Abstract Cloud computing is the on‐demand provision of computing resources over the Internet, such as cloud storage, computing power, network, and so on. Cloud computing has several advantages, including high speed, cost reduction, data security, and scalability. The main challenge in cloud environment is to balance the workloads and network traffic among the available resources to achieve maximum performance. Several methods have been proposed in the literature for effective load balancing, including heuristic, meta‐heuristic, and hybrid algorithms. The performance of these techniques has been improved by combining machine learning based Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and meta‐heuristic algorithms. Most of the existing load balancing techniques are not aware of the content type of user tasks. However, from the literature, the content type of the tasks can be very effective to design a balanced workload distribution system in the cloud. In this work, a novel AI‐assisted hybrid approach called Content‐aware Machine Learning based Load Balancing Scheduler (CA‐MLBS) is proposed. The scheduling system CA‐MLBS combines machine learning and meta‐heuristic algorithms to perform classification based on file type. To achieve this, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) based classifier is used to classify user tasks into different content types such as video, audio, image, and text. A metaheuristic algorithm based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used to map users' tasks in the cloud. The proposed approach was implemented and evaluated using a renowned Cloudsim simulation kit and compared with Ant Colony Optimization File Type Format (ACOFTF) and Data Files Type Formatting (DFTF) heuristics. The results of the proposed study show that the proposed CA‐MLBS technique achieved improvements of up to 29%, 29%, and 44% in terms of makespan, response time, and throughput, respectively.

Simulations have gained paramount importance in terms of software development for wireless sensor networks and have been a vital focus of the scientific community in this decade to provide efficient, secure, and safe communication in smart cities. Network Simulators are widely used for the development of safe and secure communication architectures in smart city. Therefore, in this technical survey report, we have conducted experimental comparisons among ten different simulation environments that can be used to simulate smart-city operations. We comprehensively analyze and compare simulators COOJA, NS-2 with framework Mannasim, NS-3, OMNeT++ with framework Castalia, WSNet, TOSSIM, J-Sim, GloMoSim, SENSE, and Avrora. These simulators have been run eight times each and comparison among them is critically scrutinized. The main objective behind this research paper is to assist developers and researchers in selecting the appropriate simulator against the scenario to provide safe and secure wired and wireless networks. In addition, we have discussed the supportive simulation environments, functions, and operating modes, wireless channel models, energy consumption models, physical, MAC, and network-layer protocols in detail. The selection of these simulation frameworks is based on features, literature, and important characteristics. Lastly, we conclude our work by providing a detailed comparison and describing the pros and cons of each simulator.

Summary In the heterogeneous computing environment, programmers map the applications either on CPUs or GPUs. However, this default mapping process does not produce improved results, particularly on the heterogeneous clusters. If one resource of the cluster is more compute capable, then most of the scheduling schemes favor that powerful device. In this scenario, the scheduling schemes overload the powerful resources while making all other compute resources remain under utilized. This load imbalance problem results in higher energy consumption and increased execution time. In this research, a novel Resource‐Aware Load Balancer for the Heterogeneous Cluster (RALB‐HC) is proposed that distributes workload based on resources computing capabilities and applications computing needs. The RALB‐HC uses supervised machine learning approach to classify applications using the static code‐features. The RALB‐HC framework comprises of two phases: (1) job mapping based on the availability of the resources and (2) the resource‐aware load balancing to achieve the higher resource utilization ratio. The experimental results on a large set of real‐world and synthetic workloads show that the RALB‐HC reduces execution time by 31.61%, increased resource utilization ratio by 67.8% and improved throughout 147.35% as compared to baseline scheduling schemes.

Abstract Nowadays, embedded systems are comprised of heterogeneous multi-core architectures, i.e., CPUs and GPUs. If the application is mapped to an appropriate processing core, then these architectures provide many performance benefits to applications. Typically, programmers map sequential applications to CPU and parallel applications to GPU. The task mapping becomes challenging because of the usage of evolving and complex CPU- and GPU-based architectures. This paper presents an approach to map the OpenCL application to heterogeneous multi-core architecture by determining the application suitability and processing capability. The classification is achieved by developing a machine learning-based device suitability classifier that predicts which processor has the highest computational compatibility to run OpenCL applications. In this paper, 20 distinct features are proposed that are extracted by using the developed LLVM-based static analyzer. In order to select the best subset of features, feature selection is performed by using both correlation analysis and the feature importance method. For the class imbalance problem, we use and compare synthetic minority over-sampling method with and without feature selection. Instead of hand-tuning the machine learning classifier, we use the tree-based pipeline optimization method to select the best classifier and its hyper-parameter. We then compare the optimized selected method with traditional algorithms, i.e., random forest, decision tree, Naïve Bayes and KNN. We apply our novel approach on extensively used OpenCL benchmarks, i.e., AMD and Polybench. The dataset contains 653 training and 277 testing applications. We test the classification results using four performance metrics, i.e., F -measure, precision, recall and $$R^2$$ R 2 . The optimized and reduced feature subset model achieved a high F -measure of 0.91 and $$R^2$$ R 2 of 0.76. The proposed framework automatically distributes the workload based on the application requirement and processor compatibility.

Opportunistic networks utilize pocket switching for routing where each node forwards its messages to a suitable next node. The selection of the forwarder node is crucial for the efficient performance of a routing protocol. In any opportunistic network, some nodes have a paramount role in the routing process and these nodes could be identified with the assistance of the existing centrality measures available in network theory. However, the central nodes tend to suffer from congestion because a large number of nodes that are relatively less central attempt to forward their payload to the central nodes to increase the probability of the message delivery. This paper evaluates mechanisms to transform the social encounters into congestion aware metrics so that high‐ranking central nodes are downgraded when they encounter congestion. The network transformations are aimed at aggregating the connectivity patterns of the nodes to implicitly accumulate the network information to be utilized by centrality measures for routing purposes. We have analyzed the performance of the metrics’ computed centrality measures using routing simulation on three real‐world network traces. The results revealed that betweenness centrality along with the congestion aware network metrics holds the potential to deliver a competitive number of messages. Additionally, the proposed congestion aware metrics significantly balance the routing load among the central nodes.

Smart phones are an integral component of the mobile edge computing (MEC) framework. Securing the data stored on mobile devices is very crucial for ensuring the smooth operations of cloud services. A growing number of malicious Android applications demand an in-depth investigation to dissect their malicious intent to design effective malware detection techniques. The contemporary state-of-the-art model suggests that hybrid features based on machine learning (ML) techniques could play a significant role in android malware detection. The selection of application’s features plays a very crucial role to capture the appropriate behavioural patterns of malware instances for a useful classification of mobile applications. In this study, we propose a novel hybrid approach to detect android malware, wherein static features in conjunction with dynamic features of smart phone applications are employed. We collect these hybrid features using permissions, intents, and run-time features (such as information leakage, cryptography’s exploitation, and network manipulations) to analyse the effectiveness of the employed techniques for malware detection. We conduct experiments using over 5,000 real-world applications. The outcomes of the study reveal that the proposed set of features has successfully detected malware threats with 97% F-measure results.

Today, the use of GPUs as coprocessors to accelerate high-performance scientific applications is becoming an important practice. Still, some of the high-level programming languages such as Java require extensions or new interfaces for utilising the huge parallelism of these new devices. In this paper, we propose extensions to an existing Java-based programming and parallel computing environment called Java Symphony to enable Java applications use accelerating devices such as GPUs with little API programmability change. With Java Symphony, a parallel Java application can be uniformly programmed and executed on heterogeneous platforms consisting of conventional parallel computers enhanced with data-parallel coprocessors such as GPUs. We report results on using Java Symphony for programming and improving the performance of six real applications and benchmarks in a heterogeneous environment consisting of a combination of different multi-core CPU and GPU devices.