Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Thirty Years of Machine Learning: The Road to Pareto-Optimal Wireless Networks

Future wireless networks have a substantial potential in terms of supporting a broad range of complex compelling applications both in military and civilian fields, where the users are able to enjoy high-rate, low-latency, low-cost and reliable information services. Achieving this ambitious goal requires new radio techniques for adaptive learning and intelligent decision making because of the complex heterogeneous nature of the network structures and wireless services. Machine learning (ML) algorithms have great success in supporting big data analytics, efficient parameter estimation and interactive decision making. Hence, in this article, we review the thirty-year history of ML by elaborating on supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning and deep learning. Furthermore, we investigate their employment in the compelling applications of wireless networks, including heterogeneous networks (HetNets), cognitive radios (CR), Internet of things (IoT), machine to machine networks (M2M), and so on. This article aims for assisting the readers in clarifying the motivation and methodology of the various ML algorithms, so as to invoke them for hitherto unexplored services as well as scenarios of future wireless networks.Comment: 46 pages, 22 fig

Implementation of a herd management system with wireless sensor networks

This paper investigates an adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to cattle monitoring applications. The proposed solution facilitates the requirement for continuously assessing the condition of individual animals, aggregating and reporting this data to the farm manager. There are several existing approaches to achieving animal monitoring, ranging from using a store and forward mechanism to employing GSM-based techniques; these approaches only provide sporadic information and introduce a considerable cost in staffing and physical hardware. The core of this study is to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks by using alternative cheap, low power consumption sensor nodes capable of providing real-time communication at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, both the hardware and software has been designed to provide a solution which can obtain real-time data from dairy cattle whilst conforming to the limitations associated with WSNs implementations

Diseños de capa cruzada para redes inalámbricas de área corporal energéticamente eficientes: una revisión

RESUMEN: El diseño de capa cruzada se considera una poderosa alternativa para dar solución a las complejidades introducidas por las comunicaciones inalámbricas en redes de área corporal (WBAN), donde el modelo clásico de comunicaciones no ha exhibido un desempeño adecuado. Respecto al problema puntual de consumo de energía, hemos preparado la presente revisión de las publicaciones más relevantes que tratan la eficiencia energética para WBAN usando diseño de capa cruzada. En este artículo se proporciona una revisión exhaustiva de los avances en aproximaciones, protocolos y optimizaciones de capa cruzada cuyo objetivo es incrementar el tiempo de vida de las redes WBAN mediante el ahorro de energía. Luego, se discute los aspectos relevantes y deficiencias de las técnicas de capa cruzada energéticamente eficientes. Además, se introducen aspectos de investigación abiertos y retos en el diseño de capa cruzada para WBAN. En esta revisión proponemos una taxonomía de las aproximaciones de capa cruzada, de modo que las técnicas revisadas se ajustan en categorías de acuerdo a los protocolos involucrados en el diseño. Una clasificación novedosa se incluye para hacer claridad en los conceptos teóricos involucrados en cada esquema de capa cruzada y para luego agrupar aproximaciones similares evidenciando las diferencias con otras técnicas entre sí. Nuestras conclusiones consideran los aspectos de movilidad y modelamiento del canal en escenarios de WBAN como las direcciones para futura investigación en WBAN y en aplicaciones de telemedicina.ABSTRACT: Cross-layer design is considered a powerful alternative to solve the complexities of wireless communication in wireless body area networks (WBAN), where the classical communication model has been shown to be inaccurate. Regarding the energy consumption problem, we have prepared a current survey of the most relevant scientific publications on energy-efficient cross-layer design for WBAN. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the advances in cross-layer approaches, protocols and optimizations aimed at increasing the network lifetime by saving energy in WBANs. Subsequently, we discuss the relevant aspects and shortcomings of these energy-efficient cross-layer techniques and point out the open research issues and challenges in WBAN cross-layer design. In this survey, we propose a taxonomy for cross-layer approaches to fit them into categories based on the protocols involved in the cross-layer scheme. A novel classification is included to clarify the theoretical concepts behind each cross-layer scheme; and to group similar approaches by establishing their differences from the other strategies reviewed. Our conclusion considers the aspects of mobility and channel modeling in WBAN scenarios as the directions of future cross-layer research for WBAN and telemedicine applications

D13.2 Techniques and performance analysis on energy- and bandwidth-efficient communications and networking

Deliverable D13.2 del projecte europeu NEWCOM#The report presents the status of the research work of the various Joint Research Activities (JRA) in WP1.3 and the results that were developed up to the second year of the project. For each activity there is a description, an illustration of the adherence to and relevance with the identified fundamental open issues, a short presentation of the main results, and a roadmap for the future joint research. In the Annex, for each JRA, the main technical details on specific scientific activities are described in detail.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version