Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) demand real-time collision prediction to ensure road safety and reduce accident severity. Conventional approaches rely on transmitting raw video or high-dimensional sensory data from roadside units (RSUs) to vehicles, which is impractical under vehicular communication bandwidth and latency constraints. In this work, we propose a semantic V2X framework in which RSU-mounted cameras generate spatiotemporal semantic embeddings of future frames using the Video Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (V-JEPA). To evaluate the system, we construct a digital twin of an urban traffic environment enabling the generation of d verse traffic scenarios with both safe and collision events. These embeddings of the future frame, extracted from V-JEPA, capture task-relevant traffic dynamics and are transmitted via V2X links to vehicles, where a lightweight attentive probe and classifier decode them to predict imminent collisions. By transmitting only semantic embeddings instead of raw frames, the proposed system significantly reduces communication overhead while maintaining predictive accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that the framework with an appropriate processing method achieves a 10% F1-score improvement for collision prediction while reducing transmission requirements by four orders of magnitude compared to raw video. This validates the potential of semantic V2X communication to enable cooperative, real-time collision prediction in ITS.

High-quality Service Function Chaining (SFC) provisioning is provided by the timely execution of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in a defined sequence. Advanced Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) solutions are utilized in many studies to contribute to fast and reliable autonomous SFC provisioning. However, under a large-scale network environment, centralized solutions might struggle to provide efficient outcomes when handling massive demands with stringent End-to-End (E2E) delay constraints. Therefore, in this paper, a novel distributed SFC provisioning framework is proposed, where the network is divided into several clusters. Each cluster has a dedicated local agent with a DRL module to handle the SFC provisioning of demands in that cluster. Also, there is a general agent that can communicate with local agents to handle the requests beyond their capacity. The DRL module of local agents can be applied under different configurations of clusters independent of different numbers of data centers and logical links in each cluster. Simulation results demonstrate that utilizing the proposed distributed framework offers up to 60 % improvements in the acceptance ratio of service requests in comparison to the centralized approach while minimizing the E2E delay of accepted requests.

Virtualization technology, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), gives flexibility to communication and 5G core network technologies for dynamic and efficient resource allocation while reducing the cost and dependability of the physical infrastructure. In the NFV context, Service Function Chain (SFC) refers to the ordered arrangement of various Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). To provide an automated SFC provisioning algorithm that satisfies high demands of SFC requests having ultra-reliable and low latency communication (URLLC) requirements, in the literature, Artificial Intelligence (AI) modules and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms are investigated in detail. This research proposes a generative Variational Autoencoder (VAE) assisted advanced-DRL module for handling SFC requests in a dynamic environment where network configurations and request amounts can be changed. Using the hybrid approach, including generative VAE and DRL, the algorithm leverages several advantages, such as dimensionality reduction, better generalization on the VAE side, exploration, and trial-error learning from the DRL model. Results show that GenAI-assisted DRL surpasses the state-of-the-art model of DRL in SFC provisioning in terms of SFC acceptance ratio, E2E delay, and throughput maximization.

Service Function Chain (SFC) provisioning stands as a pivotal technology in the realm of 5G and future networks. Its essence lies in orchestrating VNFs (Virtual Network Functions) in a specified sequence for different types of SFC requests. Efficient SFC provisioning requires fast, reliable, and automatic VNFs’ placements, especially in a network where massive amounts of SFC requests are generated having ultrareliable and low latency communication (URLLC) requirements. Although much research has been done in this area, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)-based solutions, this work presents an advanced Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based simulation model for SFC provisioning that illustrates a realistic environment. The proposed simulation platform can handle massive heterogeneous SFC requests having different characteristics in terms of VNFs chain, bandwidth, and latency constraints. Also, the model is flexible to apply to networks having different configurations in terms of the number of data centers (DCs), logical connections among DCs, and service demands. The simulation model components and the workflow of processing VNFs in the SFC requests are described in detail. Numerical results demonstrate that using this simulation setup and proposed algorithm, a realistic SFC provisioning can be achieved with an optimal SFC acceptance ratio while minimizing the E2E latency and resource consumption.

IoT binary classification tasks can benefit significantly from edge computing because it allows for real-time processing and decision-making. By gathering and processing data locally, edge devices can lower latency and enable quicker response times, which is beneficial for applications whose main aims are safety and security. Cell phone usage while driving is one of the worst scenarios that decreases traffic safety and causes accidents. A wide range of new applications and services could be possible with the convergence of IoT and cell phone detection in the car while in driving mode. Machine learning methods, which include the ability to track people and objects in realtime, increase public safety by identifying and preventing potential security threats and improve transportation system efficiency by streamlining traffic and easing congestion. Although object detection is the most common approach for cell phone detection, the binary classification approach has been proposed because of its fast processing ability and easy deployment on edge devices. The device, in consideration, incorporates an inside camera to gather driver image data to perform binary classification. After collecting images from edge devices, these data are prepared in detail in an IID (independently and identically distributed) manner for better training for deep learning models. After training, test results are obtained by interpolation and extrapolation analyses. Results show that interpolation accuracy increases by $1.1 \%$ and extrapolation accuracy increases by $16.5 \%$.

Massive amount of data transmission in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) settings lead to heavy utilization of communication channels. Furthermore, reliable connectivity and fast data transmission can be achieved by either re-engineering the network architecture or using efficient methods that alter data attributes, such as volume. This paper proposes a new method called Sequential Tracking along with an event-based distracted driving detection algorithm. Existing studies using machine learning models and object detection aim to detect distracted drivers and send their detection outcomes to the cloud or edge units. However, minimizing the data transmission or exchange overhead remains understudied. Therefore, the proposed Sequential Tracking method with an event-based algorithm is applied to distracted driving detection models to reduce the data transmission overhead due to false predictions, i.e., false positives or false negatives. Furthermore, the proposed method considers the camera's inference time and storage capacity since AI models are deployed to edge units for these kinds of tasks. Numerical results, with the inclusion of parameter tuning, confirm that the overall accuracy performance of the model can be improved from 87% to 91%. Moreover, following upon parameter-tuning, false predictions in the test dataset are eliminated, and the number of data points is reduced to less than one-tenth leading to significant traffic reduction between the edge unit and the cloud.

Conventional AI-based service flow remains a challenge for IoT-enabled devices since data collected by local clients is transferred to a centralized server, which contains a global machine learning (ML) model. However, this introduces privacy and security concerns for the clients, and federated Learning is positioned to overcome this problem where each client trains a local model with its local data and shares its model parameters with the centralized server instead of sharing data. Upon the receipt of all parameters, it aggregates these parameters and generates a new global model. Later this global model is distributed among the clients. Various aggregation methods have been published for increasing the global model's accuracy performance after aggregation. However, those new aggregation algorithms are not fully investigated under malicious and collaborated environments. A malicious environment is a scenario where malicious clients are present and can share parameters to degrade the aggregated model performance. On the other hand, the collaborative environment is another scenario in which some clients can share information with each other in order to collaborate. To tackle this issue, we investigate a new aggregation method called Score Based Aggregation (SBA) That aims to mitigate the impact of the model parameters from such malicious clients without keeping compromising the training accuracy. We compare our result to a baseline approach where the malicious client is varied from 20% to 50%. Numerical results suggest that the SBA aggregation helps the model maintain the convergence of accuracy at higher levels in comparison to the baseline approach.