Review and Classification of Bio-inspired Algorithms and Their Applications

Scientists have long looked to nature and biology in order to understand and model solutions for complex real-world problems. The study of bionics bridges the functions, biological structures and functions and organizational principles found in nature with our modern technologies, numerous mathematical and metaheuristic algorithms have been developed along with the knowledge transferring process from the lifeforms to the human technologies. Output of bionics study includes not only physical products, but also various optimization computation methods that can be applied in different areas. Related algorithms can broadly be divided into four groups: evolutionary based bio-inspired algorithms, swarm intelligence-based bio-inspired algorithms, ecology-based bio-inspired algorithms and multi-objective bio-inspired algorithms. Bio-inspired algorithms such as neural network, ant colony algorithms, particle swarm optimization and others have been applied in almost every area of science, engineering and business management with a dramatic increase of number of relevant publications. This paper provides a systematic, pragmatic and comprehensive review of the latest developments in evolutionary based bio-inspired algorithms, swarm intelligence based bio-inspired algorithms, ecology based bio-inspired algorithms and multi-objective bio-inspired algorithms

Proceedings of the First PhD Symposium on Sustainable Ultrascale Computing Systems (NESUS PhD 2016)

Proceedings of the First PhD Symposium on Sustainable Ultrascale Computing Systems (NESUS PhD 2016) Timisoara, Romania. February 8-11, 2016.The PhD Symposium was a very good opportunity for the young researchers to share information and knowledge, to present their current research, and to discuss topics with other students in order to look for synergies and common research topics. The idea was very successful and the assessment made by the PhD Student was very good. It also helped to achieve one of the major goals of the NESUS Action: to establish an open European research network targeting sustainable solutions for ultrascale computing aiming at cross fertilization among HPC, large scale distributed systems, and big data management, training, contributing to glue disparate researchers working across different areas and provide a meeting ground for researchers in these separate areas to exchange ideas, to identify synergies, and to pursue common activities in research topics such as sustainable software solutions (applications and system software stack), data management, energy efficiency, and resilience.European Cooperation in Science and Technology. COS

Intelligent MANET optimisation system

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In the literature, various Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) routing protocols proposed. Each performs the best under specific context conditions, for example under high mobility or less volatile topologies. In existing MANET, the degradation in the routing protocol performance is always associated with changes in the network context. To date, no MANET routing protocol is able to produce optimal performance under all possible conditions. The core aim of this thesis is to solve the routing problem in mobile Ad hoc networks by introducing an optimum system that is in charge of the selection of the running routing protocol at all times, the system proposed in this thesis aims to address the degradation mentioned above. This optimisation system is a novel approach that can cope with the network performance’s degradation problem by switching to other routing protocol. The optimisation system proposed for MANET in this thesis adaptively selects the best routing protocol using an Artificial Intelligence mechanism according to the network context. In this thesis, MANET modelling helps in understanding the network performance through different contexts, as well as the models’ support to the optimisation system. Therefore, one of the main contributions of this thesis is the utilisation and comparison of various modelling techniques to create representative MANET performance models. Moreover, the proposed system uses an optimisation method to select the optimal communication routing protocol for the network context. Therefore, to build the proposed system, different optimisation techniques were utilised and compared to identify the best optimisation technique for the MANET intelligent system, which is also an important contribution of this thesis. The parameters selected to describe the network context were the network size and average mobility. The proposed system then functions by varying the routing mechanism with the time to keep the network performance at the best level. The selected protocol has been shown to produce a combination of: higher throughput, lower delay, fewer retransmission attempts, less data drop, and lower load, and was thus chosen on this basis. Validation test results indicate that the identified protocol can achieve both a better network performance quality than other routing protocols and a minimum cost function of 4.4%. The Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol comes in second with a cost minimisation function of 27.5%, and the Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR) algorithm comes in third with a cost minimisation function of 29.8%. Finally, The Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) algorithm comes in last with a cost minimisation function of 38.3%

Modélisation formelle des systèmes de détection d'intrusions

L’écosystème de la cybersécurité évolue en permanence en termes du nombre, de la diversité, et de la complexité des attaques. De ce fait, les outils de détection deviennent inefficaces face à certaines attaques. On distingue généralement trois types de systèmes de détection d’intrusions : détection par anomalies, détection par signatures et détection hybride. La détection par anomalies est fondée sur la caractérisation du comportement habituel du système, typiquement de manière statistique. Elle permet de détecter des attaques connues ou inconnues, mais génère aussi un très grand nombre de faux positifs. La détection par signatures permet de détecter des attaques connues en définissant des règles qui décrivent le comportement connu d’un attaquant. Cela demande une bonne connaissance du comportement de l’attaquant. La détection hybride repose sur plusieurs méthodes de détection incluant celles sus-citées. Elle présente l’avantage d’être plus précise pendant la détection. Des outils tels que Snort et Zeek offrent des langages de bas niveau pour l’expression de règles de reconnaissance d’attaques. Le nombre d’attaques potentielles étant très grand, ces bases de règles deviennent rapidement difficiles à gérer et à maintenir. De plus, l’expression de règles avec état dit stateful est particulièrement ardue pour reconnaître une séquence d’événements. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une approche stateful basée sur les diagrammes d’état-transition algébriques (ASTDs) afin d’identifier des attaques complexes. Les ASTDs permettent de représenter de façon graphique et modulaire une spécification, ce qui facilite la maintenance et la compréhension des règles. Nous étendons la notation ASTD avec de nouvelles fonctionnalités pour représenter des attaques complexes. Ensuite, nous spécifions plusieurs attaques avec la notation étendue et exécutons les spécifications obtenues sur des flots d’événements à l’aide d’un interpréteur pour identifier des attaques. Nous évaluons aussi les performances de l’interpréteur avec des outils industriels tels que Snort et Zeek. Puis, nous réalisons un compilateur afin de générer du code exécutable à partir d’une spécification ASTD, capable d’identifier de façon efficiente les séquences d’événements.Abstract : The cybersecurity ecosystem continuously evolves with the number, the diversity, and the complexity of cyber attacks. Generally, we have three types of Intrusion Detection System (IDS) : anomaly-based detection, signature-based detection, and hybrid detection. Anomaly detection is based on the usual behavior description of the system, typically in a static manner. It enables detecting known or unknown attacks but also generating a large number of false positives. Signature based detection enables detecting known attacks by defining rules that describe known attacker’s behavior. It needs a good knowledge of attacker behavior. Hybrid detection relies on several detection methods including the previous ones. It has the advantage of being more precise during detection. Tools like Snort and Zeek offer low level languages to represent rules for detecting attacks. The number of potential attacks being large, these rule bases become quickly hard to manage and maintain. Moreover, the representation of stateful rules to recognize a sequence of events is particularly arduous. In this thesis, we propose a stateful approach based on algebraic state-transition diagrams (ASTDs) to identify complex attacks. ASTDs allow a graphical and modular representation of a specification, that facilitates maintenance and understanding of rules. We extend the ASTD notation with new features to represent complex attacks. Next, we specify several attacks with the extended notation and run the resulting specifications on event streams using an interpreter to identify attacks. We also evaluate the performance of the interpreter with industrial tools such as Snort and Zeek. Then, we build a compiler in order to generate executable code from an ASTD specification, able to efficiently identify sequences of events

Scheduling Problems

Scheduling is defined as the process of assigning operations to resources over time to optimize a criterion. Problems with scheduling comprise both a set of resources and a set of a consumers. As such, managing scheduling problems involves managing the use of resources by several consumers. This book presents some new applications and trends related to task and data scheduling. In particular, chapters focus on data science, big data, high-performance computing, and Cloud computing environments. In addition, this book presents novel algorithms and literature reviews that will guide current and new researchers who work with load balancing, scheduling, and allocation problems

Making sense of the Internet of Things: A critical review of Internet of Things definitions between 2005 and 2019

Purpose: This paper aims to study the evolution of definitions of internet of things (IoT) through time, critically assess the knowledge these definitions contain and facilitate sensemaking by providing those unfamiliar with IoT with a theoretical definition and an extended framework. Design/methodology/approach: 164 articles published between 2005 and 2019 are collected using snowball sampling. Further, 100 unique definitions are identified in the sample. Definitions are examined using content analysis and applying a theoretical framework of five knowledge dimensions. Findings: In declarative/relational dimensions of knowledge, increasing levels of agreement are observed in the sample. Sources of tautological reasoning are identified. In conditional and causal dimensions, definitions of IoT remain underdeveloped. In the former, potential limitations of IoT related to resource scarcity, privacy and security are overlooked. In the latter, three main loci of agreement are identified. Research limitations/implications: This study does not cover all published definitions of IoT. Some narratives may be omitted by our selection criteria and process. Practical implications: This study supports sensemaking of IoT. Main loci of agreement in definitions of IoT are identified. Avenues for further clarification and consensus are explored. A new framework that can facilitate further investigation and agreement is introduced. Originality/value: This is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first study that examines the historical evolution of definitions of IoT vis-à-vis its technological features. This study introduces an updated framework to critically assess and compare definitions, identify ambiguities and resolve conflicts among different interpretations. The framework can be used to compare past and future definitions and help actors unfamiliar with IoT to make sense of it in a way to reduce adoption costs. It can also support researchers in studying early discussions of IoT

USV charging based on WPT system

With the increasing demand of water and underwater exploration, more and more electric unmanned surface vehicles (USV) are put into use in recent years. However, because of the present battery technology limits, these devices require to be recharged frequently that is a challenging problem taking into account the complex water environment where these equipments are acting. To improve safety and convenience of USV charging a wireless power transfer (WPT) system is proposed in this dissertation. In this case, the boat can be controlled to go to the charging facilities. During charging by the implemented WPT system, the state of charging can be remotely monitored by host computer. The moving control is based on embedded system. The relative position between transmitting coil and receiving coil is supposed to be sensed by magnetic sensor, since the relative position has great impact on transmission efficiency. The remote monitoring software was implemented in the host computer and was developed in LABVIEW. A graphical user interface was developed to control the boat moving and collect the data from the WPT and the boat sensors. The effectiveness of the proposed system was tested for instance in the laboratory environment and in-field tests are also planned in the near future.Com a crescente procura da exploração em ambientes aquáticos e subaquáticos , os veículos elétricos de superfície não tripulados ("electric unmanned surface vehicle" -USV) têm sido cada vez mais utilizados nestes últimos anos. No entanto, devido aos limites atuais relacionados com a tecnologia utilizada nas baterias, os dispositivos precisam de ser recarregados com frequência para poderem operar num ambiente aquático complexo. Para melhorar a segurança e a conveniência do carregamento da bateria de um USV, um sistema para recarregamento da bateria de um barco não tripulado através de transferência de energia sem fios("wireless power transfer" - WPT) é proposto nesta dissertação. Neste caso de estudo, o barco tem a capacidade de ser controlado para chegar a um ponto de recarregamento da bateria, que se encontra fixado por uma doca mecânica. Enquanto o sistema WPT érecarregado, os dados associados ao processo de recarregamento da bateria podem ser monitorizados por um computador host. O controlo da movimentação do barco é baseado num sistema embebido. A posição relativa entre a bobina transmissora e a bobina receptora deve ser detectada pelo sensor magnético, uma vez que a posição relativa tem um grande impacto na eficiência da transmissão. Em termos do computador host, foi utilizado o software LABVIEW para programar a interface que permite controlar o movimento do barco e recolher os dados. Finalmente, a eficácia do sistema proposto foi experimentada e testada num ambiente de laboratório

JTIT

kwartalni

Adaptation of the human nervous system for self-aware secure mobile and IoT systems

IT systems have been deployed across several domains, such as hospitals and industries, for the management of information and operations. These systems will soon be ubiquitous in every field due to the transition towards the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT brings devices with sensory functions into IT systems through the process of internetworking. The sensory functions of IoT enable them to generate and process information automatically, either without human contribution or having the least human interaction possible aside from the information and operations management tasks. Security is crucial as it prevents system exploitation. Security has been employed after system implementation, and has rarely been considered as a part of the system. In this dissertation, a novel solution based on a biological approach is presented to embed security as an inalienable part of the system. The proposed solution, in the form of a prototype of the system, is based on the functions of the human nervous system (HNS) in protecting its host from the impacts caused by external or internal changes. The contributions of this work are the derivation of a new system architecture from HNS functionalities and experiments that prove the implementation feasibility and efficiency of the proposed HNS-based architecture through prototype development and evaluation. The first contribution of this work is the adaptation of human nervous system functions to propose a new architecture for IT systems security. The major organs and functions of the HNS are investigated and critical areas are identified for the adaptation process. Several individual system components with similar functions to the HNS are created and grouped to form individual subsystems. The relationship between these components is established in a similar way as in the HNS, resulting in a new system architecture that includes security as a core component. The adapted HNS-based system architecture is employed in two the experiments prove its implementation capability, enhancement of security, and overall system operations. The second contribution is the implementation of the proposed HNS-based security solution in the IoT test-bed. A temperature-monitoring application with an intrusion detection system (IDS) based on the proposed HNS architecture is implemented as part of the test-bed experiment. Contiki OS is used for implementation, and the 6LoWPAN stack is modified during the development process. The application, together with the IDS, has a brain subsystem (BrSS), a spinal cord subsystem (SCSS), and other functions similar to the HNS whose names are changed. The HNS functions are shared between an edge router and resource-constrained devices (RCDs) during implementation. The experiment is evaluated in both test-bed and simulation environments. Zolertia Z1 nodes are used to form a 6LoWPAN network, and an edge router is created by combining Pandaboard and Z1 node for a test-bed setup. Two networks with different numbers of sensor nodes are used as simulation environments in the Cooja simulator. The third contribution of this dissertation is the implementation of the proposed HNS-based architecture in the mobile platform. In this phase, the Android operating system (OS) is selected for experimentation, and the proposed HNS-based architecture is specifically tailored for Android. A context-based dynamically reconfigurable access control system (CoDRA) is developed based on the principles of the refined HNS architecture. CoDRA is implemented through customization of Android OS and evaluated under real-time usage conditions in test-bed environments. During the evaluation, the implemented prototype mimicked the nature of the HNS in securing the application under threat with negligible resource requirements and solved the problems in existing approaches by embedding security within the system. Furthermore, the results of the experiments highlighted the retention of HNS functions after refinement for different IT application areas, especially the IoT, due to its resource-constrained nature, and the implementable capability of our proposed HNS architecture.--- IT-järjestelmiä hyödynnetään tiedon ja toimintojen hallinnassa useilla aloilla, kuten sairaaloissa ja teollisuudessa. Siirtyminen kohti esineiden Internetiä (Internet of Things, IoT) tuo tällaiset laitteet yhä kiinteämmäksi osaksi jokapäiväistä elämää. IT-järjestelmiin liitettyjen IoT-laitteiden sensoritoiminnot mahdollistavat tiedon automaattisen havainnoinnin ja käsittelyn osana suurempaa järjestelmää jopa täysin ilman ihmisen myötävaikutusta, poislukien mahdolliset ylläpito- ja hallintatoimenpiteet. Turvallisuus on ratkaisevan tärkeää IT-järjestelmien luvattoman käytön estämiseksi. Valitettavan usein järjestelmäsuunnittelussa turvallisuus ei ole osana ydinsuunnitteluprosessia, vaan otetaan huomioon vasta käyttöönoton jälkeen. Tässä väitöskirjassa esitellään uudenlainen biologiseen lähestymistapaan perustuva ratkaisu, jolla turvallisuus voidaan sisällyttää erottamattomaksi osaksi järjestelmää. Ehdotettu prototyyppiratkaisu perustuu ihmisen hermoston toimintaan tilanteessa, jossa se suojelee isäntäänsä ulkoisten tai sisäisten muutosten vaikutuksilta. Tämän työn keskeiset tulokset ovat uuden järjestelmäarkkitehtuurin johtaminen ihmisen hermoston toimintaperiaatteesta sekä tällaisen järjestelmän toteutettavuuden ja tehokkuuden arviointi kokeellisen prototyypin kehittämisen ja toiminnan arvioinnin avulla. Tämän väitöskirjan ensimmäinen kontribuutio on ihmisen hermoston toimintoihin perustuva IT-järjestelmäarkkitehtuuri. Tutkimuksessa arvioidaan ihmisen hermoston toimintaa ja tunnistetaan keskeiset toiminnot ja toiminnallisuudet, jotka mall-innetaan osaksi kehitettävää järjestelmää luomalla näitä vastaavat järjestelmäkomponentit. Nä-istä kootaan toiminnallisuudeltaan hermostoa vastaavat osajärjestelmät, joiden keskinäinen toiminta mallintaa ihmisen hermoston toimintaa. Näin luodaan arkkitehtuuri, jonka keskeisenä komponenttina on turvallisuus. Tämän pohjalta toteutetaan kaksi prototyyppijärjestelmää, joiden avulla arvioidaan arkkitehtuurin toteutuskelpoisuutta, turvallisuutta sekä toimintakykyä. Toinen kontribuutio on esitetyn hermostopohjaisen turvallisuusratkaisun toteuttaminen IoT-testialustalla. Kehitettyyn arkkitehtuuriin perustuva ja tunkeutumisen estojärjestelmän (intrusion detection system, IDS) sisältävä lämpötilan seurantasovellus toteutetaan käyttäen Contiki OS -käytöjärjestelmää. 6LoWPAN protokollapinoa muokataan tarpeen mukaan kehitysprosessin aikana. IDS:n lisäksi sovellukseen kuuluu aivo-osajärjestelmä (Brain subsystem, BrSS), selkäydinosajärjestelmä (Spinal cord subsystem, SCSS), sekä muita hermoston kaltaisia toimintoja. Nämä toiminnot jaetaan reunareitittimen ja resurssirajoitteisten laitteiden kesken. Tuloksia arvioidaan sekä simulaatioiden että testialustan tulosten perusteella. Testialustaa varten 6LoWPAN verkon toteutukseen valittiin Zolertia Z1 ja reunareititin on toteutettu Pandaboardin ja Z1:n yhdistelmällä. Cooja-simulaattorissa käytettiin mallinnukseen ymp-äristönä kahta erillistä ja erikokoisuta sensoriverkkoa. Kolmas tämän väitöskirjan kontribuutio on kehitetyn hermostopohjaisen arkkitehtuurin toteuttaminen mobiilialustassa. Toteutuksen alustaksi valitaan Android-käyttöjärjestelmä, ja kehitetty arkkitehtuuri räätälöidään Androidille. Tuloksena on kontekstipohjainen dynaamisesti uudelleen konfiguroitava pääsynvalvontajärjestelmä (context-based dynamically reconfigurable access control system, CoDRA). CoDRA toteutetaan mukauttamalla Androidin käyttöjärjestelmää ja toteutuksen toimivuutta arvioidaan reaaliaikaisissa käyttöolosuhteissa testialustaympäristöissä. Toteutusta arvioitaessa havaittiin, että kehitetty prototyyppi jäljitteli ihmishermoston toimintaa kohdesovelluksen suojaamisessa, suoriutui tehtävästään vähäisillä resurssivaatimuksilla ja onnistui sisällyttämään turvallisuuden järjestelmän ydintoimintoihin. Tulokset osoittivat, että tämän tyyppinen järjestelmä on toteutettavissa sekä sen, että järjestelmän hermostonkaltainen toiminnallisuus säilyy siirryttäessä sovellusalueelta toiselle, erityisesti resursseiltaan rajoittuneissa IoT-järjestelmissä