This paper underscores the crucial role of video anonymization in smart ports, were data privacy and security hold critical importance. It introduces the Matrix Platform, specifically designed for smart environments, and highlights its strong video anonymization capabilities. The platform employs advanced Video Anonymization techniques to effectively balance the preservation of data confidentiality with the enhancement of port security. Furthermore, the paper discusses how object detection and anonymization methods are strategically employed to protect sensitive information while still allowing access to critical operational details such as cargo and vessel types. Emphasis is placed on video anonymization's pivotal role in strengthening port security by concealing high-value assets and minimizing the risk of exposing sensitive data. By integrating the Matrix Platform, ports gain the capability to proactively manage security risks, safeguard assets, and secure information. This adaptable platform can be deployed in both Edge and Cloud environments, ensuring alignment with the specific needs of smart ports, with a primary focus on data anonymization. In conclusion, as the port industry continues to evolve, this paper asserts that the adoption of video anonymization techniques is fundamental for future growth and development, providing assurance of privacy and security in this dynamic landscape.

IoT ecosystems are rapidly expanding, and device management is emerging as a key challenge due to the scale, complexity, and dynamism of IoT systems. The adoption of autonomous techniques shows promise to alleviate key issues including maintaining organisational security when large volumes of IoT devices are being added and removed from a telecommunications network. Here we propose a proactive IoT device management approach that addresses the need to control network access in a risk-based manner. The proposed system comprises of two novel core components, a Management Platform for IoT (MP-IoT) component and an Intent-Based Microsegmentation (IBMS) component. The MP-IoT component carries out a risk management role and combines with IBMS to provide risk-based network segmentation. The two components work together to proactively manage risks by migrating devices between isolated network segments according to a dynamic assessment of the risk to the system from an individual device. Self-healing techniques may then be used to mitigate risks associated with a device and consequently change the network segment that it resides in. Here we present the key challenges associated with typical IoT environments and demonstrate how they are addressed by the proposed Proactive IoT Device Management architecture. A prototype implementation is also presented to validate the operation of the proposed architecture.

This paper presents an approach to autonomous IoT device lifecycle management for our developed Matrix IoT platform. We discuss our approach for zero touch onboarding, IoT device failure, device end-of-life offboarding and SLAs to support device lifecycle management. We collected timings on the key stages of our proposed onboarding process. The total onboarding time takes on average 6.4 seconds to onboard a device. Therefore, when scaled to many hundreds of devices, there is a very significant time saving benefit to onboarding devices automatically, along with the benefits of reducing human error.

Future 5G networks have stringent end-user requirements on data rate and error performance. In order to satisfy these requirements, innovative wireless networking technologies and models need be researched. One particular example is the two-way relaying channel, which can have as much as 100% higher theoretical data rate than current systems where transmissions are arranged in an orthogonal manner. However, benefits of this model cannot be achieved without the application of proper relaying protocols. This paper proposes a novel protocol that directly addresses the problems of existing protocols of two-way relaying models, e.g. analogy network coding and physical network coding, and has improved performance. By combining direct and differential demodulation-forward schemes based on wireless channel qualities and signal to noise ratio, a new hybrid protocol is created. Theoretical analysis and numerical experiments show that the proposed solution has lower error rate than the existing ones, and can thus be applied to support future 5G networks.

As technology has evolved, so too has the way which we store information: Simple items like photographs which, in the past we could have flicked through in a printed album, are now often only stored online. If they are not accessible online, they will therefore not be accessible at all once we are no longer around to locate them. This may have a psychological impact on the people we leave behind. In addition to the ethical concern, management of assets in the cloud is also a resource management challenge from the sustainability and environmental perspectives: As redundant data increasingly consumes resources, network sustainability becomes compromised. There is therefore an opportunity to optimize the process for the ethical, environmental, and sustainability implications of doing so. To determine the extent to which a problem exists both now and potentially in the future, we have conducted a survey to capture perceptions on cloud footprints in general, and the importance which people place on recovering digital assets from the cloud prior to death. Our results confirm that online users are generally unaware that this is an aspect which they should be considering in their estate planning - only 29% of respondents have considered what will happen their online data after death - but the majority agree that it is important and indicate that they will give it greater attention in the future.

Two-Way Relay Channel (TWRC) plays an important role in relay networks, and efficient relaying protocols are particularly important for this model. However, existing protocols may not be able to realize the potential of TWRC if the two independent fading channels are not carefully handled. In this paper, a Hybrid DeModulate-Forward (HDMF) protocol is proposed to address such a problem. We first introduce the two basic components of HDMF - direct and differential DMF, and then propose the key decision criterion for HDMF based on the corresponding log-likelihood ratios. We further enhance the protocol so that it can be applied independently from the modulation schemes. Through extensive mathematical analysis, theoretical performance of the proposed protocol is investigated. By comparing with existing protocols, the proposed HDMF has lower error rate. A novel scheduling scheme for the proposed protocol is introduced, which has lower length than the benchmark method. The results also reveal the protocol's potential to improve spectrum efficiency of relay channels with unbalanced bilateral traffic.

Carbon emissions are receiving increased attention and scrutiny in all walks of life and the ICT sector is no exception. With the increase in on-demand applications and services together with on-demand compute/storage facilities in server farms or data centres there are self-evident increases in the power requirements to maintain such systems. Proponents of the impact of increased carbon emissions when powering electrical systems in general however, regularly impress negative side-effects such as influence on climate change. Action is subsequently being encouraged to halt further environmental damage. The problem is explored in this paper from the point of view of carbon emissions from data centre operations and the development of energy-aware management and energy-efficient networking solutions. Data centre energy consumption costs drive the evaluation process within a Data Centre Energy-Efficient Context-Aware Broker (DCe-CAB) algorithm designed as an original solution to this significant carbon-contributing network scenario. In this paper, performance requirements and objectives of the DCe-CAB are defined, along with case study demonstration of the way in which it optimises selection and operation of data centres using context-awareness.

This paper presents a framework for context-driven policy-based QoS control and end-to-end resource management in converged next generation networks. The Converged Networks QoS Framework (CNQF) is being developed within the IU-ATC project, and comprises distributed functional entities whose instances co-ordinate the converged network infrastructure to facilitate scalable and efficient end-to-end QoS management. The CNQF design leverages aspects of TISPAN, IETF and 3GPP policy-based management architectures whilst also introducing important innovative extensions to support context-aware QoS control in converged networks. The framework architecture is presented and its functionalities and operation in specific application scenarios are described.