A framework to maximise the communicative power of knowledge visualisations

Knowledge visualisation, in the field of information systems, is both a process and a product, informed by the closely aligned fields of information visualisation and knowledg management. Knowledge visualisation has untapped potential within the purview of knowledge communication. Even so, knowledge visualisations are infrequently deployed due to a lack of evidence-based guidance. To improve this situation, we carried out a systematic literature review to derive a number of “lenses” that can be used to reveal the essential perspectives to feed into the visualisation production process.We propose a conceptual framework which incorporates these lenses to guide producers of knowledge visualisations. This framework uses the different lenses to reveal critical perspectives that need to be considered during the design process. We conclude by demonstrating how this framework could be used to produce an effective knowledge visualisation

An Enhanced Architecture to Resolve Public-Key Cryptographic Issues in the Internet of Things (IoT), Employing Quantum Computing Supremacy

The Internet of Things (IoT) strongly influences the world economy; this emphasizes the importance of securing all four aspects of the IoT model: sensors, networks, cloud, and applications. Considering the significant value of public-key cryptography threats on IoT system confidentiality, it is vital to secure it. One of the potential candidates to assist in securing public key cryptography in IoT is quantum computing. Although the notion of IoT and quantum computing convergence is not new, it has been referenced in various works of literature and covered by many scholars. Quantum computing eliminates most of the challenges in IoT. This research provides a comprehensive introduction to the Internet of Things and quantum computing before moving on to public-key cryptography difficulties that may be encountered across the convergence of quantum computing and IoT. An enhanced architecture is then proposed for resolving these public-key cryptography challenges using SimuloQron to implement the BB84 protocol for quantum key distribution (QKD) and one-time pad (OTP). The proposed model prevents eavesdroppers from performing destructive operations in the communication channel and cyber side by preserving its state and protecting the public key using quantum cryptography and the BB84 protocol. A modified version is introduced for this IoT situation. A traditional cryptographic mechanism called 'one-time pad' (OTP) is employed in hybrid management

OpenIaC: open infrastructure as code - the network is my computer

Modern information systems are built fron a complex composition of networks, infrastructure, devices, services, and applications, interconnected by data flows that are often private and financially sensitive. The 5G networks, which can create hyperlocalized services, have highlighted many of the deficiencies of current practices in use today to create and operate information systems. Emerging cloud computing techniques, such as Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and elastic computing, offer a path for a future re-imagining of how we create, deploy, secure, operate, and retire information systems. In this paper, we articulate the position that a comprehensive new approach is needed for all OSI layers from layer 2 up to applications that are built on underlying principles that include reproducibility, continuous integration/continuous delivery, auditability, and versioning. There are obvious needs to redesign and optimize the protocols from the network layer to the application layer. Our vision seeks to augment existing Cloud Computing and Networking solutions with support for multiple cloud infrastructures and seamless integration of cloud-based microservices. To address these issues, we propose an approach named Open Infrastructure as Code (OpenIaC), which is an attempt to provide a common open forum to integrate and build on advances in cloud computing and blockchain to address the needs of modern information architectures. The main mission of our OpenIaC approach is to provide services based on the principles of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) among the federation of connected resources based on Decentralized Identity (DID). Our objectives include the creation of an open-source hub with fine-grained access control for an open and connected infrastructure of shared resources (sensing, storage, computing, 3D printing, etc.) managed by blockchains and federations. Our proposed approach has the potential to provide a path for developing new platforms, business models, and a modernized information ecosystem necessary for 5G networks.publishedVersio

IRS Assisted MIMO Full Duplex: Rate Analysis and Beamforming Under Imperfect CSI

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) have emerged as a promising technology to enhance the performance of wireless communication systems. By actively manipulating the wireless propagation environment, IRS enables efficient signal transmission and reception. In recent years, the integration of IRS with full-duplex (FD) communication has garnered significant attention due to its potential to further improve spectral and energy efficiencies. IRS-assisted FD systems combine the benefits of both IRS and FD technologies, providing a powerful solution for the next generation of cellular systems. In this manuscript, we present a novel approach to jointly optimize active and passive beamforming in a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) FD system assisted by an IRS for weighted sum rate (WSR) maximization. Given the inherent difficulty in obtaining perfect channel state information (CSI) in practical scenarios, we consider imperfect CSI and propose a statistically robust beamforming strategy to maximize the ergodic WSR. Additionally, we analyze the achievable WSR for an IRS-assisted MIMO FD system under imperfect CSI by deriving both the lower and upper bounds. To tackle the problem of ergodic WSR maximization, we employ the concept of expected weighted minimum mean squared error (EWMMSE), which exploits the information of the expected error covariance matrices and ensures convergence to a local optimum. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed design through extensive simulations. The results demonstrate that our robust approach yields significant performance improvements compared to the simplistic beamforming approach that disregards CSI errors, while also outperforming the robust half-duplex (HD) system considerablyComment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2308.0801

Un marco de aprendizaje mutuo para redes podadas y cuantificadas

Model compression is an important topic in deep learning research. It can be mainly divided into two directions: model pruning and model quantization. However, both methods will more or less affect the original accuracy of the model. In this paper, we propose a mutual learning framework for pruned and quantized networks. We regard the pruned network and the quantized network as two sets of features that are not parallel. The purpose of our mutual learning framework is to better integrate the two sets of features and achieve complementary advantages, which we call feature augmentation. To verify the effectiveness of our framework, we select a pairwise combination of 3 state-of-the-art pruning algorithms and 3 state-of-theart quantization algorithms. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and Tiny-imagenet show the benefits of our framework: through the mutual learning of the two networks, we obtain a pruned network and a quantization network with higher accuracy than traditional approaches.La compresión de modelos es un tema importante en la investigación del aprendizaje profundo. Se puede dividir principalmente en dos direcciones: poda de modelos y cuantización de modelos. Sin embargo, ambos métodos afectarán más o menos la precisión original del modelo. En este artículo, proponemos un marco de aprendizaje mutuo para redes podadas y cuantificadas. Consideramos la red podada y la red quantized como dos conjuntos de características que no son paralelas. El propósito de nuestro marco de aprendizaje mutuo es integrar mejor los dos conjuntos de funciones y lograr ventajas complementarias, lo que llamamos aumento de funciones. Para verificar la efectividad de nuestro marco, seleccionamos una combinación por pares de 3 algoritmos de poda de última generación y 3 algoritmos de cuantificación de última generación. Extensos experimentos en CIFAR- 10, CIFAR-100 y Tiny-imagenet muestran los beneficios de nuestro marco: a través del aprendizaje mutuo de las dos redes, obtenemos una red pruned y una red de cuantificación con mayor precisión que los enfoques tradicionales.Facultad de Informátic

Iot-enabled smart cities: evolution and outlook

For the last decade the Smart City concept has been under development, fostered by the growing urbanization of the world’s population and the need to handle the challenges that such a scenario raises. During this time many Smart City projects have been executed–some as proof-of-concept, but a growing number resulting in permanent, production-level deployments, improving the operation of the city and the quality of life of its citizens. Thus, Smart Cities are still a highly relevant paradigm which needs further development before it reaches its full potential and provides robust and resilient solutions. In this paper, the focus is set on the Internet of Things (IoT) as an enabling technology for the Smart City. In this sense, the paper reviews the current landscape of IoT-enabled Smart Cities, surveying relevant experiences and city initiatives that have embedded IoT within their city services and how they have generated an impact. The paper discusses the key technologies that have been developed and how they are contributing to the realization of the Smart City. Moreover, it presents some challenges that remain open ahead of us and which are the initiatives and technologies that are under development to tackle them.This research was partially funded by Spain State Research Agency (AEI) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-A-I00). Prof. Song was supported by Smart City R&D project of the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) grant funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT), Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) (Grant 18NSPS-B149386-01)

Ambient Backscatter Assisted Co-Existence in Aerial-IRS Wireless Networks

Ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) is an emerging technology that has the potential to offer spectral- and energy-efficient solutions for the next generation wireless communications networks, especially for the Internet of Things (IoT). Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) are also perceived to be an integral part of the beyond 5G systems to complement the traditional relaying scheme. To this end, this paper proposes a novel system design that enables the co-existence of a backscattering secondary system with the legacy primary system. This co-existence is primarily driven by leveraging the AmBC technique in IRS-assisted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks. More specifically, an aerial-IRS mounted on a UAV is considered to be employed for cooperatively relaying the transmitted signal from a terrestrial primary source node to a user equipment on the ground. Meanwhile, capitalizing on the AmBC technology, a backscatter capable terrestrial secondary node transmits its information to a terrestrial secondary receiver by modulating and backscattering the ambient relayed radio frequency signals from the UAV-IRS. We comprehensively analyze the performance of the proposed design framework with co-existing systems by deriving the outage probability and ergodic spectral efficiency expressions. Moreover, we also investigate the asymptotic behaviour of outage performance in high transmit power regimes for both primary and secondary systems. Importantly, we analyze the performance of the primary system by considering two different scenarios i.e., optimal phase shifts design and random phase shifting at IRS. Finally, based on the analytical performance assessment, we present numerical results to provide various useful insights and also provide simulation results to corroborate the derived theoretical results

Impact of IoT on Manufacturing Industry 4.0: A New Triangular Systematic Review

The Internet of Things (IoT) has realised the fourth industrial revolution concept; however, its applications in the manufacturing industry are relatively sparse and primarily investigated without contextual peculiarities. Our research undertakes an intricate critical review to investigate significant aspects of IoT applications in the manufacturing Industry 4.0 perspective to address this gap. We adopt a systematic literature review approach by Denyer and Tranfield (2009) to carry out critical analyses that help develop future research domains based on empirical studies. We describe key knowledge gaps in the existing literature and empirical studies by exploring the main contribution categories and finding six critical differences between traditional and manufacturing Industry 4.0 and 10 enablers and 11 challenges of IoT applications. Finally, an agenda for future research is proposed with 11 research domains to focus on the recognised gaps