Risk management (RM) frameworks were established to identify, evaluate, and treat information security risks. The hybrid model for information security risk assessment (RA) [1] outlines a systematic process encompassing threat analysis while remaining agnostic to the source of threat information. It is limited in its adaptability to threat changes and dynamics. In an evolving landscape of changing threats, traditional RM methodologies face limitations in dynamic adaptation without considering Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) information. In this paper, we overview the established frameworks and methodologies for RM and CTI to identify gaps in the established RM frameworks. We propose a novel enhancement to the hybrid model by integrating CTI. This enhancement distinguishes our approach from other frameworks by facilitating the proactive inclusion of context-rich external threat data, leading to a more efficient RM process that effectively adapts to the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.

Developing countries usually lack the proper governance means to generate and regularly update a national rooftop map. Using traditional photogrammetry and surveying methods to produce a building map at the federal level is costly and time consuming. Using earth observation and deep learning methods, we can bridge this gap and propose an automated pipeline to fetch such national urban maps. This paper aims to exploit the power of fully convolutional neural networks for multi-class buildings’ instance segmentation to leverage high object-wise accuracy results. Buildings’ instance segmentation from sub-meter high-resolution satellite images can be achieved with relatively high pixel-wise metric scores. We detail all engineering steps to replicate this work and ensure highly accurate results in dense and slum areas witnessed in regions that lack proper urban planning in the Global South. We applied a case study of the proposed pipeline to Lebanon and successfully produced the first comprehensive national building footprint map with approximately 1 Million units with an 84% accuracy. The proposed architecture relies on advanced augmentation techniques to overcome dataset scarcity, which is often the case in developing countries.

New technologies that incorporate affordable storage at the edge, such as caching, are anticipated to facilitate the growth of wireless communication and accommodate increased traffic. In this paper, we address the challenge of adapting the original coded caching scheme to time-varying channels through a low-complexity approach. The approach categorizes graph nodes into two groups: those requiring modifications and those that remain unchanged. When a user's code rate increases, a merge process is applied to the associated graph vertices, while a split process is implemented for users with a decreased code rate. Subsequently, the graph is adaptively colored to facilitate continuous transmission. The efficacy and performance of the proposed scheme are demonstrated through simulation results.

Recently, the integration of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) with the blockchain has been gaining a lot of attention. This combination aims to avoid traditional NFV issues such as trust, payment, and security. Several works have been proposed to orchestrate, buy, execute, and manage the life cycle of a Virtual Network Function (VNF). Thus, they came as NFV marketplaces and orchestration platforms. In this paper, we provide a novel secure End-to-End NFV marketplace called “VNFO-DCSC”, that uses dynamic composite smart contracts. This platform provides full orchestration, management, execution, and monitoring of VNFs in a secure way. “VNFO-DCSC” is implemented following the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) standards [1] for NFV management and it is available on GitHub.

LoRaWAN has emerged as a promising and suitable technology for massive machine-type communications. The emerging trend of green communication networking will play a significant role in minimizing power consumption for different battery-powered nodes. The Aloha access scheme used in LoRaWAN leads to a high probability of collision, reducing the network throughput on a large scale. Thus, enhancing the energy efficiency of LoRaWAN networks has become paramount. In this work, we propose a novel spreading factor selection and power control algorithm, named EE-LoRa, to improve the energy efficiency of LoRaWAN networks with multiple gateways. We first devise an optimization problem that maximizes the energy efficiency of the network, defined as a benefit-cost ratio between the network throughput and the consumed energy. Then, power control is applied to tune the transmission power at nodes to the lowest possible levels without affecting the reliability of communications. The simulation results show that EE-LoRa significantly improves the energy efficiency of LoRaWAN networks when compared to legacy LoRaWAN and relevant state-of-the-art algorithms.

New technologies that incorporate affordable storage at the edge, such as caching, are anticipated to facilitate the growth of wireless communication and accommodate increased traffic. In this paper, the focus is on designing an adaptive coded caching schema in dynamic scenarios with respect to the users mobility and their continuous requests. The proposed technique is based on the original coded caching schema that can be seen as index coding problem and modeled as a conflict graph. The approach is to adapt the conflict graph to any request and apply the necessary coloring in a adaptive way. A greedy approach is used, comparing the performance to the Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) algorithm proposed by Vettigli et al.. The aim of the adaptive greedy based technique is improving the performance while significantly reducing the complexity of the algorithm. Simulation results highlight the performance of the proposed technique.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has succeeded to be one of the important future communication technologies. The evolution of IoT has accelerated along with the emergence of 5G considered as a leading IoT service provider. In this context, the low power wide area network (LPWAN) has recently attracted attention as it provides an impeccable infrastructure for massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTCs). Long range wide area network (LoRaWAN) is one of the most adopted LPWAN technologies in the world. However, an efficient integration of LoRaWAN technology into the 5G system (5GS) is required. In this article, we review briefly related work trying to integrate LoRaWAN into the 5GS. Then, we present our solution for the integration and we detail the adopted network architecture. We propose new authentication methods based on the extensible authentication protocol (EAP) providing secure access, and an adaptation function to attain seamless and efficient integration. In addition, we evaluate our solution in terms of performance and security. Moreover, a comparison of our solution with related work confirms the efficiency of our solution.

Recently, LoRaWAN has become the most employed Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) for a wide range of Internet of Thing (IoT) applications. The main power source for IoT nodes are batteries. However, such disposable power sources are short-lived and impact the environment. In addition, battery replacement is costly and dangerous in some applications, where nodes are located in hard-to-reach areas. Battery-less nodes equipped with energy harvesting impose themselves as a promising environmental friendly solution for a sustainable IoT. In this paper, we propose an optimization problem to find the suitable capacitor and packet generation rate which ensures that the battery-less node can effectively perform its tasks using the harvested energy. Then, we devise an algorithm for improving the throughput of LoRaWAN networkswith battery-less nodes. Numerical examples validate the effectiveness of our algorithm where we obtained a tiny capacitor size and packet arrival rate suitable for IoT applications. Furthermore, our proposed approach enhances the network throughput and the packet delivery ratio compared to Legacy LoRaWAN and other state-of-the-art algorithms.

Blockchain brings many added values to modern business systems. However, Blockchain-based applications with massive IoT devices experience some limitations. The limitations are due to the linear structure and the consensus algorithms used in Blockchain that consume the participating nodes' considerable resources. In addition, IoT devices are generally with limited resources and have limited bandwidth connections. IOTA, based on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), is a new distributed ledger technology (DLT) for IoT devices. It proves its high scalability by providing parallel data processing. However, DAG is still not mature enough to fully replace Blockchain. In previous work, we proposed combining Blockchain and IOTA technologies to allow scalable transactions where Blockchain is employed in the backend, and Tangle is used in the frontend. This paper considers the proposed solution, focusing mainly on the connector part that intermediates both DLT technologies. The connector is a decentralized software component that supports the interaction between the DLT implicitly. The experiments' results show the flexibility to merge both DLTs using a message queuing protocol that enables smart contracts to run on the Tangle nodes and enriches the new platform with reliability and working offline features.

In this article, we consider the mobility of an end device (ED) in low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) and we focus on the continuity of the ED session with the application server when this ED is moving from the coverage of one operator to that of another one. One of the methods to achieve the continuity of the session after roaming is the use of an IPv6-based scheme. As LPWAN is characterized by a fixed message rate and very small bandwidth as well as asymmetric communication, an efficient header compression scheme is required. Recently, the Internet Engineering Task Force LPWAN working group has proposed a static context header compression (SCHC) to compress IPv6 into LPWAN through a rule-based mechanism. In this article, we first extend the SCHC scheme to support session continuity and the new scheme is called mobile SCHC (MSCHC). MSCHC consists of several contexts, instead of the static context for SCHC and we also improve the use of the memory by dividing the rules into layers. Then, we investigate the mobility of the ED to show how the continuity of the session can be achieved while transmitting and receiving data when the ED is roaming between different operators. The proposed solution is based on the use of light mobile IPv6 messages compressed with MSCHC. Finally, the proposed mechanism is implemented in the popular LoRaWAN technology, evaluated and compared with the existing solutions provided by the LoRaWAN v1.1 standard.

The shared superframe multihop nature of wireless personal area networks (WPAN s) encounters fundamental challenges to the design of effective and optimal resource allocation algorithms with respect to resource utilization and fairness across different network devices. In this paper, we propose a distributed optimization framework for resource allocation scheme for IEEE 802.15.5 hop-2 for fairly sharing the channel time resources granted by the reference Mesh Piconet Coordinator (MPNC) to the hop-1 MNPC among hop-2 devices. A NUM based optimization approach is proposed for optimal resource allocation with differentiation between real-time (RT) and non-real time (NRT) devices. Simulation results for studying satisfaction and fairness indexes are conducted.

In this paper, we consider a multi-operator heterogeneous cloud radio access network, where operators share their small cells. A formulation for the energy efficiency of the shared network is suggested and an energy-efficient resource allocation algorithm is proposed for the user assignment and power allocation in the multi-operator network. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer optimization problem and solved using Lagrange Dual Decomposition method. Numerical results proved the benefits of sharing in terms of network energy efficiency, power consumption and users satisfaction. It also showed the efficiency of the proposed algorithm in achieving additional power saving in a multi-operator Heterogeneous Cloud RAN.

In this paper, we propose a hybrid decision algorithm for the selection of the access in multi-operator networks environment, where competing operators share their radio access networks to meet traffic and data rate demands. The proposed algorithm guarantees the user satisfaction and a global gain for all cooperating operators. Simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme and show that the cooperation between operators achieves benefits to both users and operators; user acceptance as well as the operator resource utilization and the operator revenue increase.

In this paper, we propose an analytical model for dimensioning a hierarchical WiMax-WiFi network. Our model consists in replacing a finite number of nodes by an equivalent continuum. The key feature of the proposed model is that it accounts for the effect of interference and for the physical layer and channel characteristics in an easy and straightforward way. On the one hand, our model takes into consideration frequency planning and scheduling aspects; and on the other hand, it provides tractable formulae of the end user mean capacity and coverage probability to dimension properly the network.

In future mobile networks, different radio access technologies, such as GSM, UMTS, WiMAX, WIFI, will coexist. In order to realize a seamless vertical handover (inter-RAT handover) among these technologies, a variety of interworking architectures and inter-RAT handover mobility managements have been proposed. Based on an integrated coupling architecture, we propose a novel common interworking sublayer (IW sublayer) at layer 2 on RNC and UE to provide a seamless PS inter-RAT handover between UMTS and WiMAX systems. This IW sublayer scheme focuses on eliminating packet loss and reducing handover latency which are common problems for most inter-RAT handover scenarios. In addition, an enhanced TCP proxy, which interacts with the IW sublayer, is also introduced to RNC to resolve other two typical inter-RAT handover problems of TCP traffics: BDP mismatch and spurious RTO. Compared with other vertical handover solutions, our novel inter-RAT scheme has the merits of keeping existing TCP protocol stacks unchanged and is robust to different handover scenarios. The simulation results show our total solution not only achieves a lossless and prompt handover procedure, but also accommodates BDP mismatch and prevents spurious RTO of TCP sender.

The future B3G or 4G mobile networks will consist of heterogeneous networks, including GSM, UMTS, and WiMAX. In order to realize a seamless vertical handover (inter-RAT handover), a variety of interworking architectures and inter-RAT handover mobility managements have been proposed. In this paper we consider the tight coupling architecture to achieve the interconnection between UMTS and WiMAX systems. A novel common interworking sublayer (IW sublayer) is proposed at layer 2 on RNC, W-RNC and UE to provide a seamless PS inter-RAT handover between UMTS and WiMAX. This IW sublayer scheme, which features SR ARQ mechanism, focuses on eliminating packet loss and reducing handover latency that are common problems for most inter-RAT handover scenarios. The simulation results of the tight coupling architecture show that, compared with other context transfer schemes like buffering-and-forwarding of FMIPv6, the IW sublayer solution can achieve a lossless and prompt handover.

The future B3G or 4G mobile networks will consist of heterogeneous networks, including GSM, UMTS, WiMAX and WIFI. In order to realize a seamless vertical handover (inter-RAT handover), a variety of interworking architectures and inter-RAT handover mobility managements have been proposed. Based on the integrated coupling architecture, we propose a novel common interworking sublayer (IW sublayer) at layer 2 on RNC and UE to provide a seamless PS inter-RAT handover between UMTS and WiMAX systems. This IW sublayer scheme focuses on eliminating packet loss and reducing handover latency which are common problems for most inter-RAT handover scenarios. Compared with other context transfer schemes, the simulation results show the IW sublayer with ARQ mechanism can achieve a lossless and prompt handover procedure. In addition, this IW sublayer scheme can eliminate false fast retransmit of TCP traffics which is usually caused by packet losses or out-of-order packet arrivals.

In this paper, we propose an analytical fluid model for adhoc wireless networks. Our fluid model consists in replacing a finite number of nodes by an equivalent continuum - characterized by a density of nodes - and disseminated in the network according to some distribution function. The key feature of our model is that it takes into account the effect of interference, the CSMA/CA mechanism and radio propagation aspects in an easy and straightforward way. We will give closed form formulae of the Mean Capacity per node and the Coverage Probability, along with an evaluation of the impact of nodes density, network size and carrier sense range on overall performance.

The problem of dynamic load balancing in heterogeneous networks is investigated. The sub-systems considered are a UMTS network with WLAN hotspots. A load balancing algorithm is first proposed that can push traffic between the two sub-systems according to load conditions and predetermined load thresholds. To adapt the algorithm to traffic condition, the load threshold for the UMTS to WLAN vertical handover is auto-tuned. The auto-tuning process is orchestrated by a fuzzy logic controller that is optimized using the fuzzy Q-learning algorithm. Numerical simulations using a semi-dynamic network simulator illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WEAN) widely deployed in recent years work mostly with distributed coordinated function (DCF) at medium access control (MAC) layer without QoS (quality of service) support. This paper aims at modelling WLAN network for a semi-dynamic simulator: Bianchi's DCF model is extended to include asymmetric TCP traffic for mobile stations with different radio conditions and modulations; radio resource management (RRM) algorithms are devised to guarantee QoS; adaptation of the model for a semi-dynamic simulator is described. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed modelling

In this work, we study the transport of real-time voice traffic in the IP-based UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN) where a stringent-delay bound, some 5 ms, is to be met. Our work is analytical and is validated through empirical results on a local experimental test-bed emulating the UTRAN. It shows the trade-offs between performance, in terms of delay and cost, in terms of link utilization, and quantifies optimal values for the timer used in the packetization of frame protocol (FP) frames into larger IP packets as well as the number of FP frames per IP packet for a given output link capacity.

In this paper, we analytically compare IP versus AAL2/ATM as a transport technology in the UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN), where stringent delay bounds are to be met for both real-time and non real-time traffic. We particularly select voice and Web traffic so as to illustrate our investigation. We show that, for the case of voice traffic. AAL2/ATM has a small advantage over IP, in terms of delay; IP is however more efficient than AAL2/ATM in terms of link utilization, especially for heavy loaded systems. As for data traffic, IP performs best.