Faced with multiple societal challenges, the healthcare sector has been compelled to leverage recent and emerging technologies to adapt. Blockchain is one of the leading technologies, offering transparency, process automation, immutability of traces and the ability to scale up in terms of both the volume of processes and the number of players interacting. The goal of the paper is to show the potential of blockchain technology - alone or merged with other technologies - to help the healthcare system evolve and provide scalable, efficient and secure solutions to four healthcare applications: electronic health record (EHR) storage, health data sharing, remote patient monitoring, and pharmaceutical supply chains. After identifying the functional and security requirements of healthcare systems, the paper conducts an in-depth review of the literature. The survey assesses the effectiveness of blockchain-based solutions in meeting functional, privacy and security needs. It is completed by an analysis of the synergies that can be expected between blockchain and emerging technologies, e.g. artificial intelligence, federated learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Large Language Models (LLM), to the benefit of security or privacy in healthcare.

Short-form videos are becoming a trend in today’s social media. A large number of tools provide users with the capability to edit and mix video clips with audio files to create a short-form video. A significant number of such videos currently exist on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram that were created by manual cut and mix of video and audio clips. In this paper, we examine the relationship that exists between video scenes and audio clips in order to identify the best mixing strategy of multiple video and audio files. For this purpose, we extract the beats and downbeats of the audio files and augment them with the scene changes in the video files. Next, we use the data to train two LSTM and RNN models to determine the best places to cut the video based on the audio data. Our system enables users to automatically create high-quality short-form videos by simply specifying the video clips and the audio file that should be mixed with them. We conducted experiments on 200 short-form videos. Our results illustrate the efficiency of the proposed system in determining the optimal cut scenes based on the characteristics of the selected audio file.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is becoming the most dominant method for network management. By decoupling the control plane from the data plane, SDN provides a centralized view and more flexibility, scalability, and global knowledge of the network. In a previous paper, we presented ROAMER, a routing protocol that exploits roadside units (RSUs) in order to route messages within vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). ROAMER combines two famous routing methods that have been extensively used in VANETs, which are geographical and carry-and-forward. In this article, we upgrade ROAMER by shifting the routing operations into the SDN. Hence, we present SURFER, a routing protocol for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) that makes use of a distributed SDN architecture and a Blockchain system within the RSU network in order to route packets securely and efficiently. We present two implementation methods for SURFER: the first uses SDN within the RSU network only, while the second method deploys SDN within the entire IoV. We implemented extensive simulations and compared SURFER to some very recent routing protocols for IoV. The simulation results illustrated the high efficiency of SURFER as compared to other IoV routing protocols in terms of latency, packet delivery, and network overhead.

The wide expansion of the Internet of Things is pushing the growth of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) into the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). Secure data communication is vital to the success and stability of the IoV and should be integrated into its various operations and aspects. In this paper, we present a framework for secure IoV communications by utilizing the High Performance Blockchain Consensus (HPBC) algorithm. Based on a previously published communication model for VANETs that uses an efficient routing protocol for transmitting packets between vehicles, we describe in this paper how to integrate a blockchain model on top of the IoV communications system. We illustrate the method that we used to implement HPBC within the IoV nodes. In order to prove the efficiency of the proposed model, we carry out extensive simulations that test the proposed model and study its overhead on the IoV network. The simulation results demonstrated the good performance of the HPBC algorithm when implemented within the IoV environment.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is becoming the most dominant method for network management. By decoupling the control plane from the data plane, SDN provides a centralized view and more flexibility, scalability, and global knowledge of the entire network. In a previous paper, the authors presented ROAMER, a routing protocol that exploits Roadside Units (RSUs) in order to route messages within Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). ROAMER combines two famous routing methods that have been extensively used in VANETs, which are geographical and carry-and-forward routing paradigms. In this paper, we upgrade ROAMER by shifting the routing operations into the SDN. Hence, we present SURFER, a routing protocol for Internet of Vehicles (IoV) that makes use of a distributed SDN architecture within the RSU network in order to route packets efficiently. We describe the extensive simulations that we performed to test SURFER and compare it to two very recent routing protocols for IoV. The simulation results illustrated the high efficiency of SURFER in terms of packet delivery, latency, and network overhead.

In a previous work, we presented a system which combines active solid state drives and reconfigurable FPGAs (which we called reconfigurable active SSD nodes, or simply RASSD nodes) into a storage-compute node that can be used by a cloud data-center to achieve accelerated computations while running data intensive applications. To hide the complexity of accessing RASSD nodes from applications, we proposed in another work a middleware framework which handles all low-level interactions with the hardware. The Middleware Server (MWS), which manages a group of RASSD nodes, has the role of bridging the connection between a client and the nodes. In this paper, we present extensions to the MWS to enable it to operate within a collaborative cloud environment, and we develop a model to evaluate the performance of the collaborative MWS. This model represents a study of the utilization of three hardware resources of the MWS: CPU, memory, and network interface. For each, we derive the parameters that affect its operations, and propose formulas for its utilization. The results describe the capacity of a MWS, and hence can be used to decide on the number of MWSs in a collaborative cloud datacenter.

Data curation activities in collaborative databases mandate that collaborators interact until they converge and agree on the content of their data. Typically, updates by a member of the collaboration are made visible to all collaborators for comments but at the same time are pending the approval or rejection of the data custodian, e.g., the principal scientist or investigator (PI). In current database technologies, approval and authorization of updates is based solely on the identity of the user, e.g., via the SQL GRANT and REVOKE commands. However, in collaborative environments, the updated data is open for collaborators for discussion and further editing and is finally approved or rejected by the PI based on the content of the data and not on the identity of the updater. In this paper, we introduce a cloud-based collaborative database system that promotes and enables collaboration and data curation scenarios. We realize content-based update approval and history tracking of updates inside HBase, a distributed and scalable open-source cluster-based database. The design and implementation as well as a detailed performance study of several approaches for update approval are presented and contrasted in the paper.

In this article, we propose new extensions to Hadoop to enable clusters of reconfigurable active solid-state drives (RASSDs) to process streaming data from SSDs using FPGAs. We also develop an analytical model to estimate the performance of RASSD clusters running under Hadoop. Using the Hadoop RASSD platform and network simulators, we validate our design and demonstrate its impact on performance for different workloads taken from Stanford's Phoenix MapReduce project. Our results show that for a hardware acceleration factor of 20×, compute-intensive workloads processing 153MB of data can run up to 11× faster than a standard Hadoop cluster.

The strong potentials that exist in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) has given birth to the concept of Vehicular Clouds, in which cloud computing services are hosted by vehicles that have sufficient resources to act as mobile cloud servers. In this paper, we propose a protocol that enables vehicles to search for mobile cloud servers that are moving nearby and discover their services and resources. The design depends on roadside units (RSUs) that act as cloud directories with which mobile cloud servers register. We evaluate the performance of our protocol using ns2 and explain through comparing the results to another scheme the feasibility and efficiency of our protocol in terms of service discovery and service consuming delays and packet success ratio.

A novel and rapidly growing area of research concerns data-intensive applications and the technical challenges that accompany it. One of those challenges is developing approaches and mechanisms that render high performance in processing and storing data. We joined this research effort by proposing a reconfigurable active solid state drives (RASSD) system that deals with such applications, through employing basic hardware, namely FPGA's connected to SSD's, to service the above applications as processing nodes, and take advantage of the close proximity between storage and processing. In this paper, we propose an intelligent middleware system for interfacing workstation-based and mobile applications to the distributed RASSD system. In order to provide high performance in terms of time and functionality, the middleware manages the data processing on the RASSD nodes through special pieces of code that we call drivelets, along with FPGA configuration files (bitstreams). Another important responsibility of the proposed middleware architecture lies in the unguided management of applications' flows, where it uses an intelligent script-parsing mechanism to turn one general request from the client into a sequence of operations needed to generate the required results. The middleware design allows for the integration of mobile applications into the overall architecture of the RASSD system, and allowing them to run data intensive applications that otherwise it is unfeasible for them to execute. We validate our design by comparing it to an existing middleware architecture, and present two use-cases with their results and discussion.

Cloud computing is increasingly becoming a desirable and foundational element in international enterprise computing. There are many companies which design, develop, and offer cloud technologies. However, cloud providers are still like lone islands. While current cloud computing models have provided significant benefits of maximizing the use of resources within a cloud, the current solutions still face many challenges including the lack of cross-leverage of available resources across clouds, the need to move data between clouds in some cases, and the lack of a global efficient cooperation between clouds. In [1], we addressed some of these challenges by providing an approach that enables various cloud providers to cooperate in order to execute, together, common requests. In this paper, we illustrate several enhancements to our work in [1] which focus on integrating hardware acceleration with the cloud services. We extend the Hadoop framework by adding provisions for hardware acceleration with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) within the cloud, for multi-cloud interaction, and for global cloud management. Hardware acceleration is used to offload computations when needed or as a service within the clouds. It can provide additional sources of revenues, reduced operating costs, and increased resource utilization. We derive a mathematical model for evaluating the performance of the most important entity in our system under various conditions.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable vehicles to communicate with each other but require efficient and robust routing protocols for their success. In this paper, we exploit the infrastructure of roadside units (RSUs) to efficiently and reliably route packets in VANETs. Our system operates by using vehicles to carry and forward messages from a source vehicle to a nearby RSU and, if needed, route these messages through the RSU network and, finally send them from an RSU to the destination vehicle. Our system is mostly critical for users who are far apart and want to communicate using their vehicles' onboard units. Many recent paradigms, like social networks, will greatly benefit from a system like ours to enable users on the road to exchange different types of data. We evaluate the performance of our system using the ns2 simulation platform and compare our scheme to existing solutions. The results prove the feasibility and efficiency of our scheme.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable vehicles to communicate with each other, but require efficient and robust routing protocols for their success. In this paper, we exploit the infrastructure of roadside units (RSUs) to efficiently and reliably route packets in VANETs. Our system operates by using vehicles to carry and forward messages from a source vehicle to a nearby RSU, and then if needed, route these messages through the RSU network, and finally send them from an RSU to the destination vehicle. Our system is mostly critical for far apart users who want to communicate using their on-board units (OBUs). We carry out an extensive mathematical analysis to study the performance of our system under different network conditions. We verify our analysis by comparing its results with the results of the simulations we performed using the ns2 software. The results prove the feasibility and efficiency of our scheme in terms of query delay, packet delivery ratio, and network traffic.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) enable vehicles that are not necessarily within the same radio transmission range to communicate with each other and with roadside units (RSUs). The success of data acquisition and delivery systems in VANETs depends on their ability to defend against the different types of security and privacy attacks. The security of safety messages (like emergency and traffic information) has been the concern of VANET security researchers, and very few works dealt with the security of data messages exchanged between users and the infrastructure. This paper introduces a system that takes advantage of the RSUs that are connected to the internet and provide various types of information to VANET users. We provide a suite of novel security and privacy mechanisms in our proposed system, and evaluate its performance using the ns2 software. We demonstrate through comparing its results to those of another system its feasibility and efficiency.

This paper proposes a cache consistency scheme based on a previously proposed architecture for caching database data in MANETs. The original scheme for data caching stores the queries that are submitted by requesting nodes in special nodes, called query directories (QDs), and uses these queries to locate the data (responses) that are stored in the nodes that requested them, called caching nodes (CNs). The consistency scheme is server-based in which control mechanisms are implemented to adapt the process of caching a data item and updating it by the server to its popularity and its data update rate at the server. The system implements methods to handle disconnections of QD and CN nodes from the network and to control how the cache of each node is updated or discarded when it returns to the network. Estimates for the average response time of node requests and the average node bandwidth utilization are derived in order to determine the gains (or costs) of employing our scheme in the MANET. Moreover, ns2 simulations were performed to measure several parameters, like the average data request response time, cache update delay, hit ratio, and bandwidth utilization. The results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed scheme over existing systems.

Nodes in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) acquire data from servers through access points. In order to minimize this interaction, data caching at mobile nodes is employed. This work builds on a recently introduced cooperative caching scheme that uses the query as an index to its response. When a new request is issued, nodes cooperate to find its answer and send it to the requesting node. This work semantically compares each request with all cached queries and implements a process that may trim the request into fragments and combine the answers of these fragments to calculate the total answer of the request. Our simulations show the advantages of the system when compared to other cache methods that are proposed for MANETs.

This paper introduces a message forwarding algorithm for search applications within mobile ad hoc networks that is based on the concept of selecting the nearest node from a set of designated nodes. The algorithm, which is called Minimum Distance Packet Forwarding (MDPF), uses routing information to select the node with the minimum distance. The goal of the proposed algorithm is to minimize the average number of hops taken to reach the node that holds the desired data. Numerical analysis and experimental evaluations using the network simulation software ns2 were performed to derive the lower and upper bounds of the confidence interval for the mean hop count between the source node of the data request, on one hand, and the node that holds the desired data and the last node in the set of search nodes, on the other hand. In the experimental evaluation, the performance of MDPF was compared to that of Random Packet Forwarding (RPF) and Minimal Spanning Tree Forwarding (MSTF). The results agreed with the numerical analysis results and demonstrated that MDPF offers significant hop count savings and smaller delays when compared to RPF and MSTF.

This paper introduces a cooperation-based database caching system for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). The heart of the system is the nodes that cache submitted queries. The queries are used as indices to data cached in nodes that previously requested them. We discuss how the system is formed and how requested data is found if cached, or retrieved from the external database and then cached. Analysis is performed and expressions are derived for the different parameters, including upper and lower bounds for the number of query caching nodes as well as the average load they experience, generated network traffic, node bandwidth consumption, and other performance-related measures. Simulations with the ns-2 software were used to study the performance of the system in terms of average delay and hit ratio, and to compare it with the performance of two other caching schemes for MANETs, namely CachePath and CacheData. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system in terms of achieved hit ratio and low delay.

Service discovery is indispensable to ad hoc networking where establishing a stand-alone and self-configurable communication environment is the main objective. This paper concentrates on designing a distributed service discovery model for service sharing among diverse mobile devices in mobile ad hoc networks. This model is built on top of the network layer of the TCP/IP stack and benefits from the up-to-date routing information enabled by proactive routing protocols that attempt to keep the information in the routing tables of the mobile nodes current. The designed system is based on storing service descriptions in selected nodes that are searched in accordance to a proposed Minimum Distance Packet Forwarding (MDPF) algorithm. In addition to identifying and analyzing the design parameters of the system, this paper studies the delay and traffic performance using analytical derivations and experimental evaluation based on the ns-2 network simulation software. The system is intended to be used in a collaborative mobile ad hoc network environment whereby a mobile node can consume services, share them, or facilitate such sharing by helping other nodes find them.