21,549 research outputs found
Challenges in the Design and Implementation of IoT Testbeds in Smart-Cities : A Systematic Review
Advancements in wireless communication and the increased accessibility to low-cost sensing and data processing IoT technologies have increased the research and development of urban monitoring systems. Most smart city research projects rely on deploying proprietary IoT testbeds for indoor and outdoor data collection. Such testbeds typically rely on a three-tier architecture composed of the Endpoint, the Edge, and the Cloud. Managing the system's operation whilst considering the security and privacy challenges that emerge, such as data privacy controls, network security, and security updates on the devices, is challenging. This work presents a systematic study of the challenges of developing, deploying and managing urban monitoring testbeds, as experienced in a series of urban monitoring research projects, followed by an analysis of the relevant literature. By identifying the challenges in the various projects and organising them under the V-model development lifecycle levels, we provide a reference guide for future projects. Understanding the challenges early on will facilitate current and future smart-cities IoT research projects to reduce implementation time and deliver secure and resilient testbeds
Birth of dairy 4.0: opportunities and challenges in adoption of fourth industrial revolution technologies in the production of milk and its derivative
Embracing innovation and emerging technologies is becoming increasingly important to address the current global challenges facing many food industry sectors, including the dairy industry. Growing literature shows that the adoption of technologies of the fourth industrial revolution (named Industry 4.0) has promising potential to bring about breakthroughs and new insights and unlock advancement opportunities in many areas of the food manufacturing sector. This article discusses the current knowledge and recent trends and progress on the application of Industry 4.0 innovations in the dairy industry. First, the “Dairy 4.0” concept, inspired by Industry 4.0, is introduced and its enabling technologies are determined. Second, relevant examples of the use of Dairy 4.0 technologies in milk and its derived products are presented. Finally, conclusions and future perspectives are given. The results revealed that robotics, 3D printing, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Big Data, and blockchain are the main enabling technologies of Dairy 4.0. These advanced technologies are being progressively adopted in the dairy sector, from farm to table, making significant and profound changes in the production of milk, cheese, and other dairy products. It is expected that, in the near future, new digital innovations will emerge, and greater implementations of Dairy 4.0 technologies is likely to be achieved, leading to more automation and optimization of this dynamic food sector
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
Unmanned-Aircraft-System-Assisted Early Wildfire Detection with Air Quality Sensors †
Numerous Hectares of Land Are Destroyed by Wildfires Every Year, Causing Harm to the Environment, the Economy, and the Ecology. More Than Fifty Million Acres Have Burned in Several States as a Result of Recent Forest Fires in the Western United States and Australia. According to Scientific Predictions, as the Climate Warms and Dries, Wildfires Will Become More Intense and Frequent, as Well as More Dangerous. These Unavoidable Catastrophes Emphasize How Important Early Wildfire Detection and Prevention Are. the Energy Management System Described in This Paper Uses an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) with Air Quality Sensors (AQSs) to Monitor Spot Fires Before They Spread. the Goal Was to Develop an Efficient Autonomous Patrolling System that Detects Early Wildfires While Maximizing the Battery Life of the UAS to Cover Broad Areas. the UAS Will Send Real-Time Data (Sensor Readings, Thermal Imaging, Etc.) to a Nearby Base Station (BS) When a Wildfire is Discovered. an Optimization Model Was Developed to Minimize the Total Amount of Energy Used by the UAS While Maintaining the Required Levels of Data Quality. Finally, the Simulations Showed the Performance of the Proposed Solution under Different Stability Conditions and for Different Minimum Data Rate Types
Sensing User's Activity, Channel, and Location with Near-Field Extra-Large-Scale MIMO
This paper proposes a grant-free massive access scheme based on the
millimeter wave (mmWave) extra-large-scale multiple-input multiple-output
(XL-MIMO) to support massive Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices with low latency,
high data rate, and high localization accuracy in the upcoming sixth-generation
(6G) networks. The XL-MIMO consists of multiple antenna subarrays that are
widely spaced over the service area to ensure line-of-sight (LoS)
transmissions. First, we establish the XL-MIMO-based massive access model
considering the near-field spatial non-stationary (SNS) property. Then, by
exploiting the block sparsity of subarrays and the SNS property, we propose a
structured block orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm for efficient active
user detection (AUD) and channel estimation (CE). Furthermore, different
sensing matrices are applied in different pilot subcarriers for exploiting the
diversity gains. Additionally, a multi-subarray collaborative localization
algorithm is designed for localization. In particular, the angle of arrival
(AoA) and time difference of arrival (TDoA) of the LoS links between active
users and related subarrays are extracted from the estimated XL-MIMO channels,
and then the coordinates of active users are acquired by jointly utilizing the
AoAs and TDoAs. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms outperform
existing algorithms in terms of AUD and CE performance and can achieve
centimeter-level localization accuracy.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communications, Major revision.
Codes will be open to all on https://gaozhen16.github.io/ soo
A review of abnormal behavior detection in activities of daily living
Abnormal behavior detection (ABD) systems are built to automatically identify and recognize abnormal behavior from various input data types, such as sensor-based and vision-based input. As much as the attention received for ABD systems, the number of studies on ABD in activities of daily living (ADL) is limited. Owing to the increasing rate of elderly accidents in the home compound, ABD in ADL research should be given as much attention to preventing accidents by sending out signals when abnormal behavior such as falling is detected. In this study, we compare and contrast the formation of the ABD system in ADL from input data types (sensor-based input and vision-based input) to modeling techniques (conventional and deep learning approaches). We scrutinize the public datasets available and provide solutions for one of the significant issues: the lack of datasets in ABD in ADL. This work aims to guide new research to understand the field of ABD in ADL better and serve as a reference for future study of better Ambient Assisted Living with the growing smart home trend
Graph-based Algorithm Unfolding for Energy-aware Power Allocation in Wireless Networks
We develop a novel graph-based trainable framework to maximize the weighted
sum energy efficiency (WSEE) for power allocation in wireless communication
networks. To address the non-convex nature of the problem, the proposed method
consists of modular structures inspired by a classical iterative suboptimal
approach and enhanced with learnable components. More precisely, we propose a
deep unfolding of the successive concave approximation (SCA) method. In our
unfolded SCA (USCA) framework, the originally preset parameters are now
learnable via graph convolutional neural networks (GCNs) that directly exploit
multi-user channel state information as the underlying graph adjacency matrix.
We show the permutation equivariance of the proposed architecture, which is a
desirable property for models applied to wireless network data. The USCA
framework is trained through a stochastic gradient descent approach using a
progressive training strategy. The unsupervised loss is carefully devised to
feature the monotonic property of the objective under maximum power
constraints. Comprehensive numerical results demonstrate its generalizability
across different network topologies of varying size, density, and channel
distribution. Thorough comparisons illustrate the improved performance and
robustness of USCA over state-of-the-art benchmarks.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication
Detecting Anomalous Microflows in IoT Volumetric Attacks via Dynamic Monitoring of MUD Activity
IoT networks are increasingly becoming target of sophisticated new
cyber-attacks. Anomaly-based detection methods are promising in finding new
attacks, but there are certain practical challenges like false-positive alarms,
hard to explain, and difficult to scale cost-effectively. The IETF recent
standard called Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) seems promising to limit
the attack surface on IoT devices by formally specifying their intended network
behavior. In this paper, we use SDN to enforce and monitor the expected
behaviors of each IoT device, and train one-class classifier models to detect
volumetric attacks.
Our specific contributions are fourfold. (1) We develop a multi-level
inferencing model to dynamically detect anomalous patterns in network activity
of MUD-compliant traffic flows via SDN telemetry, followed by packet inspection
of anomalous flows. This provides enhanced fine-grained visibility into
distributed and direct attacks, allowing us to precisely isolate volumetric
attacks with microflow (5-tuple) resolution. (2) We collect traffic traces
(benign and a variety of volumetric attacks) from network behavior of IoT
devices in our lab, generate labeled datasets, and make them available to the
public. (3) We prototype a full working system (modules are released as
open-source), demonstrates its efficacy in detecting volumetric attacks on
several consumer IoT devices with high accuracy while maintaining low false
positives, and provides insights into cost and performance of our system. (4)
We demonstrate how our models scale in environments with a large number of
connected IoTs (with datasets collected from a network of IP cameras in our
university campus) by considering various training strategies (per device unit
versus per device type), and balancing the accuracy of prediction against the
cost of models in terms of size and training time.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figure
The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions
The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are
non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive
experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can
benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed,
including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture.
Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an
ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on
the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse
and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic,
multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is
required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To
address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline
ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications
and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user
interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps
of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact
of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial
Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on
its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies
to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions,
and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for
each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the
best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users,
scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse
ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution
The Viability and Potential Consequences of IoT-Based Ransomware
With the increased threat of ransomware and the substantial growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market, there is significant motivation for attackers to carry out IoT-based ransomware campaigns. In this thesis, the viability of such malware is tested.
As part of this work, various techniques that could be used by ransomware developers to attack commercial IoT devices were explored. First, methods that attackers could use to communicate with the victim were examined, such that a ransom note was able to be reliably sent to a victim. Next, the viability of using "bricking" as a method of ransom was evaluated, such that devices could be remotely disabled unless the victim makes a payment to the attacker. Research was then performed to ascertain whether it was possible to remotely gain persistence on IoT devices, which would improve the efficacy of existing ransomware methods, and provide opportunities for more advanced ransomware to be created. Finally, after successfully identifying a number of persistence techniques, the viability of privacy-invasion based ransomware was analysed.
For each assessed technique, proofs of concept were developed. A range of devices -- with various intended purposes, such as routers, cameras and phones -- were used to test the viability of these proofs of concept. To test communication hijacking, devices' "channels of communication" -- such as web services and embedded screens -- were identified, then hijacked to display custom ransom notes. During the analysis of bricking-based ransomware, a working proof of concept was created, which was then able to remotely brick five IoT devices. After analysing the storage design of an assortment of IoT devices, six different persistence techniques were identified, which were then successfully tested on four devices, such that malicious filesystem modifications would be retained after the device was rebooted. When researching privacy-invasion based ransomware, several methods were created to extract information from data sources that can be commonly found on IoT devices, such as nearby WiFi signals, images from cameras, or audio from microphones. These were successfully implemented in a test environment such that ransomable data could be extracted, processed, and stored for later use to blackmail the victim.
Overall, IoT-based ransomware has not only been shown to be viable but also highly damaging to both IoT devices and their users. While the use of IoT-ransomware is still very uncommon "in the wild", the techniques demonstrated within this work highlight an urgent need to improve the security of IoT devices to avoid the risk of IoT-based ransomware causing havoc in our society. Finally, during the development of these proofs of concept, a number of potential countermeasures were identified, which can be used to limit the effectiveness of the attacking techniques discovered in this PhD research
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