Applications of Repeated Games in Wireless Networks: A Survey

A repeated game is an effective tool to model interactions and conflicts for players aiming to achieve their objectives in a long-term basis. Contrary to static noncooperative games that model an interaction among players in only one period, in repeated games, interactions of players repeat for multiple periods; and thus the players become aware of other players' past behaviors and their future benefits, and will adapt their behavior accordingly. In wireless networks, conflicts among wireless nodes can lead to selfish behaviors, resulting in poor network performances and detrimental individual payoffs. In this paper, we survey the applications of repeated games in different wireless networks. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of repeated games to encourage wireless nodes to cooperate, thereby improving network performances and avoiding network disruption due to selfish behaviors. Furthermore, various problems in wireless networks and variations of repeated game models together with the corresponding solutions are discussed in this survey. Finally, we outline some open issues and future research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, 168 reference

Analysis of the security and reliability of packet transmission in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) : a case study of Malicious Packet drop attack

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are known for possessing good attributes such as low up-front cost, easy network maintenance, and reliable service coverage. This has largely made them to be adopted in various areas such as; school campus networks, community networking, pervasive healthcare, office and home automation, emergency rescue operations and ubiquitous wireless networks. The routing nodes are equipped with self-organized and self-configuring capabilities. The routing mechanisms of WMNs depend on the collaboration of all participating nodes for reliable network performance. However, it has been noted that most routing algorithms proposed for WMNs in the last few years are designed with the assumption that all the participating nodes will collaboratively be involved in relaying the data packets originated from a source to a multi-hop destination. Such design approach exposes WMNs to vulnerability such as malicious packet drop attack. Therefore, it is imperative to design and implement secure and reliable packet routing mechanisms to mitigate this type of attack. While there are works that have attempted to implement secure routing approach, the findings in this research unearthed that further research works are required to improve the existing secure routing in order to provide more secure and reliable packet transmission in WMNs, in the event of denial of service (DoS) attacks such black hole malicious pack drop attack. This study further presents an analysis of the impact of the black hole malicious packet drop attack with other influential factors in WMNs. In the study, NS-3 simulator was used with AODV as the routing protocol. The results show that the packet delivery ratio and throughput of WMN under attack decreases sharply as compared to WMN free from attack

Cognitive Radio Systems

Cognitive radio is a hot research area for future wireless communications in the recent years. In order to increase the spectrum utilization, cognitive radio makes it possible for unlicensed users to access the spectrum unoccupied by licensed users. Cognitive radio let the equipments more intelligent to communicate with each other in a spectrum-aware manner and provide a new approach for the co-existence of multiple wireless systems. The goal of this book is to provide highlights of the current research topics in the field of cognitive radio systems. The book consists of 17 chapters, addressing various problems in cognitive radio systems

BLOCKGRID: A BLOCKCHAIN-MEDIATED CYBER-PHYSICAL INSTRUCTIONAL PLATFORM

Includes supplementary material, which may be found at https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/66767Blockchain technology has garnered significant attention for its disruptive potential in several domains of national security interest. For the United States government to meet the challenge of incorporating blockchain technology into its IT infrastructure and cyber warfare strategy, personnel must be educated about blockchain technology and its applications. This thesis presents both the design and prototype implementation for a blockchain-mediated cyber-physical system called a BlockGrid. The system consists of a cluster of microcomputers that form a simple smart grid controlled by smart contracts on a private blockchain. The microcomputers act as private blockchain nodes and are programmed to activate microcomputer-attached circuits in response to smart-contract transactions. LEDs are used as visible circuit elements that serve as indicators of the blockchain’s activity and allow demonstration of the technology to observers. Innovations in networking configuration and physical layout allow the prototype to be highly portable and pre-configured for use upon assembly. Implementation options allow the use of BlockGrid in a variety of instructional settings, thus increasing its potential benefit to educators.Civilian, CyberCorps: Scholarship for ServiceApproved for public release. distribution is unlimite

Covert Channels and Anonymous Communication in Ad-hoc Networks

Ad-hoc wireless networks distinguish themselves from their traditional wired counterparts by three unique characteristics: mobility, lack of infrastructure, and shared wireless channel. These properties have gained popularity in various military and civilian applications, but have also introduced challenging problems in terms of ensuring satisfying network performance and network security. Ad hoc networks are a fertile ground for new threats and security problems. We start by demonstrating how new covert attacks can be launched by using the ad hoc network protocols. In particular, nodes in ad-hoc wireless networks have to cooperate with each other in order to accomplish many networking functions such as routing and channel access. We observe that covert information can be conveyed during the cooperation procedure. It is very difficult to eliminate or even detect these covert channels. Simulation results show that performance of these covert channels depends on various network characteristics. Anonymous communication has been considered as one possible way of fighting covert threats. In fact, anonymity and privacy by themselves have attracted intensive attention as important societal issues and desirable security features. One of the key components in most anonymous routing protocols is anonymous trapdoors, for which we propose a new construction scheme based on pairing-based cryptographies. More careful analysis has shown that anonymity could be in conflict with other secure properties and secure mechanisms, such as accountability and intrusion detection. We propose a solution that can flexibly trade off anonymity against accountability according to the needs of individual applications. The basic idea is to distribute the real identity of a given user among a set of pseudonyms in such a way that only a sufficient number of pseudonyms can lead to the recovery of the identity. Users authenticate each other anonymously under pseudonyms. When the number of times a user is caught misbehaving exceeds the threshold, the user's real identity can be recovered from the pseudonyms that had been used. Thus, accountability is enforced. As conclusion, we propose to jointly investigate and incorporate all different secure properties by using various secure mechanisms across multiple protocol layers of the network

Leveraging Cognitive Radio Networks Using Heterogeneous Wireless Channels

The popularity of ubiquitous Internet services has spurred the fast growth of wireless communications by launching data hungry multimedia applications to mobile devices. Powered by spectrum agile cognitive radios, the newly emerged cognitive radio networks (CRN) are proposed to provision the efficient spectrum reuse to improve spectrum utilization. Unlicensed users in CRN, or secondary users (SUs), access the temporarily idle channels in a secondary and opportunistic fashion while preventing harmful interference to licensed primary users (PUs). To effectively detect and exploit the spectrum access opportunities released from a wide spectrum, the heterogeneous wireless channel characteristics and the underlying prioritized spectrum reuse features need to be considered in the protocol design and resource management schemes in CRN, which plays a critical role in unlicensed spectrum sharing among multiple users. The purpose of this dissertation is to address the challenges of utilizing heterogeneous wireless channels in CRN by its intrinsic dynamic and diverse natures, and build the efficient, scalable and, more importantly, practical dynamic spectrum access mechanisms to enable the cost-effective transmissions for unlicensed users. Note that the spectrum access opportunities exhibit the diversity in the time/frequency/space domain, secondary transmission schemes typically follow three design principles including 1) utilizing local free channels within short transmission range, 2) cooperative and opportunistic transmissions, and 3) effectively coordinating transmissions in varying bandwidth. The entire research work in this dissertation casts a systematic view to address these principles in the design of the routing protocols, medium access control (MAC) protocols and radio resource management schemes in CRN. Specifically, as spectrum access opportunities usually have small spatial footprints, SUs only communicate with the nearby nodes in a small area. Thus, multi-hop transmissions in CRN are considered in this dissertation to enable the connections between any unlicensed users in the network. CRN typically consist of intermittent links of varying bandwidth so that the decision of routing is closely related with the spectrum sensing and sharing operations in the lower layers. An efficient opportunistic cognitive routing (OCR) scheme is proposed in which the forwarding decision at each hop is made by jointly considering physical characteristics of spectrum bands and diverse activities of PUs in each single band. Such discussion on spectrum aware routing continues coupled with the sensing selection and contention among multiple relay candidates in a multi-channel multi-hop scenario. An SU selects the next hop relay and the working channel based upon location information and channel usage statistics with instant link quality feedbacks. By evaluating the performance of the routing protocol and the joint channel and route selection algorithm with extensive simulations, we determine the optimal channel and relay combination with reduced searching complexity and improved spectrum utilization. Besides, we investigate the medium access control (MAC) protocol design in support of multimedia applications in CRN. To satisfy the quality of service (QoS) requirements of heterogeneous applications for SUs, such as voice, video, and data, channels are selected to probe for appropriate spectrum opportunities based on the characteristics and QoS demands of the traffic along with the statistics of channel usage patterns. We propose a QoS-aware MAC protocol for multi-channel single hop scenario where each single SU distributedly determines a set of channels for sensing and data transmission to satisfy QoS requirements. By analytical model and simulations, we determine the service differentiation parameters to provision multiple levels of QoS. We further extend our discussion of dynamic resource management to a more practical deployment case. We apply the experiences and skills learnt from cognitive radio study to cellular communications. In heterogeneous cellular networks, small cells are deployed in macrocells to enhance link quality, extend network coverage and offload traffic. As different cells focus on their own operation utilities, the optimization of the total system performance can be analogue to the game between PUs and SUs in CRN. However, there are unique challenges and operation features in such case. We first present challenging issues including interference management, network coordination, and interworking between cells in a tiered cellular infrastructure. We then propose an adaptive resource management framework to improve spectrum utilization and mitigate the co-channel interference between macrocells and small cells. A game-theory-based approach is introduced to handle power control issues under constrained control bandwidth and limited end user capability. The inter-cell interference is mitigated based upon orthogonal transmissions and strict protection for macrocell users. The research results in the dissertation can provide insightful lights on flexible network deployment and dynamic spectrum access for prioritized spectrum reuse in modern wireless systems. The protocols and algorithms developed in each topic, respectively, have shown practical and efficient solutions to build and optimize CRN

Major: Electronics and Communication Engineering

Today, information technology is strategically important to the goals and aspirations of the business enterprises, government and high-level education institutions – university. Universities are facing new challenges with the emerging global economy characterized by the importance of providing faster communication services and improving the productivity and effectiveness of individuals. New challenges such as provides an information network that supports the demands and diversification of university issues. A new network architecture, which is a set of design principles for build a network, is one of the pillar bases. It is the cornerstone that enables the university’s faculty, researchers, students, administrators, and staff to discover, learn, reach out, and serve society. This thesis focuses on the network architecture definitions and fundamental components. Three most important characteristics of high-quality architecture are that: it’s open network architecture; it’s service-oriented characteristics and is an IP network based on packets. There are four important components in the architecture, which are: Services and Network Management, Network Control, Core Switching and Edge Access. The theoretical contribution of this study is a reference model Architecture of University Campus Network that can be followed or adapted to build a robust yet flexible network that respond next generation requirements. The results found are relevant to provide an important complete reference guide to the process of building campus network which nowadays play a very important role. Respectively, the research gives university networks a structured modular model that is reliable, robust and can easily grow

Security in Distributed, Grid, Mobile, and Pervasive Computing

This book addresses the increasing demand to guarantee privacy, integrity, and availability of resources in networks and distributed systems. It first reviews security issues and challenges in content distribution networks, describes key agreement protocols based on the Diffie-Hellman key exchange and key management protocols for complex distributed systems like the Internet, and discusses securing design patterns for distributed systems. The next section focuses on security in mobile computing and wireless networks. After a section on grid computing security, the book presents an overview of security solutions for pervasive healthcare systems and surveys wireless sensor network security

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin