Purpose This paper aims to present arguments about how a complex concept of privacy labeling can be a solution to the current state of privacy. Design/methodology/approach The authors give a precise definition of Privacy Labeling (PL), painting a panoptic portrait from seven different perspectives: Business, Legal, Regulatory, Usability and Human Factors, Educative, Technological and Multidisciplinary. They describe a common vision, proposing several important “traits of character” of PL as well as identifying “undeveloped potentialities”, i.e. open problems on which the community can focus. Findings This position paper identifies the stakeholders of the PL and their needs with regard to privacy, describing how PL should be and look like to address these needs. Main aspects considered are the PL’s educational power to change people’s knowledge of privacy, tools useful for constructing PL and the possible visual appearances of PL. They also identify how the present landscape of privacy certifications could be improved by PL. Originality/value The authors adopt a multidisciplinary approach to defining PL as well as give guidelines in the form of goals, characteristics, open problems, starting points and a roadmap for creating the ideal PL.

In recent years, it has come to attention that governments have been doing mass surveillance of personal communications without the consent of the citizens. As a consequence of these revelations, developers have begun releasing new protocols for end-to-end encrypted conversations, extending and making popular the old Off-the-Record protocol. New implementations of such end-to-end encrypted messaging protocols have appeared, and several popular chat applications have been updated to use such protocols. In this survey, we compare six existing applications for end-to-end encrypted instant messaging, namely, Signal, WhatsApp, Wire, Viber, Riot, and Telegram, most of them implementing one of the recent and popular protocols called Signal. We conduct five types of experiments on each of the six applications using the same hardware setup. During these experiments, we test 21 security and usability properties specially relevant for applications (not protocols). The results of our experiments demonstrate that the applications vary in terms of the usability and security properties they provide, and none of them are perfect. In consequence, we make 12 recommendations for improvement of either security, privacy, or usability, suitable for one or more of the tested applications.

Internet of Things (IoT) offers a variety of technologies for connecting different kinds of heterogeneous devices. Security and privacy are becoming the main issue for IoT systems and their developers. Nevertheless, most works on IoT security and privacy requirements look at these requirements from a high-level view. Hence, the essential aspects of security and privacy functionalities will be disregarded, causing wrong design decisions. To combat this problem, this paper summarizes the most current documents related to security and privacy functionalities in the setting of IoT and provides a new taxonomy framework that organizes all aspects of security and privacy baselines, guidelines, and recommendations. To give an understanding of how the framework can help to improve security and privacy of IoT products, we combine it with a security classification method and demonstrate the usefulness by a case study of health products. Our framework can serve as a cornerstone towards the development of appropriate security solutions.

Current mobile units have multiple network interfaces and can connect to multiple access points simultaneously. This represents new opportunities. Choosing the right network, and the optimal route through that network, requires knowledge about the state of the network. With Software Defined Networking where control plane and data plane are separated, SDN controllers can have a good overview over a wide variety of network parameters. Thus, traffic from a service with specific service parameter requirements can be routed so that these requirements are likely to be met. In this paper we have investigated how the optimal placement of a network function in SDN varies based on service parameters such as latency, price, packet loss and throughput. We present a method to choose the best placement based on a service profile according to the current network state. The results are validated by implementing the methods in an emulated SDN network.

The growing number of Wi-Fi networks at homes, buildings and public areas can consume excessive energy and therefore increase CO2 emissions. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate the energy consumption of Wi-Fi networks in general. This study is based on real-world observations both usage and energy consumption of Wi-Fi access points. A variety of off-the-shelf Wi-Fi access points were examined to investigate to what degree clients' usage patterns, especially the signal to noise ratio (SNR) affects the energy consumption. The results indicate that low SNR increases the energy consumption up to 136% in various Wi-Fi access points. Therefore, confining clients with a low level of SNR can reduce the energy consumption of Wi-Fi access points while increases network throughput. Hence, findings of this paper can improve the energy efficiency of Wi-Fi networks in particular energy and cost efficiency of public hotspots.

Enterprises are adopting new business and IT models due to the growing trend of elastically scalable cloud- based collaboration services. However, enterprises are not fully embracing them because they do not want to expose their sensitive information to the cloud when someone collaborating with someone. Therefore, the paper proposes a semantic enhanced attribute-based access manager as a gatekeeper for cloud-based services so that authoritative service access can be achieved. The paper use universal resource identifier for attribute representation. The core of the approach is an access manager, which does not only providing a globally accessible attributes but also managing the entire service access decision process. Furthermore, we propose a rule-based representation scheme to represent service access policies, using a logic-based reasoning mechanism. In order to analyze the feasibility of the proposed approach, we select a cloud-based collaboration scenario and present the prototype implementation of it.

In this paper we investigate issues related to biometric passports. First an overview of the current system is given. Then we present weaknesses associated with the hash functions designed for binary data used on bitmaps. After we show the possibility to use watermarking technologies to avoid storing the fingerprint in the passport but retaining the fingerprint check function.

Service delivery in the wireless world needs to provide a personalized and secure service access. This paper extends the security architecture of the mobile network into the service delivery. Personalized and secure service access is ensured through preferences and certificates, compiled in a personal, corporate and social identity (PID, CID, SID). Specific service examples for doctors and patients in a hospital are used to prove the concept for admittance to areas and access to confidential information.

A demonstration 3D channel prediction model was used in example scenarios in hilly terrain and undulating rural terrain. The model is comprised of a 2D vertical Tx-Rx-plane component as well as 3D components due to off-axis scattering. The latter components are found using rough surface scattering estimation. In the implementation a novel high performance scattering model called the amplitude/phase model was used. It was shown than when the vertical plane 2D prediction was attenuated more than typically 15 dB compared to free space a 3D channel model is necessary. This value was exceeded in approximately 40% of the coverage area in the hilly terrain, and in about 15% of the area in undulating rural. This leads to the conclusion that in a hilly terrain traditional 2D models are not sufficient. When the 3D components were dominating the distribution was approximately Rayleigh, with a typical difference between the 5 and 95 percentiles in the distribution of more than 15 dB. Weather and seasonal variation may change the mean received signal level by up to 4-5 dB. An erroneous assumption about the permittivity or surface roughness by a factor of two could change the mean of the received radio signal by up to 10 dB.

The goal of the fourth-generation (4G) wireless systems is to provide broadband access to the mobile users: ‘easier access to faster information services at any place’, a goal that follows the introduction of multimedia services by IMT-2000 systems as, for example, UMTS and cdma2000. The future may provide truly broadband wireless access through such technologies as Mobile Broadband System (MBS) operating in the 40- and 60-GHz bands, interactive broadcast pseudosatellites and wireless access to Local Area Networks (LANs). Advanced antenna configurations and space-time processing leading to Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems and the use of ever-increasing complex signal processing algorithms will squeeze evermore data through a given window of frequency. For mobility, seamless interoperability is the order of the day, and the wireless devices must be able to engage different systems using such diverse technologies as LMDS and MMDS, DVB, UMTS, IEEE802.11, Hiperlan, Bluetooth, xDSL and others. Within this context, Software Radio (SR) promises to provide the flexibility and the interoperability capability needed for the future reconfigurable communication systems. The term Software Radio SR is used to encompass a wide range of agile, multimode, programmable radio systems that can operate over a wide frequency band and be able to ‘speak’ the language of the different protocols. The evolution in the semiconductor industry leading to constant increase in the clock speeds and increase in device density and the advent of reconfigurable hardware have paved the way to the creation of SR platforms. SR uses a mix of hardware entities for the implementation of radio transceiver functions capable of commanding the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum. The collection of papers in this special issue encompasses a wide range of scopes and topics. The aim has been to capture a snapshot of the current state of R&D activities in this very fertile field, yet at the same time provide the basis of the why and how of SR through several tutorial papers and example applications. Note that the terms ‘software radio’ and ‘reconfigurable systems’ are essentially synonymous. As is often the case, from time to time the commonly used term changes with the fashion of the day. At the time of this writing, ‘Reconfigurable Systems (RS)’ tend to be more fashionable. The ferment in any area is often driven by economic factors. This is indeed true with RS in which the driving force in several segments of the industry is economics. In mobile radio systems there are significant benefits to the construction of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) in RS technology. This allows the operator to invest in an adaptable technology that allows it to perform system upgrades, create nodes capable of interoperating between different protocols or even completely change the communication protocol without the necessity of investing in a completely new hardware infrastructure. In the automotive industry where the role of infotainment is becoming ever more important, the RS technology can offer significant cost benefits and a whole array of location-dependent services that could not otherwise be offered, or offered at a significantly higher cost to the customer. The list goes on and the trend in migration from fixed architecture systems to RS continues. The papers in this special issue are of three basic categories: Tutorial (T), Application-oriented (A) and Research papers (R). We shall use the appropriate symbol when introducing the papers in what follows. The paper by Noll et al. (T) provides a perspective on the system requirements for supporting future-generation protocols and services from an operator point of view. The paper presents a scenario of the potential mobile wireless services demanded by the user on the basis of his/her profile, the key element being the ability to roam and interoperate in a heterogeneous network of diverse devices supporting a variety of protocols yet receiving a user-defined set of services that are transparent to the user regardless of location and access protocol. In this vision, the RS terminal is a central element. The authors then draw an evolutionary path from the fixed architecture hardware devices supporting single protocols to truly universal RS terminals. The paper by Cianca et al. (T) presents an update on the status of R&D and the current thinking of how the somewhat inflexible networks of today may evolve to support the services demanded of the future generation of wired and wireless communication systems. In particular, the paper delves into the concepts of adaptivity at the physical layer of the protocol stack via adaptive coding, modulation and Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ), and presents the argument for the need of an across-layer optimization that addresses the interplay of the physical and the upper layers of the protocol stack to support the future generation of services more efficiently and cost-effectively. In the paper by Laddomada (T), the author addresses a very interesting issue often overlooked in the literature on RS. In particular, assuming that a universal RS user terminal is available, an interesting issue is how would such a universally programmable unit receive its program and operational software? Or for that matter, what typology of software blocks, routines and so on should be defined for a universally programmable device? The paper addresses both the issues of a potential software architecture for such a programmable unit and looks at different mechanisms of software download, providing a qualitative comparison of various techniques. The paper by Dovis et al. (A) looks at a very interesting application of the RS to the design and implementation of an interoperable localization receiver. The Galileo system that is currently being developed in Europe is essentially envisioned to provide precise localization services for commercial applications. It is to be an alternative to the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is controlled by the United States. GPS cannot offer a reliable localization service owing to the fact that it may be occasionally inaccessible to the civilian users at times of crisis or as needed by the US military. Hence, no major commercial enterprise has embraced its use to offer location-dependent services. The paper presents details of the architecture and algorithms used for the implementation of a prototype receiver implemented using reconfigurable logic and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) boards. Such a receiver would be capable of interoperating between GPS and Galileo systems, in addition to offering the possibility of integration of various localization signals to improve performance. Simulation results obtained with the prototype receiver are also presented in the paper. In the paper by Mondin et al. (A), the authors present another very interesting application of the RS technology to the design and implementation of a Satellite and/or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) transponder or signal processing payload. The use of RS in such applications offer significant advantages in comparison to the traditional fixed architecture systems. Current trends in satellite technology are toward implementation of smaller, cheaper and lighter mini- and micro-satellites that can significantly reduce the upfront costs associated with the platform launch into the orbit. In addition, there is a steady move toward the use of Commercial Off The shelf (COTs) and Commercial Avionics Military (CAM) hardware for construction of the satellite payload, as opposed to the use of radiation-hardened, often very expensive hardware that technologically lag behind their terrestrial counterparts by several device generations. These trends in addition to the significant cost benefits offered by reconfigurable payloads favor the eventual deployment of the RS technology in the space sector. The paper by Falletti et al. (R) is a research paper in the general area of MIMO systems. In particular, the paper looks at a promising new blind technique for spatiotemporal signal processing of Direct Sequence (DS) Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) signals. The CDMA technology in addition to multicarrier modulation based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) have become the de facto multiple access technologies of choice for many wireless applications. This is due to their inherent robustness to time-varying multipath channels and flexibility of use for offering a variety of services with diverse data rate requirements. The most common architecture for the CDMA receiver utilizes a RAKE receiver, whereby the multipath components of the desired signal are coherently combined at the receiver. The paper looks at a novel solution to the Multiple Access Interference (MAI) problem by combining blind adaptive beamforming techniques, with RAKE processing in an architecture resembling a wideband beamformer. Simulation results are presented demonstrating the potential gains of this promising technique. Finally, the paper by Daneshgaran and Laddomada (R) looks at a novel decimation filter design technique for Sigma-Delta (Σ-Δ) Analog to Digital Converters (ADC). The creation of a true RS unit requires moving the analog-to-digital boundary of the system as close to the antenna as possible. This way, digital processing can begin as early as possible in the processing chain, providing the greatest degree of flexibility in the reconfigurable device. Unfortunately, direct digitization of the RF signals has a significant power penalty in addition to placing great demands on the ADC. Yet, direct digitization of the RF signal is a waste of system resources since the intelligence signal often occupies a narrow band of frequencies around the RF carrier. The Σ-Δ ADC architecture offers the greatest promise in terms of providing the possibility of direct digitization of the intelligence signal around the RF carrier frequency (i.e. the process of frequency translation is embedded in the system architecture). A key element in the design of such converters is the rate-conversion filter, which is responsible for shaping the output noise spectrum and rejection of the out-of-band noise. This research paper presents a novel hardware efficient architecture for a class of rate-conversion filters suitable for the design of wideband Σ-Δ ADCs. Enjoy the special issue!!

Abstract The paper provides a vision of an adaptive wireless access for next‐generation services. Depending on the requirements of the applications and the user situation, an optimum access method has to be selected. Software (SW) radio is the key enabling technology in this field. The functionality of a SW radio is described, and the challenges for future developments are identified. A major advantage of SW radio is the on‐the‐fly upgrade capabilities, both of terminals and of base stations. The paper concludes with a presentation of future trends, hybrid fibre distribution of radio signals and mechanisms for control of the various access networks. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The capability of the scatterometers onboard the European Remote Sensing Satellites (ERS-1 and ERS-2) for soil moisture retrieval is investigated. The ERS scatterometer consists of three antennas that illuminate the Earth's surface from three different viewing directions. This allows the authors to study the dependence of the backscattering coefficient /spl sigma//sup 0/ on the azimuth and the incidence angle. An analysis of ERS scatterometer data over the Canadian Prairie region shows that land surfaces are slightly anisotropic with respect to the azimuth angle. It is proposed to consider the azimuthal anisotropy as an additional error source to /spl sigma//sup 0/. The variation of /spl sigma//sup 0/ with the incidence angle was found to be linked to vegetation, but independent of soil moisture. Based on these observations, a method for the normalization of the backscattering coefficient with respect to the incidence angle is proposed. The normalized backscattering coefficient at an incidence angle of 40/spl deg/, /spl sigma//sup 0/(40), is sensitive to vegetation and, in the case of moderate vegetation (grassland to sparsely forested areas), to the soil moisture content. Soil moisture maps derived from ERS-1 scatterometer measurements are compared to maps representing conditions on annually cropped land showing agreement. Results suggest that, over the Canadian Prairies, estimates of the total water content in the soil profile might be possible with an accuracy of about 10% of field capacity if little or no rainfall has occurred for three days before radar image acquisition.