1,628 research outputs found
Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey
This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh
network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user
privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various
possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for
WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the
security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application
layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols,
user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation
protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the
chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms
and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible
attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with
regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed,
use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved
etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management
approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly
becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open
problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed
before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the
author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are
some text overlaps with the previous submissio
Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey
The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to
ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability
issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid
(SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical
power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side
management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will
bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system.
For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time
consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built
on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG
systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue.
Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the
communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey
on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of
SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case
studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for
SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes
applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and
future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte
Physical Layer Service Integration in 5G: Potentials and Challenges
High transmission rate and secure communication have been identified as the
key targets that need to be effectively addressed by fifth generation (5G)
wireless systems. In this context, the concept of physical-layer security
becomes attractive, as it can establish perfect security using only the
characteristics of wireless medium. Nonetheless, to further increase the
spectral efficiency, an emerging concept, termed physical-layer service
integration (PHY-SI), has been recognized as an effective means. Its basic idea
is to combine multiple coexisting services, i.e., multicast/broadcast service
and confidential service, into one integral service for one-time transmission
at the transmitter side. This article first provides a tutorial on typical
PHY-SI models. Furthermore, we propose some state-of-the-art solutions to
improve the overall performance of PHY-SI in certain important communication
scenarios. In particular, we highlight the extension of several concepts
borrowed from conventional single-service communications, such as artificial
noise (AN), eigenmode transmission etc., to the scenario of PHY-SI. These
techniques are shown to be effective in the design of reliable and robust
PHY-SI schemes. Finally, several potential research directions are identified
for future work.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
A Survey of System Architecture Requirements for Health Care-Based Wireless Sensor Networks
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as a viable technology for a vast number of applications, including health care applications. To best support these health care applications, WSN technology can be adopted for the design of practical Health Care WSNs (HCWSNs) that support the key system architecture requirements of reliable communication, node mobility support, multicast technology, energy efficiency, and the timely delivery of data. Work in the literature mostly focuses on the physical design of the HCWSNs (e.g., wearable sensors, in vivo embedded sensors, et cetera). However, work towards enhancing the communication layers (i.e., routing, medium access control, et cetera) to improve HCWSN performance is largely lacking. In this paper, the information gleaned from an extensive literature survey is shared in an effort to fortify the knowledge base for the communication aspect of HCWSNs. We highlight the major currently existing prototype HCWSNs and also provide the details of their routing protocol characteristics. We also explore the current state of the art in medium access control (MAC) protocols for WSNs, for the purpose of seeking an energy efficient solution that is robust to mobility and delivers data in a timely fashion. Furthermore, we review a number of reliable transport layer protocols, including a network coding based protocol from the literature, that are potentially suitable for delivering end-to-end reliability of data transmitted in HCWSNs. We identify the advantages and disadvantages of the reviewed MAC, routing, and transport layer protocols as they pertain to the design and implementation of a HCWSN. The findings from this literature survey will serve as a useful foundation for designing a reliable HCWSN and also contribute to the development and evaluation of protocols for improving the performance of future HCWSNs. Open issues that required further investigations are highlighted
Optimizing Network Coding Algorithms for Multiple Applications.
Deviating from the archaic communication approach of treating information as a fluid moving through pipes, the concepts of Network Coding (NC) suggest that optimal throughput of a multicast network can be achieved by processing information at individual network nodes. However, existing challenges to harness the advantages of NC concepts for practical applications have prevented the development of NC into an effective solution to increase the performance of practical communication networks. In response, the research work presented in this thesis proposes cross-layer NC solutions to increase the network throughput of data multicast as well as video quality of video multicast applications. First, three algorithms are presented to improve the throughput of NC enabled networks by minimizing the NC coefficient vector overhead, optimizing the NC redundancy allocation and improving the robustness of NC against bursty packet losses. Considering the fact that majority of network traffic occupies video, rest of the proposed NC algorithms are content-aware and are optimized for both data and video multicast applications. A set of content and network-aware optimization algorithms, which allocate redundancies for NC considering content properties as well as the network status, are proposed to efficiently multicast data and video across content delivery networks. Furthermore content and channel-aware joint channel and network coding algorithms are proposed to efficiently multicast data and video across wireless networks. Finally, the possibilities of performing joint source and network coding are explored to increase the robustness of high volume video multicast applications. Extensive simulation studies indicate significant improvements with the proposed algorithms to increase the network throughput and video quality over related state-of-the-art solutions. Hence, it is envisaged that the proposed algorithms will contribute to the advancement of data and video multicast protocols in the future communication networks
Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the
challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive,
and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the
service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point
(AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are
required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to
the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that
do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are
connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to
conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other
networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for
WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks
(MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols
for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all
assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does
not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in
WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First,
it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and
the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality,
data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed.
Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed.
After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network
layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for
these attacks.Comment: 44 pages, 17 figures, 5 table
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