Prioritization-based adaptive emergency traffic medium access control protocol for wireless body area networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) provide continuous monitoring of a patient by using heterogeneous Bio-Medical Sensor Nodes (BMSNs). WBANs pose unique constraints due to contention-based prioritized channel access, sporadic emergency traffic handling and emergency-based traffic adaptivity. In the existing medium access control protocols, the available contention-based prioritized channel access is incomplete due to the repetitions in backoff period ranges. The emergency traffic is considered based on traffic generation rate as well as sporadic emergency traffic that is not handled at multiple BMSNs during contention. In an emergency situation, non-emergency traffic is ignored, traffic is not adjusted dynamically with balanced throughput and energy consumption, and the energy of non-emergency traffic BMSNs is not preserved. In this research, prioritization-based adaptive emergency traffic Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol was designed to consider contention-based prioritized channel access for heterogenous BMSNs along with sporadic emergency traffic handling and dynamic adjustment of traffic in sporadic emergency situation. Firstly, a Traffic Class Prioritization based slotted-CSMA/CA (TCP-CSMA/CA) scheme was developed to provide contention-based prioritized channel access by removing repetitions in backoff period ranges. Secondly, an emergency Traffic Class Provisioning based slotted-CSMA/CA (ETCP-CSMA/CA) scheme was presented to deliver the sporadic emergency traffic instantaneously that occurs either at a single BMSN or multiple BMSNs, with minimum delay and packet loss without ignoring non-emergency traffic. Finally, an emergency-based Traffic Adaptive slotted-CSMA/CA (ETA-CSMA/CA) scheme provided dynamic adjustment of traffic to accommodate the variations in heterogeneous traffic rates along with energy preservation of non-emergency traffic BMSNs, creating a balance between throughput and energy in the sporadic emergency situation. Performance comparison was conducted by simulation using NS-2 and the results revealed that the proposed schemes were better than ATLAS, PLA-MAC, eMC-MAC and PG-MAC protocols. The least improved performances were in terms of packet delivery delay 10%, throughput 14%, packet delivery ratio 21%, packet loss ratio 28% and energy consumption 37%. In conclusion, the prioritization-based adaptive emergency traffic MAC protocol outperformed the existing protocols

Securing Cognitive Radio Networks using blockchains

Due to the increase in industrial applications of Internet of Things (IoT), number of internet connected devices have been increased accordingly. This has resulted in big challenges in terms of accessibility, scalability, connectivity and adaptability. IoT is capable of creating connections between devices on wireless medium but the utilization of scarce spectrum in efficient manner for the establishment of these connections is the biggest concern. To accommodate spectrum allocation problem different radio technologies are being utilized. One of the most efficient technique being used is cognitive radio, which dynamically allocate the unlicensed spectrum for IoT applications. Spectrum sensing being the fundamental component of Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) is threatened by security attacks. Process of spectrum sensing is disturbed by the malicious user (MU) which attacks the primary signal detection and affects the accuracy of sensing outcome. The presence of such MU in system, sending false sensing data can degrade the performance of cognitive radios. Therefore, in this article a blockchain based method is proposed for the MU detection in network. By using this method an MU can easily be discriminated from a reliable user through cryptographic keys. The efficiency of the proposed mechanism is analyzed through proper simulations using MATLAB. Consequently, this mechanism can be deployed for the validation of participating users in the process of spectrum sensing in CRN for IoTs.publishe

Green Computing for Wireless Body Area Networks: Energy Efficient Link Aware Medical Data Dissemination Approach

Recent technological advancement- in wireless communication has invented Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), a cutting edge technology in healthcare applications. WBANs interconnect with intelligent and miniaturized biomedical sensor nodes placed on human body to un-attendant monitoring of physiological parameter of the patient. These sensors are equipped with limited resources in terms of computation, storage and battery power. The data communication in WBANs is a resource hungry process especially in terms of energy. One of the most significant challenges in this network is to design energy aware next-hop link selection framework. Towards this end, this paper presents a Green computing framework for WBANs focusing on Energy efficient Link aware approach (G-WEL). Firstly, a link efficiency oriented network model is presented considering beaconing information and network initialization process. Secondly, a path cost calculation model is derived focusing on energy aware link efficiency. A complete operational framework G-WEL is developed considering energy aware next hop link selection by utilizing the network and path cost model. The comparative performance evaluation attests the energy oriented benefit of the proposed framework as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques. It reveals a significant enhancement in body area networking in terms of various energy oriented metrics under medical environments

LEVERAGING THE POPULARITY OF VIRTUAL CONFERENCING DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC TO CREATE NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR STEM EDUCATION

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual learning has become a necessity for K9-16 education. Virtual classwork has been administered through platforms such as Google Classroom, Clever, and iReady. During the summer of 2021, the City University of New York (C.U.N.Y) York College campus hosted its NASA MAA MUREP (Minority University Research and Education Project Aerospace Academy) program virtually using a combination of Zoom, Google Docs, and even Canva, which some students requested as a more intuitive alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint. Students were mentored to use the scientific method to explore their interests in the STEM field, with a geoscience or environmental science focus where possible. Students were trained to 1) obtain peer reviewed articles from reputable sources such as Nature Geoscience, GSA Today, as well as databases such as Springer and Google Scholar, 2) locate reputable raw datasets from sources such as the EPA, NASA, NOAA, NIH, AMS, USGS, census.gov and many others, 3) analyze and discuss such data with a hypothesis in mind and represent the data in graphical form using Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, and 4) ultimately form a conclusion based on the hypothesis. Since many government bodies and reputable scientific teams worldwide conduct extensive sampling and data collection (while making this data publicly available), this virtual education approach allows the exploration of STEM topics without necessitating field or laboratory sampling. Availability of open access information pertaining to benchmark publications through the internet, it has opened a plethora of opportunities for more scientific research. The innovative combination of virtual learning tools along with email communications, allowed students to meet for 2 hours sessions multiple times a week and receive individualized attention and mentorship to generate final E-posters to present their work. Topics included: the effects of air pollution on respiratory health, acid rain in the northeastern United States, and pollution along the Yangtze River (China). The virtual platforms also enabled students to share their work-in-progress for feedback from peers, as well as allowed the students to use other forms of communication such as chat instead of only voice-communication or only face-to-face interaction. This flexibility gave an additional level of confidence to the participating students

Managing Workplace Diversity in Companies

ANOTACESpráva rozmanitosti pracovišť ve společnostech Diverzita na pracovišti se stala zásadním faktorem pro to, aby byl podnik v budoucnosti úspěšný. Díky rozmanitosti přináší na pracoviště nespočet výhod a nevýhod, nicméně je známo, že přínosy skutečně převyšují negativa, pokud jde o řízení podniku. Tato práce je zaměřena na navrhování různých metod při zvyšování rozmanitosti mezi zaměstnanci a získávání výhod z nich v budoucnosti bez ohledu na jejich věk, pohlaví, původ nebo kulturu. Výhody rozmanitého týmu mohou pohánět úspěšné podniky vpřed a současně udržovat zaměstnance spokojené a šťastné. Úvodní a literární část připravená k diskusi o vydaných problémech souvisejících s rozmanitostí. Cílem výzkumu bylo navrhnout způsoby, jak zlepšit a řídit rozmanitost pracovišť, prostřednictvím dotazníkového průzkumu, do kterého byli zapojeni zaměstnanci KFC cílové pobočky. Dotazník také zahrnoval obecné zaměstnance z multikulturní skupiny respondentů, aby porovnali problémy rozmanitosti s KFC a pokusili se zlepšit udržení zaměstnanců, spokojenost zaměstnanců a zajistit příjemné prostředí na pracovišti. Poslední část práce přináší návrhy KFC ke zlepšení postupů diverzity pracoviště přidáním některých modulů školicího programu s ekonomickou perspektivou.ABSTRACTManaging Workplace diversity in companiesWorkplace diversity has become a vital factor for a business to be successful in the future. With diversity introduces a myriad of advantages and disadvantages to the workplace however it is known that the benefits truly outweigh the negatives when it comes to running an enterprise. This thesis is focused on proposing different methods in increasing diversity practice among employees and getting benefits from them in the future regardless of their age, sex, background, or culture. The benefits of having a diverse team can propel successful businesses forward at the same time as keeping employees satisfied and happy. The introduction and literature section prepared to discuss the diversity-related issues and challenges. The research aimed to propose ways to improve and manage workplace diversity through a survey questionnaire that involved KFC employees of a targeted branch. The questionnaire also involved general employees from a multicultural group of respondents to compare the diversity issues with KFC and try to improve employee retention, employee happiness, and ensure comfortable surroundings in the workplace. The last part of the thesis brings proposals for KFC to improve workplace diversity practices by adding some modules of the training program with an economical perspective

CAMP: Congestion Avoidance and Mitigation Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks

Advances in wireless communication technologies invented body sensor networks (BSNs) for health care systems. BSN monitor’s patients’ health remotely and automatically. It is economical and helpful solution for both patients and healthcare providers. WSN is made up of small Bio-medical sensors (BMSs) and Body Coordinator (BC). BMSs sense and transmit data continuously. As BSN consist of many BMSs, the simultaneous data transmission results in congestion in the network. Congestion causes packet drops which attempt to be retransmitted. In this work, we propose Routing scheme with Traffic Redirection and Rate Control (R-TRRC) for congestion detection and mitigation for BSNs. The experimental results shows that the propsed scheme carries out better results in terms of energy efficiency and network lifetime of BSNs

Emergency traffic adaptive MAC protocol for wireless body area networks based on prioritization.

This paper proposes an emergency Traffic Adaptive MAC (eTA-MAC) protocol for WBANs based on Prioritization. The main advantage of the protocol is to provide traffic ranking through a Traffic Class Prioritization-based slotted-Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (TCP-CSMA/CA) scheme. The emergency traffic is handled through Emergency Traffic Class Provisioning-based slotted-CSMA/CA (ETCP-CSMA/CA) scheme. The emergency-based traffic adaptivity is provided through Emergency-based Traffic Adaptive slotted-CSMA/CA (ETA-CSMA/CA) scheme. The TCP-CSMA/CA scheme assigns a distinct, minimized and prioritized backoff period range to each traffic class in every backoff during channel access in Contention Access Period (CAP). The ETCP-CSMA/CA scheme delivers the sporadic emergency traffic that occurs at a single or multiple BMSN(s) instantaneously, with minimum delay and packet loss. It does this while being aware of normal traffic in the CAP. Then, the ETA-CSMA/CA scheme creates a balance between throughput and energy in the sporadic emergency situation with energy preservation of normal traffic BMSNs. The proposed protocol is evaluated using NS-2 simulator. The results indicate that the proposed protocol is better than the existing Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols by 86% decrease in packet delivery delay, 61% increase in throughput, and a 76% decrease in energy consumption

Energy conservation strategies in Host Centric Networking based MANET: A review

Energy efficient strategies relating to Host Centric Networking based Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (HCN based MANET) have been ongoing for decades. Yet, despite the production of review articles that discuss techniques and solutions for improving energy efficiency in MANET, the said existing articles are rather meritoriously inadequate as they do not provide detailed aspects of energy conservation practices in MANET, or discuss the limitations of using HCN based MANET. Hence, this article aims to elaborate on these overlooked areas of HCN based MANET research. To begin, this review will first justify the importance of improving energy efficiency in MANET, before going on to overview related research and present a comprehensive analysis on energy efficiency in MANET. This will be followed by discussions on MANET energy consumption behaviour to familiarise researchers with methods used to increase MANET energy efficiency undertaken in previous research, as well as the motives behind them. Next follows a review on the limitations of using Host Centric Networking (HCN) in MANET to expound why such protocols like TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is inefficient for use in MANET implementation. This review culminates with conclusions and suggestions for future research by extolling the virtues of utilising Named Data Networking (NDN). The ultimate objective of this review is to impart a robust understanding on MANET energy efficiency aspects and empower researchers to produce energy efficient solutions for MANET

Traffic adaptive MAC protocols in wireless body area networks

In Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), every healthcare application that is based on physical sensors is responsible for monitoring the vital signs data of patient. WBANs applications consist of heterogeneous and dynamic traffic loads. Routine patient’s observation is described as low-load traffic while an alarming situation that is unpredictable by nature is referred to as high-load traffic. This paper offers a thematic review of traffic adaptive Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols in WBANs. First, we have categorized them based on their goals, methods, and metrics of evaluation. The Zigbee standard IEEE 802.15.4 and the baseline MAC IEEE 802.15.6 are also reviewed in terms of traffic adaptive approaches. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the protocols is made and their performances are analyzed in terms of delay, packet delivery ratio (PDR), and energy consumption. The literature shows that no review work has been done on traffic adaptive MAC protocols in WBANs. This review work, therefore, could add enhancement to traffic adaptive MAC protocols and will stimulate a better way of solving the traffic adaptivity problem