Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be deployed and managed in a variety of applications with the help of flying ad hoc networks, or FANETs. However, the dynamically changing topology in FANET has raised significant challenges, mainly related to the insurance of security as a required service for the optimal performance of FANET networks. Blockchain technology has recently been used as an innovative solution to improve FANET security, due to its main characteristics such as transparency, decentralization, and tamper-proof nature. In this poster, we detail some current applications of Blockchain to secure FANET including military, surveillance, and Industry 4.0 services. Finally, we discuss some of the common issues associated with the application of Blockchain on FANET networks.

In the CubeSATs ecosystem, flight-launching and resilient communication are two major challenges for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Near Earth Orbit (NEO), and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites. Dynamic beamforming, satellite Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) operations, and channel-tolerant communication are core and common problems faced by all satellite mission designs. In this work, a UAV-assisted SkyCube Testbench is proposed that can be used to demonstrate a) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in GNURadioOR over 6 GHz Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP); b) GNC operations over 923 MHz-2 W Long Range (LoRA) wireless node; c) beam-forming using 2x2 phased-array antenna; d) energy-harvesting via 25 W mono-crystalline PV modules and two 3.7 V/6000mAh batteries driven by 50 W Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) converter; and e) energy-optimized thrust control nozzle for 30+ min airborne flight-time with 881 g payload. This design is expected to serve 35 km altitude with 73.298 km orbital curvature.

Renewable energy is gradually becoming the most promising type of power generation that could replace fossil fuels in the future. One of the most widely used form of renewable energy is solar/PV energy. To examine the impacts of different climatic circumstances and maintain solar power converters' optimal performance while meeting peak demand via diverse environmental conditions, accurate PV generating power prediction models are required. Air temperature, relative humidity, Photovoltaics (PV) surface temperature, irradiance, dust, wind speed, and output power are among the environmental parameters examined and addressed in this study. The model suggested in this study optimises and trains three prediction algorithms: the Artificial Neural Network (ANN), the Multi-Variate (MV), and the Support Vector Machine (SVM). To choose the best PV generating power forecast, the model uses three well-known prediction algorithms plus a voting method. Furthermore, given the environmental circumstances, the voting system predicts the output power with great accuracy. The MSE for Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Multi-variate (MV), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is 98, 81, and 82, respectively. In comparison, the voting algorithm's Mean Squared Error (MSE) is only slightly higher than 53. With respect to the environmental circumstances in Qatar, the suggested PV power generation forecast algorithm produces trustworthy results. The suggested voting algorithm is anticipated to aid in the design process of photovoltaic (PV) facilities when energy output is very predictable.

In this paper, we consider a downlink cooperative NOMA system where both Decode and Forward (DF) and Amplify and Forward (AF) strategies are studied in the presence of a malicious eavesdropper. First, the secrecy outage probability (SOP) is studied when users' ranking is based on either instantaneous or average channel gains. Next, the strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC) is derived for users ranking based on average and instantaneous channel gains. Under this setup, we also investigate the improvement of the system secrecy using optimal power allocation (OPA) coefficients. Numerical and simulation results are provided and demonstrate that Instantaneous channel gain users' ranking provide better results and its further improved with the use of OPA.

Outdoor air quality monitoring (OAQM) is of great importance to human health and environment. Engineers and researchers are increasingly focusing their efforts on the design of real-time OAQM systems using wireless sensor networks. This paper presents an OAQM system enabling measurement of CO2, CO, Cl2, ambient temperature, and relative humidity. In our system, remote users usually employ a local gateway to connect wireless sensor nodes to the external world. In this work, the gateway processes the collected air quality data and transmits the useful data to end-users through a web-server. The nodes are self sustainable as they are equipped with a solar panel and a rechargeable Lithim-ion 2W 3.7V battery.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have received an important consideration in recent years regarding its broad area of applications. Time synchronization is one of the most important challenges of WSNs. This paper proposes a novel Optimal Distributed Consensus Time Synchronization (O-DCTS) for WSN. The proposed O-DCTS is based on some known distributed algorithms such as consensus with averaging and graph theory features. The algorithm, iteratively, updates the skew and the offset parameters of each sensor node's virtual clock. The skew compensation parameters and the offset compensation parameters are employed to update the virtual clock of each sensor node. The optimization of the proposed algorithm is applied on these two parameters, skew and offset, with respect to a minimization criterion. The convergence of the O-DCTS is studied using distance regular graphs.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potentialities to advance the concretisation of the smart world through a wide interaction between the human society with its physical environment. This interaction is enabled by Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) used to identify and to interpret contexts. However, the IoT and WSN have intrinsically challenges, particularly Network Lifetime (NL) maximisation. In this context, researchers have developed power-aware mechanisms for WSN and IoT. These mechanisms delay the battery depletion of a sensor node and extend the NL to ensure continuous full operational network activity. Accordingly, in this paper, we review and discuss various recent contributions related to nature inspired power-aware wake-up scheduling approaches. Furthermore, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of the various nature-inspired wake-up schedule mechanisms. Besides this paper provides for the reviewed approaches usability contexts.

In all outdoor long haul air quality monitoring and mapping applications, sensing accuracy, the sustainability of telemetry, and resilience in node systems and operation are major challenges. The severity of these challenges varies depending on the moderateness and harshness of the climate of observation. In this work, an autonomous environmentally powered, sensors self-diagnostic/calibration, and context-aware IoT-based telemetry for multi-variable sensing node is being proposed. In this node, photo-voltaic and piezoelectric energy harvesters contributed to self-calibration and sustainable measurement of temperature (in °C), humidity (in %), pressure (in bar), geo-position (in NMEA format), volatile organic compounds-VOC (in ppm), particulate matter PM (in ppm), ozone (in Dobson Unit), Carbon mono-oxide (in ppm), Nitrogen dioxide (in ppm), and Sulphur dioxide (in ppm). Results have shown that the proposed system worked autonomously for days and optimized the real-time air quality mapping for the chosen geo-spatial cluster, i.e. Qatar University.

This paper investigates the physical layer security of a full-duplex (FD) Decode-and-Forward (DF) NOMA network assumed to undergo independent and identically distributed Nakagami-m fading. Herein, we provide a secrecy performance analysis for the case of multiple external eavesdroppers in both colluding and non-colluding wiretap scenario. Our analysis introduces novel expressions of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) as well as the strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC) for the proposed network. Finally, numerical analysis with simulations are given to illustrate the validity of the obtained theoretical results and to highlight the impact of multiple eavesdroppers on FD NOMA systems.

Due to the successive interference cancellation (SIC) technique, Non orthogonal multiple Access (NOMA) users have the capability of decoding the other paired users sharing the same resource bloc. As a result, NOMA technique is not only exposed to external eavesdropping, but also to internal eavesdropping which raises security risks regarding NOMA users' privacy. Therefore, this research aims to analyse a Multi-antenna cooperative NOMA system where both Decode and Forward (DF) and Amplify and Forward (AF) strategies are studied. In this context, we investigate the secrecy performance of our system with both internal and external eavesdropping scenarios. Closed-form expressions of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC) metrics are derived. Numerical results are given to illustrate the validity of the obtained theoretical results.

In this paper, we derive the Secrecy Outage Probability (SOP) and Strictly Positive Secrecy Capacity (SPSC) of cooperative Non Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) in the presence of K Decode and Forward (DF) relays and Rayleigh fading channels. We also optimize the powers allocated to far and near users to maximize the SPSC or minimize the SOP. Our results are valid for any number of relays with arbitrary positions.

This paper studies the problem of secure dual-hop AF network in the presence of eavesdropper. We study the secrecy performance of partial relay selection with outdated channel state information (CSI). We propose a system secrecy where two sources and destination simultaneously transmit the legitimate and the jamming signal respectively. The selected relay forwards the combined signal to the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. We derive a closed-form expression for lower bound on the ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC) under different assumptions of the eavesdropper channel gains. We verify that the system performance is degraded as the correlation coefficient decreases. Simulation results are considered to verify the exactness of the proposed mathematical analysis.

In this paper, we focus on the half-duplex (HD) relaying with partial relay selection (PRS) scheme using destination-assisted jamming (DAJ). We consider one source (S), one destination (D), one passive eavesdropper and multiple amplify-and-forward (AF) relays. The relay node is selected based on the best instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the first hop. Closed-form expressions for lower-bound of ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) are derived over independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading environment. Moreover, we present a comparison between the proposed system and the secure AF relaying system with reactive relay selection (RRS). In the RRS, the relay is chosen based on the best SNR of the second hop. Simulation results are presented to verify the exactness of our proposed mathematical analysis.

The early warning and disaster management agencies spend billions of dollars to counter and cater earthquakes but it has always been unique accident. In this work, a programmable four degrees of freedom electromechanical seismic wave events simulation platform design is being proposed to study and experiment seismic waves and earthquakes realization in form of ground motions. The platform can be programmed and interfaced through an IoT cloud-based Web application. The rig has been tested in the range of frequencies of extreme seismic waves from 0.1Hz to 178Hz and terrestrial inclinations from -5.000° to 5.000°, which is key contribution of this work. This would be an enabler for a variety of applications such as training self-balancing and calibrating seismic resistant designs and structures in addition to studying and testing seismic detection devices. Nevertheless, it serves as an adequate training colossus for machine learning algorithms and event management expert systems.

In this paper, we investigate the secrecy performance of an Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relay in a cooperative NOMA system. The AF relay ensures the transmission of the signal in the presence of one passive eavesdropper where all channels are assumed to undergo a Rician fading. In this context, analytical and asymptotic expressions for Secrecy Outage Probability (SOP) are derived. To verify our theoretical analysis, numerical results are presented, showing the effect of different Rician factors on secrecy performance.

In this paper, we investigate secure two-user AF relaying networks based on a destination assisted cooperative jamming (DACJ). We consider two sources, one destination, one eavesdropper and multiple amplify-and-forwards (AF) relays. In the first time slot, each source broadcasts the information signal to the relays. In order to protect the source message from being eavesdropped, the destination simultaneously transmits a jamming signal to each relay. The selected relay amplifies and forwards the combined signal to the destination and eavesdropper. We introduce reactive relay selection and power allocation to decrease the power consumption. Closed-form expressions for lower bound of ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC) are provided. Numerical results are presented to verify the exactness of the proposed mathematical analysis.

Free space optical communications (FSO) have witnessed a growing interest in the last few decades due to its various advantages. However, this technology suffers from its sensitivity to the atmospheric conditions such as fog, dust storms, and high temperature, etc. In order to overcome these issues, many techniques have been proposed in literature. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of using hybrid automatic re-transmissions request (HARQ) technique to overcome FSO channels impairments. Two HARQ protocols are considered: ALOHA (ALO) and incremental redundancy (IR). For each protocol, we derive the outage probability expressions, throughput and the average number of the re-transmissions. In addition, we study the HARQ performance in terms of delay and packet sojourn. The results show the effectiveness of using HARQ-IR over ALO protocol.

Early seismic warning systems are key for safe future scalable infrastructures. In this work, a dual variable i.e. vibration and line of sight (LOS) based structure health monitoring (SHM) node is designed to sense tilt angle for early seismic warning and wave scattering detection. The SHM node, consisting of high-precision five bi-axis tiltmeters and five Blue-Violet laser diodes transmitter/receiver/reflector(LDTRR) assembly, has been designed and simulated in Proteus 7ISIS, MATLAB 7 and drafted in AutoCAD. In AutoCAD, a four LDTRR assembly is oriented at the bottom of building and its four co-planer reflectors have been orthogonally placed at effective radii with respect to the characteristic wavelengths of P, S, and Rayleigh whilst Love seismic waves, and one reflector is placed at the bottom of building. PV umbrella with a Li-ion battery has been used for green ergonomic shape. The time plots from real tiltmeter sensor nodes and data acquired from the proposed SHM node show similar behavior and results. The derived parameters of wavelength S, i.e. seismic parameter F,varied linearly from safe to hazardous seismic conditions. The variation from safe seismic to hazardous seismic transition of randomly simulated environment, also varied network traffic in GPS module as per defined threshold of sensor variables in Proteus ISIS Electronics Design Automation (EDA) engine. As per early warning evaluation functions (EWEF), the proposed design for early seismic warning algorithm (ESWA) can be a cost-effective analytics resource for any scalable SHM solution for observation range within 5km+ radius at low cost and 20km at moderate/high cost.

Network lifetime is the main issue of wireless sensor networks and IoT solutions in real world application. Sensors cannot have an infinite lifetime without battery recharge or replacement. Energy harvesting, from environmental energy sources, is a promising technology to provide sustainable powering for WSN. However, based on harvesting opportunities, nodes power may alternate between two states: a state with sufficient residual power and another with shortage in power. Hence, it is paramount to develop robust networking platforms that are energy-harvesting-aware and that support low-energy consumption and data integrity in a noisy, variable environment. In this paper, we present the EAMP-AIDC protocol, an energy aware MAC protocol for EH-WSN based on individual duty cycle optimization. It takes into consideration nodes' residual energy and application and data requirements in order to define individual dynamic duty cycles (Active and sleep periods) that allow to create a balanced load in term of cooperative data relaying tasks and in terms of energy consumption between the different participating nodes so as to ensure continuous network operation. The proposed protocol was evaluated using the network simulator OMNET++ and was compared to the standard IEEE 802.15.4 MAC. The results showed that EAMP-AIDC protocol outperformed the IEEE 802.15.4 standard in term of better energy consumption, increased survivability in energy savings and in guaranteeing continuous operations.

Strong atmospheric turbulence can highly affect the free space optical (FSO) link. In fact, the strength of turbulence is depending on weather factors where the temperature is considered as the main parameter increasing these turbulences. In this work, an experimental investigation of the effect of Qatar's harsh climate on FSO link in term of packet ratio delivery (PDR) is carried out. Two FSO transceivers, operating June at 1550 nm for 600 m link distance, have been used. Based on Bendersky, Kopeika and Blaunstein (BKB) model and on the measured weather factors we tried to characterise the strength of turbulences under Qatar climate.

Although there has been a growing interest on the study of diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT), the existing works are mostly restricted to the outcomes reported for Rayleigh, Rician, and Nakagami fading channels. In this paper, we investigate the optimal tradeoff in the presence of log-normal fading, which provides an accurate model for indoor wireless, optical wireless, and ultra-wideband channels. We consider a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) log-normal channel, derive the outage probability expression, and then present the asymptotical DMT expression. It is shown that the asymptotical maximum diversity gain tends to infinity with logarithm of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To have further insight, we normalize the DMT with that of single-input single-output case and express the relative asymptotical DMT of the MIMO log-normal channel as a function of the number of transmit and receive antennas. We further study DMT for finite SNRs and demonstrate convergence to the asymptotical case. Extensive numerical results are provided to corroborate the analytical derivation.

Abstract Technology has revolutionized medical practices by enabling more convenient and non‐intrusive monitoring of patient's health, leading to next generation ubiquitous healthcare (u‐healthcare). The exploitation of the Internet protocol version 6 addressing space along with the miniaturization of electronic devices has fostered providing interoperability and connectivity of wearable sensor devices in wireless body area networks to the Internet of Things. In this paper, we propose to integrate the IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN) to the u‐healthcare monitoring system architecture. The main objective is to study the feasibility of the 6LoWPAN‐enabled platform in real‐world scenarios dealing with medical data. The performance evaluation of this platform is carried out initially through simulations using OMNet++ and then supported by an experimental study using sensor motes and a customized micro‐computing unit. Performance metrics such as throughput, end‐to‐end delay, packet error rate, and energy consumption are investigated under acute health conditions, where patient's health information has to be sent continuously and at maximum rate to the care provider. The obtained results show that the proposed 6LoWPAN solution fulfills the main quality of service requirements of u‐healthcare applications. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.