taxis in one day in the city of Beijing, China. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to the baseline models, the proposed model achieves the best accuracy, with a mean fuel consumption error of less 7% for paths longer than 10 km. Moreover, users could save about 20% fuel consumption on average if driving along our suggested routes in our case studies.

An efficient physical layer security technique, referred to as OFDM with subcarrier index selection (OFDM-SIS), is proposed for safeguarding the transmission of OFDM-based waveforms against eavesdropping in 5G and beyond wireless networks. This is achieved by developing a joint optimal subcarrier index selection (SIS) and adaptive interleaving (AI) design, which enables providing two levels (sources) of security in time division duplexing (TDD) mode: one is generated by the optimal selection of the subcarrier indices that can maximize the signal-to-noise ratio at only the legitimate receiver, while the other is produced by the AI performed based on the legitimate user’s channel that is different from that of the eavesdropper. The proposed scheme not only provides a remarkable secrecy gap, but also enhances the reliability performance of the legitimate user compared with the standard OFDM scheme. Particularly, a gain of 5-10 dB is observed at a bit error rate value of 10 -3 compared with standard OFDM as a result of using the adaptive channel-based subcarrier selection mechanism. Moreover, the proposed technique saves power, considers no knowledge of the eavesdropper’s channel, and provides secrecy even in the worst security scenario, where the eavesdropper can know the channel of the legitimate link when an explicit channel feedback is used as is the case in frequency division duplexing systems. This is achieved while maintaining low complexity and high reliability at the legitimate user, making the proposed scheme a harmonious candidate technique for secure 5G ultra reliable and low latency communications (URLLC) services.

The Radio Frequency (RF) communication suffers from interference and high latency issues. Along with this, RF communication requires a separate setup for transmission and reception of RF waves. Overcoming the above limitations, Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a preferred communication technique because of its high bandwidth and immunity to interference from electromagnetic sources. The revolution in the field of solid state lighting leads to the replacement of florescent lamps by Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) which further motivates the usage of VLC. This paper presents a survey of the potential applications, architecture, modulation techniques, standardization and research challenges in VLC.

The on-going development of Fifth Generation (5G) mobile communication technology will be the cornerstone for applying Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to various fields, e.g., smart city, smart home, connected car, etc. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which has developed the most successful standard technologies in the mobile communication market such as Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) and Long Term Evolution (LTE), is currently carrying out the standardization of both 5G access network system and 5G core network system at the same time. Within 3GPP, Service and System Aspects Working Group 2 (SA2) is responsible for identifying the main functions and entities of the network. In December 2016, the 3GPP SA2 group finalized the first phase of study for the architecture and main functions of 5G mobile communication system under the study item of Next Generation system (NextGen). Currently, normative standardization is on-going based on the agreements made in the NextGen Phase 1 study. In this paper, we present the architecture and functions of 5G mobile communication system agreed in the NextGen study.

This paper proposes a new conceptual architecture for authorization of mobile services based on blockchain technologies, and presents a design of procedures for heterogeneous mobile communication services. Furthermore, an extension of the procedures is considered in order to enhance privacy protection for users. The new architecture realizes the separation of mobile communication infrastructure and billing functions and multiple use of several mobile communication services under a single contract with a billing operator.

Since its inception, the blockchain technology has shown promising application prospects. From the initial cryptocurrency to the current smart contract, blockchain has been applied to many fields. Although there are some studies on the security and privacy issues of blockchain, there lacks a systematic examination on the security of blockchain systems. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study on the security threats to blockchain and survey the corresponding real attacks by examining popular blockchain systems. We also review the security enhancement solutions for blockchain, which could be used in the development of various blockchain systems, and suggest some future directions to stir research efforts into this area.

Advances in visible light communication (VLC) technology and the ubiquity of illumination facility have led to a growing interest in VLC-based indoor positioning. Numerous techniques have been proposed to obtain better system performance. In this paper, we survey over 100 papers ranging from pioneering papers to the state-of-the-art in the field to present the positioning technology. Not only the light emitting diode technology, modulation method and types of receivers are compared but also a novel taxonomy method is proposed. In this paper, VLC-based indoor positioning systems (VLC-based-IPSs) are classified based on the methods used: 1) mathematical method; 2) sensor-assisted method; and 3) optimization method. Different from other survey works, we emphasize and analyze the accuracy of VLC-based-IPS in the experiment and simulation environments. Meanwhile, this paper illustrates challenges, countermeasures, and lessons learned.

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) is defined as a combination of hardware and software that allows brain activities to control external devices or even computers. The research in this field has attracted academia and industry alike. The objective is to help severely disabled people to live their life as regular persons as much as possible. Some of these disabilities are categorized as neurological neuromuscular disorders. A BCI system goes through many phases including preprocessing, feature extraction, signal classifications, and finally control. Large body of research are found at each phase and this might confuse researchers and BCI developers. This article is a review to the state-of-the-art work in the field of BCI. The main focus of this review is on the Brain control signals, their types and classifications. In addition, this survey reviews the current BCI technology in terms of hardware and software where the most used BCI devices are described as well as the most utilized software platforms are explained. Finally, BCI challenges and future directions are stated. Due to the limited space and large body of literature in the field of BCI, another two review articles are planned. One of these articles reviews the up-to-date BCI algorithms and techniques for signal processing, feature extraction, signals classification, and control. Another article will be dedicated to BCI systems and applications. The three articles are written as base and guidelines for researchers and developers pursue the work in the field of BCI.

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as delivery systems of online goods is rapidly becoming a global norm, as corroborated by Amazon’s “Prime Air” and Google’s “Project Wing” projects. However, the real-world deployment of such drone delivery systems faces many cyber-physical security challenges. In this paper, a novel mathematical framework for analyzing and enhancing the security of drone delivery systems is introduced. In this regard, a zero-sum network interdiction game is formulated between a vendor, operating a drone delivery system, and a malicious attacker. In this game, the vendor seeks to find the optimal path that its UAV should follow, to deliver a purchase from the vendor’s warehouse to a customer location, to minimize the delivery time. Meanwhile, an attacker seeks to choose an optimal location to interdict the potential paths of the UAVs, so as to inflict cyber or physical damage to it, thus, maximizing its delivery time. First, the Nash equilibrium point of this game is characterized. Then, to capture the subjective behavior of both the vendor and attacker, new notions from prospect theory are incorporated into the game. These notions allow capturing the vendor’s and attacker’s (i) subjective perception of attack success probabilities, and (ii) their disparate subjective valuations of the achieved delivery times relative to a certain target delivery time. Simulation results have shown that the subjective decision making of the vendor and attacker leads to adopting risky path selection strategies which inflict delays to the delivery, thus, yielding unexpected delivery times which surpass the target delivery time set by the vendor.

Quantum communication provides an absolute security advantage, and it has been widely developed over the past 30 years. As an important branch of quantum communication, quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) promotes high security and instantaneousness in communication through directly transmitting messages over a quantum channel. The full implementation of a quantum protocol always requires the ability to control the transfer of a message effectively in the time domain; thus, it is essential to combine QSDC with quantum memory to accomplish the communication task. In this Letter, we report the experimental demonstration of QSDC with state-of-the-art atomic quantum memory for the first time in principle. We use the polarization degrees of freedom of photons as the information carrier, and the fidelity of entanglement decoding is verified as approximately 90%. Our work completes a fundamental step toward practical QSDC and demonstrates a potential application for long-distance quantum communication in a quantum network.

Differential privacy is an essential and prevalent privacy model that has been widely explored in recent decades. This survey provides a comprehensive and structured overview of two research directions: differentially private data publishing and differentially private data analysis. We compare the diverse release mechanisms of differentially private data publishing given a variety of input data in terms of query type, the maximum number of queries, efficiency, and accuracy. We identify two basic frameworks for differentially private data analysis and list the typical algorithms used within each framework. The results are compared and discussed based on output accuracy and efficiency. Further, we propose several possible directions for future research and possible applications.

Molecular communication (MC) is the most promising communication paradigm for nanonetwork realization since it is a natural phenomenon observed among living entities with nanoscale components. Since MC significantly differs from classical communication systems, it mandates reinvestigation of information and communication theoretical fundamentals. The closest examples of MC architectures are present inside our own body. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the existing literature on intrabody nanonetworks and different MC paradigms to establish and introduce the fundamentals of molecular information and communication science. We highlight future research directions and open issues that need to be addressed for revealing the fundamental limits of this science. Although the scope of this development encompasses wide range of applications, we particularly emphasize its significance for life sciences by introducing potential diagnosis and treatment techniques for diseases caused by dysfunction of intrabody nanonetworks.

The purpose of the NGMN 5G security group, which is a sub-group of the NGMN P1 5G Architecture group, is to identify new threats and security issues that may arise with 5G. The work of the group aims at informing the 5G community, and especially SDOs (like 3GPP) of potential problems in 5G, what we should pay attention to. This working group does not make requirements, just recommendation that people should have in mind when designing 5G networks. The group will release several documents with different focus; this first package focuses on Improving the Access Network and also identifies DoS attacks scenarios in a 5G context. Some of the identified threats are not specific to 5G but will be emphasized in a 5G context, and thus should be very carefully considered when designing the 5G networks. Some of the recommendations described in this document might also be applicable to the current generation mobile networks.

With much advancement in the field of nanotechnology, bioengineering, and synthetic biology over the past decade, microscales and nanoscales devices are becoming a reality. Yet the problem of engineering a reliable communication system between tiny devices is still an open problem. At the same time, despite the prevalence of radio communication, there are still areas where traditional electromagnetic waves find it difficult or expensive to reach. Points of interest in industry, cities, and medical applications often lie in embedded and entrenched areas, accessible only by ventricles at scales too small for conventional radio waves and microwaves, or they are located in such a way that directional high frequency systems are ineffective. Inspired by nature, one solution to these problems is molecular communication (MC), where chemical signals are used to transfer information. Although biologists have studied MC for decades, it has only been researched for roughly 10 year from a communication engineering lens. Significant number of papers have been published to date, but owing to the need for interdisciplinary work, much of the results are preliminary. In this survey, the recent advancements in the field of MC engineering are highlighted. First, the biological, chemical, and physical processes used by an MC system are discussed. This includes different components of the MC transmitter and receiver, as well as the propagation and transport mechanisms. Then, a comprehensive survey of some of the recent works on MC through a communication engineering lens is provided. The survey ends with a technology readiness analysis of MC and future research directions.

We posit that commercial Wi-Fi-based unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are vulnerable to common and basic security attacks, capable by beginner to intermediate hackers. We do this by demonstrating that the standard ARDiscovery Connection process and the Wi-Fi access point used in the Parrot Bebop UAV are exploitable such that the UAV’s ability to fly can be disrupted mid-flight by a remote attacker. We believe that these vulnerabilities are systemic in Wi-Fi-based Parrot UAVs. Our approach observed the normal operation (i.e., ARDiscovery Connection process over Wi-Fi) of the Parrot Bebop UAV. We then used a fuzzing technique to discover that the Parrot Bebop UAV is vulnerable to basic denial of service (DoS) and bufferoverflow attacks during its ARDiscovery Connection process. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities could result in catastrophic and immediate disabling of the UAV’s rotors midflight. Also, we discovered that the Parrot Bebop UAV is vulnerable to a basic ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) Cache Poisoning attack, which can disconnect the primary mobile device user and in most cases cause the UAV to land or return home. Based on the literature and our own penetration testing, we assert that Wi-Fi-based commercial UAVs require a comprehensive security framework that utilizes a defense-indepth approach. This approach would likely mitigate security risks associated with the three zero-day vulnerabilities described in this paper as well as other vulnerabilities reported in the literature. This framework will be effective for Parrot Wi-Fibased commercial UAVs and likely others with similar platforms.

Quantum secure direct communication is an important mode of quantum communication in which secret messages are securely communicated directly over a quantum channel. Quantum secure direct communication is also a basic cryptographic primitive for constructing other quantum communication tasks, such as quantum authentication and quantum dialog. Here, we report the first experimental demonstration of quantum secure direct communication based on the DL04 protocol and equipped with single-photon frequency coding that explicitly demonstrated block transmission. In our experiment, we provided 16 different frequency channels, equivalent to a nibble of four-bit binary numbers for direct information transmission. The experiment firmly demonstrated the feasibility of quantum secure direct communication in the presence of noise and loss.

5G is the next cellular generation and is expected to quench the growing thirst for taxing data rates and to enable the Internet of Things. Focused research and standardization work have been addressing the corresponding challenges from the radio perspective while employing advanced features, such as network densification, massive multiple-input-multiple-output antennae, coordinated multi-point processing, inter-cell interference mitigation techniques, carrier aggregation, and new spectrum exploration. Nevertheless, a new bottleneck has emerged: the backhaul. The ultra-dense and heavy traffic cells should be connected to the core network through the backhaul, often with extreme requirements in terms of capacity, latency, availability, energy, and cost efficiency. This pioneering survey explains the 5G backhaul paradigm, presents a critical analysis of legacy, cutting-edge solutions, and new trends in backhauling, and proposes a novel consolidated 5G backhaul framework. A new joint radio access and backhaul perspective is proposed for the evaluation of backhaul technologies which reinforces the belief that no single solution can solve the holistic 5G backhaul problem. This paper also reveals hidden advantages and shortcomings of backhaul solutions, which are not evident when backhaul technologies are inspected as an independent part of the 5G network. This survey is key in identifying essential catalysts that are believed to jointly pave the way to solving the beyond-2020 backhauling challenge. Lessons learned, unsolved challenges, and a new consolidated 5G backhaul vision are thus presented.

Next-generation wireless networks are expected to support extremely high data rates and radically new applications, which require a new wireless radio technology paradigm. The challenge is that of assisting the radio in intelligent adaptive learning and decision making, so that the diverse requirements of next-generation wireless networks can be satisfied. Machine learning is one of the most promising artificial intelligence tools, conceived to support smart radio terminals. Future smart 5G mobile terminals are expected to autonomously access the most meritorious spectral bands with the aid of sophisticated spectral efficiency learning and inference, in order to control the transmission power, while relying on energy efficiency learning/inference and simultaneously adjusting the transmission protocols with the aid of quality of service learning/inference. Hence we briefly review the rudimentary concepts of machine learning and propose their employment in the compelling applications of 5G networks, including cognitive radios, massive MIMOs, femto/small cells, heterogeneous networks, smart grid, energy harvesting, device-todevice communications, and so on. Our goal is to assist the readers in refining the motivation, problem formulation, and methodology of powerful machine learning algorithms in the context of future networks in order to tap into hitherto unexplored applications and services.

Modern mobile devices have access to a wealth of data suitable for learning models, which in turn can greatly improve the user experience on the device. For example, language models can improve speech recognition and text entry, and image models can automatically select good photos. However, this rich data is often privacy sensitive, large in quantity, or both, which may preclude logging to the data center and training there using conventional approaches. We advocate an alternative that leaves the training data distributed on the mobile devices, and learns a shared model by aggregating locally-computed updates. We term this decentralized approach Federated Learning. We present a practical method for the federated learning of deep networks based on iterative model averaging, and conduct an extensive empirical evaluation, considering five different model architectures and four datasets. These experiments demonstrate the approach is robust to the unbalanced and non-IID data distributions that are a defining characteristic of this setting. Communication costs are the principal constraint, and we show a reduction in required communication rounds by 10–100× as compared to synchronized stochastic gradient descent.

The rapidly increasing number of mobile devices, voluminous data, and higher data rate are pushing to rethink the current generation of the cellular mobile communication. The next or fifth generation (5G) cellular networks are expected to meet high-end requirements. The 5G networks are broadly characterized by three unique features: ubiquitous connectivity, extremely low latency, and very high-speed data transfer. The 5G networks would provide novel architectures and technologies beyond state-of-the-art architectures and technologies. In this paper, our intent is to find an answer to the question: “what will be done by 5G and how?” We investigate and discuss serious limitations of the fourth generation (4G) cellular networks and corresponding new features of 5G networks. We identify challenges in 5G networks, new technologies for 5G networks, and present a comparative study of the proposed architectures that can be categorized on the basis of energy-efficiency, network hierarchy, and network types. Interestingly, the implementation issues, e.g., interference, QoS, handoff, security–privacy, channel access, and load balancing, hugely effect the realization of 5G networks. Furthermore, our illustrations highlight the feasibility of these models through an evaluation of existing real-experiments and testbeds.

Requirements for 5G mobile networks includes a higher flexibility, scalability, cost effectiveness and energy efficiency. Towards these goals, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization have been adopted in recent proposals for future mobile networks architectures because they are considered critical technologies for 5G. In this paper, we propose an X2-based handover implementation in an SDN-based and partially virtualized LTE architecture. Moreover, the architecture considered operates at link level, which provides lower latency and higher scalability. In our implementation, we use MPLS tunnels for user plane instead of GTP-U protocol, which introduces a significant overhead. To verify the correct operation of our system, we developed a simulator. It implements the messages exchange and processing of the primary network entities. Using this tool we measured the handover preparation and completion times, whose estimated values were roughly 6.94 ms and 8.31 ms, respectively, according to our experimental setup. These latencies meet the expected requirements concerning control plane delay budgets for 5G networks.

Technology coined as the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is harmonizing with Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and Intelligent Traffic System (ITF). An application scenario of VANET is the military communication where vehicles move as a convoy on roadways, requiring secure and reliable communication. However, utilization of radio frequency (RF) communication in VANET limits its usage in military applications, due to the scarce frequency band and its vulnerability to security attacks. Visible Light Communication (VLC) has been recently introduced as a more secure alternative, limiting the reception of neighboring nodes with its directional transmission. However, secure vehicular VLC that ensures confidential data transfer among the participating vehicles, is an open problem. In this paper, we propose a secure military light communication protocol (SecVLC) for enabling efficient and secure data sharing. We use the directionality property of VLC to ensure that only target vehicles participate in the communication. Vehicles use full-duplex communication where infra-red (IR) is utilized to share a secret key and VLC is used to receive encrypted data. We experimentally demonstrate the suitability of SecVLC in outdoor scenarios at varying inter-vehicular distances with key metrics of interest, including the security, data packet delivery ratio and delay.

Wireless communication systems that include unmanned aerial vehicles promise to provide cost-effective wireless connectivity for devices without infrastructure coverage. Compared to terrestrial communications or those based on high-altitude platforms, on-demand wireless systems with low-altitude UAVs are in general faster to deploy, more flexibly reconfigured, and likely to have better communication channels due to the presence of short-range line-of-sight links. However, the utilization of highly mobile and energy-constrained UAVs for wireless communications also introduces many new challenges. In this article, we provide an overview of UAV-aided wireless communications, by introducing the basic networking architecture and main channel characteristics, highlighting the key design considerations as well as the new opportunities to be exploited.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have enormous potential in the public and civil domains. These are particularly useful in applications, where human lives would otherwise be endangered. Multi-UAV systems can collaboratively complete missions more efficiently and economically as compared to single UAV systems. However, there are many issues to be resolved before effective use of UAVs can be made to provide stable and reliable context-specific networks. Much of the work carried out in the areas of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), and vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) does not address the unique characteristics of the UAV networks. UAV networks may vary from slow dynamic to dynamic and have intermittent links and fluid topology. While it is believed that ad hoc mesh network would be most suitable for UAV networks yet the architecture of multi-UAV networks has been an understudied area. Software defined networking (SDN) could facilitate flexible deployment and management of new services and help reduce cost, increase security and availability in networks. Routing demands of UAV networks go beyond the needs of MANETS and VANETS. Protocols are required that would adapt to high mobility, dynamic topology, intermittent links, power constraints, and changing link quality. UAVs may fail and the network may get partitioned making delay and disruption tolerance an important design consideration. Limited life of the node and dynamicity of the network lead to the requirement of seamless handovers, where researchers are looking at the work done in the areas of MANETs and VANETs, but the jury is still out. As energy supply on UAVs is limited, protocols in various layers should contribute toward greening of the network. This paper surveys the work done toward all of these outstanding issues, relating to this new class of networks, so as to spur further research in these areas.

Future applications for nano-machines, such as drug-delivery and health monitoring, will require robust communications and nanonetworking capabilities. This is likely to be enabled via the use of molecules, as opposed to electromagnetic waves, acting as the information carrier. To enhance the reliability of the transmitted data, Euclidean geometry low density parity check (EG-LDPC) and cyclic Reed-Muller (C-RM) codes are considered for use within a molecular communication system for the first time. These codes are compared against the Hamming code to show that an s = 4 LDPC (integer s ≥ 2) has a superior coding gain of 7.26 dBs. Furthermore, the critical distance and energy cost for a coded system are also taken into account as two other performance metrics. It is shown that when considering the case of nano-to nano-machines communication, a Hamming code with m = 4, (integer m ≥ 2) is better for a system operating between 10 -6 and 10 -3 bit error rate (BER) levels. Below these BERs,s = 2 LDPC codes are superior, exhibiting the lowest energy cost. For communication between nano-to macro-machines, and macro-to nano-machines, s = 3 LDPC and s = 2 LDPC are the best options respectively.

All new 5G mobile technology is expected to be operational by 2020. This time, it is therefore crucial to know the direction of research and developments enabling 5G technology. This paper provides an inclusive and comprehensive analysis of recent developmental endeavors toward 5G. It highlights salient features, i.e., flexibility, accessibility, and cloud-based service offerings, those are going to ensure the futuristic mobile communication technology as the dominant protocol for global communication.

The solid-state lighting is revolutionizing the indoor illumination. Current incandescent and fluorescent lamps are being replaced by the LEDs at a rapid pace. Apart from extremely high energy efficiency, the LEDs have other advantages such as longer lifespan, lower heat generation, and improved color rendering without using harmful chemicals. One additional benefit of LEDs is that they are capable of switching to different light intensity at a very fast rate. This functionality has given rise to a novel communication technology (known as visible light communication-VLC) where LED luminaires can be used for high speed data transfer. This survey provides a technology overview and review of existing literature of visible light communication and sensing. This paper provides a detailed survey of 1) visible light communication system and characteristics of its various components such as transmitter and receiver; 2) physical layer properties of visible light communication channel, modulation methods, and MIMO techniques; 3) medium access techniques; 4) system design and programmable platforms; and 5) visible light sensing and application such as indoor localization, gesture recognition, screen-camera communication, and vehicular networking. We also outline important challenges that need to be addressed in order to design high-speed mobile networks using visible light communication.

This paper provides an in-depth view of Terahertz Band (0.1–10 THz) communication, which is envisioned as a key technology to satisfy the increasing demand for higher speed wireless communication. THz Band communication will alleviate the spectrum scarcity and capacity limitations of current wireless systems, and enable new applications both in classical networking domains as well as in novel nanoscale communication paradigms. In this paper, the device design and development challenges for THz Band are surveyed first. The limitations and possible solutions for high-speed transceiver architectures are highlighted. The challenges for the development of new ultra-broadband antennas and very large antenna arrays are explained. When the devices are finally developed, then they need to communicate in the THz band. There exist many novel communication challenges such as propagation modeling, capacity analysis, modulation schemes, and other physical and link layer solutions, in the THz band which can be seen as a new frontier in the communication research. These challenges are treated in depth in this paper explaining the existing plethora of work and what still needs to be tackled.

Molecular Communication (MC) is an emerging and promising communication paradigm for several multi-disciplinary domains like bio-medical, industry and military. Differently to the traditional communication paradigm, the information is encoded on the molecules, that are then used as carriers of information. Novel approaches related to this new communication paradigm have been proposed, mainly focusing on architectural aspects and categorization of potential applications. So far, security and privacy aspects related to the molecular communication systems have not been investigated at all and represent an open question that need to be addressed. The main motivation of this paper lies on providing some first insights about security and privacy aspects of MC systems, by highlighting the open issues and challenges and above all by outlining some specific directions of potential solutions. Existing cryptographic methods and security approaches are not suitable for MC systems since do not consider the pecific issues and challenges, that need ad-hoc solutions. We will discuss directions in terms of potential solutions by trying to highlight the main advantages and potential drawbacks for each direction considered. We will try to answer to the main questions: 1) why this solution can be exploited in the MC field to safeguard the system and its reliability? 2) which are the main issues related to the specific approach? .

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology offers potential for human augmentation in areas ranging from communication to home automation, leisure and gaming. This paper addresses ethical challenges associated with the wider scale deployment of BCI as an assistive technology by documenting issues associated with the development of non-invasive BCI technology. Laboratory testing is normally carried out with volunteers but further testing with subjects, who may be in vulnerable groups is often needed to improve system operation. BCI development is technically complex, sometimes requiring lengthy recording sessions to achieve the necessary personalisation of the paradigms, and this can present ethical challenges that vary depending on the subject group. The paper contributes to the on-going ethical discussion surrounding the deployment BCI outside the specialist laboratory and suggests some tentative guidelines for BCI research teams, appropriate to those deploying the technology, derived from experience on a multisite project. Any tension between deployment and technical progress must be managed by a formal process within a multidisciplinary consortium.

This paper considers secure transmission over the visible light communication (VLC) channel by the means of physical-layer security techniques. In particular, we consider achievable secrecy rates of the multiple-input, single-output (MISO) wiretap VLC channel. The VLC channel is modeled as a deterministic and real-valued Gaussian channel subject to amplitude constraints. We utilize null-steering and artificial noise strategies to achieve positive secrecy rates when the eavesdropper’s channel state information (CSI) is perfectly known and entirely unknown to the transmitter, respectively. In both scenarios, the legitimate receiver’s CSI is available to the transmitter. We numerically evaluate achievable secrecy rates under typical VLC scenarios and show that simple precoding techniques can significantly improve the confidentiality of VLC links.

High demands for broadband mobile wireless communications and the emergence of new wireless multimedia applications constitute the motivation to the development of broadband wireless access technologies in recent years. The Long Term Evolution/System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE) system has been specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) on the way towards fourth-generation (4G) mobile to ensure 3GPP keeping the dominance of the cellular communication technologies. Through the design and optimization of new radio access techniques and a further evolution of the LTE systems, the 3GPP is developing the future LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) wireless networks as the 4G standard of the 3GPP. Since the 3GPP LTE and LTE-A architecture are designed to support flat Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity and full interworking with heterogeneous wireless access networks, the new unique features bring some new challenges in the design of the security mechanisms. This paper makes a number of contributions to the security aspects of the LTE and LTE-A networks. First, we present an overview of the security functionality of the LTE and LTE-A networks. Second, the security vulnerabilities existing in the architecture and the design of the LTE and LTE-A networks are explored. Third, the existing solutions to these problems are classically reviewed. Finally, we show the potential research issues for the future research works.

The current research with EEG devices in the user authentication context has some deficiencies that address expensive equipment, the requirement of laboratory conditions and applicability. In this paper we address this issue by using widely available and inexpensive EEG device to verify its capability for authentication. As a part of this research, we developed two phase authentication that enables users to enhance their password with the mental state by breaking the password into smaller elements, marry them with mental state, and generate one time pad for a secure session.

4G wireless networks are receiving a lot of attention from researchers, wireless carriers, device manufacturers, and mobile users. This survey compares the original vision with current 4G offerings and considers future prospects.

The Newnes Know It All Series takes the best of what our authors have written to create hard- working desk references that will be an engineer’s first port of call for key information, design techniques and rules of thumb. Guaranteed not to gather dust on a shelf! Communications engineers need to master a wide area of topics to excel. The Wireless Security Know It All covers every angle including Emerging Wireless Technologies and Security Issues, Wireless LAN and MAN Security, as well as Wireless Personal Area Networks.

The proposed method describes the current forensics and biometrics in a modern approach and implements the concept of IRIS along with brain and resolves the issues and increases the strength of Digital Forensics Community. It has enormous features in biometrics to enhance diverse security levels. A new method to identify individuals using IRIS Patterns with the brain wave signals (EEG) is proposed. Several different algorithms were proposed for detecting, verifying and extracting the deterministic patterns in a person’s IRIS from the Eye. The extracted EEG recordings form the person’s brain has proved to be unique. Next we combine EEG signals into the IRIS patterns a biometric application which makes use of future multi modal combination architecture. The proposed forensic research directions and argues that to move forward the community needs to adopt standardized, modular approaches for person identification. The result of each authentication test is compared with the user’s pre-recorded measurements, using pattern recognition methods and signal-processing algorithms.

A UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) core network supports the negotiation of variable quality of service (QoS). A QoS information element (IE) is defined that supports downgradeable QoS requirements by allowing multiple traffic classes to be specified in a priority order. Similarly, a QoS information element (IE) is defined that supports upgradeable QoS requirements.

This paper presents a study of security advances and challenges associated with emergent 4G wireless technologies. The paper makes a number of contributions to the field. First, it studies the security standards evolution across different generations of wireless standards. Second, the security-related standards, architecture and design for the LTE and WiMAX technologies are analyzed. Third, security issues and vulnerabilities present in the above 4G standards are discussed. Finally, we point to potential areas for future vulnerabilities and evaluate areas in 4G security which warrant attention and future work by the research and advanced technology industry.

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

Recently, the mobile industry has experienced an extreme increment in number of its users. The GSM network with the greatest worldwide number of users succumbs to several security vulnerabilities. Although some of its security problems are addressed in its upper generations, there are still many operators using 2G systems. This paper briefly presents the most important security flaws of the GSM network and its transport channels. It also provides some practical solutions to improve the security of currently available 2G systems.

Over the past several years, the Seaweb initiative has demonstrated steady progress in advancing the capabilities and performance of undersea wireless acoustic communication networks. With the forthcoming next-generation Seaweb, software and hardware improvements will allow for the implementation of dynamic message routing schemes, rather than the fixed/static routing implementations that have previously been used. In order to determine best path routes, dynamic routing methods such as the Dijkstra’s forward search algorithm require the set of link costs between all connected nodes in the network (link state database). Best path routing is determined by minimizing the total aggregate cost from the source node to the final intended destination node. The criteria and cost functions used for optimizing the routing will depend on the communications scenario objectives and the network topology. In this paper, the following route-cost criteria for undersea network performance are defined and evaluated: hop count, path length, message delivery latency, transmission security, power consumption, network longevity, and message delivery reliability. Comparisons between these cost criteria and their resulting optimum routes are shown for an hypothetical network topology.

A close look at the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). GSM standard shows that most of the security features were designed from an operator perspective with a view to preventing fraud and network misuse; the responsibility for implementing features related to user’s privacy was delegated to the operators. This approach failed in providing a trusted environment where mobile users felt confident enough to place commercial transactions and exchange sensitive information. As technology matures and mobile data services appear, users are more than ever questioning the security of mobile communications and are becoming more aware of the associated risks. This is particularly true in the area of m-banking, where bank establishments have been reluctant to introduce sophisticated services and users uncomfortable to use their mobile telephones to transmit sensitive information about their accounts. Aware of the need to boost public confidence in mobile data services, the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) committee in charge of developing the standards for the Universal Mobile Telephony System (UMTS), took a different approach and incorporated more security requirements into the specification. This article looks at the security aspects associated with mobile communications and the way risks are addressed both in GSM and UMTS.