A Secure and Low-Energy Zone-based Wireless Sensor Networks Routing Protocol for Pollution Monitoring

[EN] Sensor networks can be used in many sorts of environments. The increase of pollution and carbon footprint are nowadays an important environmental problem. The use of sensors and sensor networks can help to make an early detection in order to mitigate their effect over the medium. The deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) requires high-energy efficiency and secures mechanisms to ensure the data veracity. Moreover, when WSNs are deployed in harsh environments, it is very difficult to recharge or replace the sensor's batteries. For this reason, the increase of network lifetime is highly desired. WSNs also work in unattended environments, which is vulnerable to different sort of attacks. Therefore, both energy efficiency and security must be considered in the development of routing protocols for WSNs. In this paper, we present a novel Secure and Low-energy Zone-based Routing Protocol (SeLeZoR) where the nodes of the WSN are split into zones and each zone is separated into clusters. Each cluster is controlled by a cluster head. Firstly, the information is securely sent to the zone-head using a secret key; then, the zone-head sends the data to the base station using the secure and energy efficient mechanism. This paper demonstrates that SeLeZoR achieves better energy efficiency and security levels than existing routing protocols for WSNs.Mehmood, A.; Lloret, J.; Sendra, S. (2016). A Secure and Low-Energy Zone-based Wireless Sensor Networks Routing Protocol for Pollution Monitoring. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. 16(17):2869-2883. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcm.2734S286928831617Sendra S Deployment of efficient wireless sensor nodes for monitoring in rural, indoor and underwater environments 2013Javaid, N., Qureshi, T. N., Khan, A. H., Iqbal, A., Akhtar, E., & Ishfaq, M. (2013). EDDEEC: Enhanced Developed Distributed Energy-efficient Clustering for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks. Procedia Computer Science, 19, 914-919. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2013.06.125Garcia, M., Sendra, S., Lloret, J., & Canovas, A. (2011). Saving energy and improving communications using cooperative group-based Wireless Sensor Networks. Telecommunication Systems, 52(4), 2489-2502. doi:10.1007/s11235-011-9568-3Garcia, M., Lloret, J., Sendra, S., & Rodrigues, J. J. P. C. (2011). Taking Cooperative Decisions in Group-Based Wireless Sensor Networks. Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering, 61-65. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23734-8_9Garcia, M., & Lloret, J. (2009). A Cooperative Group-Based Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring. Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering, 276-279. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-04265-2_41Jain T Wireless environmental monitoring system (wems) using data aggregation in a bidirectional hybrid protocol In Proc of the 6th International Conference ICISTM 2012 2012Senouci, M. R., Mellouk, A., Senouci, H., & Aissani, A. (2012). Performance evaluation of network lifetime spatial-temporal distribution for WSN routing protocols. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 35(4), 1317-1328. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2012.01.016Heinzelman WR Chandrakasan A Balakrishnan H Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks In proc of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2000 2000Xiangning F Yulin S Improvement on LEACH protocol of wireless sensor network In proc of the 2007 International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications SensorComm 2007 2007Tong M Tang M LEACH-B: an improved LEACH protocol for wireless sensor network In proc of the 6th International Conference on Wireless Communications Networking and Mobile Computing WiCOM 2010 2010Mohammad El-Basioni, B. M., Abd El-kader, S. M., Eissa, H. S., & Zahra, M. M. (2011). An Optimized Energy-aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network. Egyptian Informatics Journal, 12(2), 61-72. doi:10.1016/j.eij.2011.03.001Younis O Fahmy S Distributed clustering in ad-hoc sensor networks: a hybrid, energy-efficient approach In proc of the Twenty-third Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies INFOCOM 2004 2004Noack, A., & Spitz, S. (2009). Dynamic Threshold Cryptosystem without Group Manager. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 1(1). doi:10.5296/npa.v1i1.161Nasser, N., & Chen, Y. (2007). SEEM: Secure and energy-efficient multipath routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. Computer Communications, 30(11-12), 2401-2412. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2007.04.014Alippi, C., Camplani, R., Galperti, C., & Roveri, M. (2011). A Robust, Adaptive, Solar-Powered WSN Framework for Aquatic Environmental Monitoring. IEEE Sensors Journal, 11(1), 45-55. doi:10.1109/jsen.2010.2051539Parra L Sendra S Jimenez JM Lloret J Smart system to detect and track pollution in marine environments, in proc. of the 2015 2015 1503 1508Atto, M., & Guy, C. (2014). Routing Protocols and Quality of Services for Security Based Applications Using Wireless Video Sensor Networks. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 6(3), 119. doi:10.5296/npa.v6i3.5802Liu, Z., Zheng, Q., Xue, L., & Guan, X. (2012). A distributed energy-efficient clustering algorithm with improved coverage in wireless sensor networks. Future Generation Computer Systems, 28(5), 780-790. doi:10.1016/j.future.2011.04.019Bri D Sendra S Coll H Lloret J How the atmospheric variables affect to the WLAN datalink layer parameters 2010Ganesh, S., & Amutha, R. (2013). Efficient and secure routing protocol for wireless sensor networks through SNR based dynamic clustering mechanisms. Journal of Communications and Networks, 15(4), 422-429. doi:10.1109/jcn.2013.000073Amjad M 2014 Energy efficient multi level and distance clustering mechanism for wireless sensor networksMeghanathan, N. (2015). A Generic Algorithm to Determine Maximum Bottleneck Node Weight-based Data Gathering Trees for Wireless Sensor Networks. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 7(3), 18. doi:10.5296/npa.v7i3.796

Dry Eye Disease in Younger Age

 To evaluate the personal andenvironmental risk factors attributable to dry eyedisease (DED) among younger age group ofIslamabad.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 360individuals aged 18-40 years of either sex werescreened randomly. All patients visiting outpatientdepartment with various symptoms and laterdiagnosed to have abnormal tests and symptoms ofdry eye were included in this study. Patients havingany eye disease, systemic disease and those usingantiallergic or steroid drugs were excluded. Patientdemographics and dry eye questionnaire (DEQ) wasadministered by a trained interviewer. Dry eye testslike tear film breakup time (TBUT), cornealfluorescein staining (CFS), Schirmers test (ST) andslit-lamp examination for presence of conjunctivalinjection, punctate epithelial erosions (PEE), lidmargins plugging and telengiectasias were used todiagnose dry eye.Results:There were 55.6% males and (44.4%females. Majority were urban (72.8%). Majorconstituents were students (23.3%), teachers (17.2%),office workers (27.8%), housewives (13.9%) andlabourers (17.8%). In this study, 81(22.5%) subjects,42(11.7%)male, 39(10.8%) female were symptomaticdefined as presence of one or more dry-eyesymptoms often or all the time. Two hundred andtwo (56.1%) subjects had low TBUT, 140(38.9%) hadlow ST and 180(50%) patients had abnormalplugging or telengiectasias of lid margins. Commonsymptoms were burning 59.2%, eye strain 55.5%,watering 51.8% and fatigue 49.3%.Dry eye symptomswere related to computer use 20(24.7%), blepharitis19(23.4%), refractive errors 7(8.6%), contact lens use3(3.7%), refractive surgery 1(1.2%), eye make-up use10(12.3%), use of antiallergic medications 10(12.3%)and smoking 11(13.5%).Conclusion : Various environmental effects atwork are related to eye and physical symptomswhich affect quality of life. Those students who areusing computers and other screens develop dry eyesymptoms. Dry eye is a common conditionpresenting to Ophthalmologists. It isunderdiagnosed and variably treated withantiallergic /decongestants drops on empirical basis

ELDC: An Artificial Neural Network Based Energy-Efficient and Robust Routing Scheme for Pollution Monitoring in WSNs

[EN] The range of applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is increasing continuously despite of their serious constraints of the sensor nodes¿ resources such as storage, processing capacity, communication range and energy. The main issues in WSN are the energy consumption and the delay in relaying data to the Sink node. This becomes extremely important when deploying a big number of nodes, like the case of industry pollution monitoring. We propose an artificial neural network based energy-efficient and robust routing scheme for WSNs called ELDC. In this technique, the network is trained on huge data set containing almost all scenarios to make the network more reliable and adaptive to the environment. Additionally, it uses group based methodology to increase the life-span of the overall network, where groups may have different sizes. An artificial neural network provides an efficient threshold values for the selection of a group's CN and a cluster head based on back propagation technique and allows intelligent, efficient, and robust group organization. Thus, our proposed technique is highly energy-efficient capable to increase sensor nodes¿ lifetime. Simulation results show that it outperforms LEACH protocol by 42 percent, and other state-of-the-art protocols by more than 30 percent.Mehmood, A.; Lv, Z.; Lloret, J.; Umar, MM. (2020). ELDC: An Artificial Neural Network Based Energy-Efficient and Robust Routing Scheme for Pollution Monitoring in WSNs. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing. IEEE TETC. 8(1):106-114. https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2017.26718471061148

FIPA-based reference architecture for efficient discovery and selection of appropriate cloud service using cloud ontology

[EN] Cloud computing is considered the latest emerging computing paradigm and has brought revolutionary changes in computing technology. With the advancement in this field, the number of cloud users and service providers is increasing continuously with more diversified services. Consequently, the selection of appropriate cloud service has become a difficult task for a new cloud customer. In case of inappropriate selection of a cloud services, a cloud customer may face the vendor locked-in issue and data portability and interoperability problems. These are the major obstacles in the adoption of cloud services. To avoid these complexities, a cloud customer needs to select an appropriate cloud service at the initial stage of the migration to the cloud. Many researches have been proposed to overcome the issues, but problems still exist in intercommunication standards among clouds and vendor locked-in issues. This research proposed an IEEE multiagent Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent (FIPA) compliance multiagent reference architecture for cloud discovery and selection using cloud ontology. The proposed approach will mitigate the prevailing vendor locked-in issue and also alleviate the portability and interoperability problems in cloud computing. To evaluate the proposed reference architecture and compare it with the state-of-the-art approaches, several experiments have been performed by utilizing the commonly used performance measures. Analysis indicates that the proposed approach enables significant improvements in cloud service discovery and selection in terms of search efficiency, execution, and response timeAbbas, G.; Mehmood, A.; Lloret, J.; Raza, MS.; Ibrahim, M. (2020). FIPA-based reference architecture for efficient discovery and selection of appropriate cloud service using cloud ontology. International Journal of Communication Systems. 33(14):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.4504114331

Adaptive Cross-Layer Multipath Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

[EN] Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are generally created for temporary scenarios. In such scenarios, where nodes are in mobility, efficient routing is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose an adaptive and cross-layer multipath routing protocol for such changing scenarios. Our routing mechanisms operate keeping in view the type of applications. For simple applications, the proposed protocol is inspired from traditional on-demand routing protocols by searching shortest routes from source to destination using default parameters. In case of multimedia applications, the proposed mechanism considers such routes which are capable of providing more data rates having less packet loss ratio. For those applications which need security, the proposed mechanism searches such routes which are more secure in nature as compared to others. Cross-layer methodology is used in proposed routing scheme so as to exchange different parameters across the protocol stack for better decision-making at network layer. Our approach is efficient and fault tolerant in a variety of scenarios that we simulated and tested.The authors would like to extend their sincere appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding this research group no. 037-1435-RG.Iqbal, Z.; Khan, S.; Mehmood, A.; Lloret, J.; Alrajeh, NA. (2016). Adaptive Cross-Layer Multipath Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. Journal of Sensors. 2016:1-18. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5486437S1182016Abusalah, L., Khokhar, A., & Guizani, M. (2008). A survey of secure mobile Ad Hoc routing protocols. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 10(4), 78-93. doi:10.1109/surv.2008.080407Murthy, S., & Garcia-Luna-Aceves, J. J. (1996). An efficient routing protocol for wireless networks. Mobile Networks and Applications, 1(2), 183-197. doi:10.1007/bf01193336Toh, C.-K. (1997). Wireless Personal Communications, 4(2), 103-139. doi:10.1023/a:1008812928561Pearlman, M. R., & Haas, Z. J. (1999). Determining the optimal configuration for the zone routing protocol. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 17(8), 1395-1414. doi:10.1109/49.779922ZHEN, Y., WU, M., WU, D., ZHANG, Q., & XU, C. (2010). Toward path reliability by using adaptive multi-path routing mechanism for multimedia service in mobile Ad-hoc network. The Journal of China Universities of Posts and Telecommunications, 17(1), 93-100. doi:10.1016/s1005-8885(09)60431-3Sivakumar, R., Sinha, P., & Bharghavan, V. (1999). CEDAR: a core-extraction distributed ad hoc routing algorithm. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 17(8), 1454-1465. doi:10.1109/49.779926Zapata, M. G. (2002). Secure ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing. ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, 6(3), 106-107. doi:10.1145/581291.581312Khan, S., & Loo, J. (2010). Cross Layer Secure and Resource-Aware On-Demand Routing Protocol for Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks. Wireless Personal Communications, 62(1), 201-214. doi:10.1007/s11277-010-0048-ySharma, V., & Alam, B. (2012). Unicaste Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: A Survey. International Journal of Computer Applications, 51(14), 9-18. doi:10.5120/8108-1714Tarique, M., Tepe, K. E., Adibi, S., & Erfani, S. (2009). Survey of multipath routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 32(6), 1125-1143. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2009.07.002Shiwen Mao, Shunan Lin, Yao Wang, Panwar, S. S., & Yihan Li. (2005). Multipath video transport over ad hoc networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 12(4), 42-49. doi:10.1109/mwc.2005.1497857Li, Z., Chen, Q., Zhu, G., Choi, Y., & Sekiya, H. (2015). A Low Latency, Energy Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 11(8), 946587. doi:10.1155/2015/946587Zheng, Z., Liu, A., Cai, L. X., Chen, Z., & Shen, X. (2016). Energy and memory efficient clone detection in wireless sensor networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 15(5), 1130-1143. doi:10.1109/tmc.2015.2449847Dong, M., Ota, K., Liu, A., & Guo, M. (2016). Joint Optimization of Lifetime and Transport Delay under Reliability Constraint Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 27(1), 225-236. doi:10.1109/tpds.2015.2388482Hamrioui, S., Lorenz, P., Lloret, J., & Lalam, M. (2013). A Cross Layer Solution for Better Interactions Between Routing and Transport Protocols in MANET. Journal of Computing and Information Technology, 21(3), 137. doi:10.2498/cit.1002136Sanchez-Iborra, R., & Cano, M.-D. (2014). An approach to a cross layer-based QoE improvement for MANET routing protocols. Network Protocols and Algorithms, 6(3), 18. doi:10.5296/npa.v6i3.5827Cho, J.-H., Swami, A., & Chen, I.-R. (2011). A Survey on Trust Management for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 13(4), 562-583. doi:10.1109/surv.2011.092110.0008

Intelligent detection of black hole attacks for secure communication in autonomous and connected vehicles

Detection of Black Hole attacks is one of the most challenging and critical routing security issues in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) and autonomous and connected vehicles (ACVs). Malicious vehicles or nodes may exist in the cyber-physical path on which the data and control packets have to be routed converting a secure and reliable route into a compromised one. However, instead of passing packets to a neighbouring node, malicious nodes bypass them and drop any data packets that could contain emergency alarms. We introduce an intelligent black hole attack detection scheme (IDBA) tailored to ACV. We consider four key parameters in the design of the scheme, namely, Hop Count, Destination Sequence Number, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), and End-to-End delay (E2E). We tested the performance of our IDBA against AODV with Black Hole (BAODV), Intrusion Detection System (IdsAODV), and EAODV algorithms. Extensive simulation results show that our IDBA outperforms existing approaches in terms of PDR, E2E, Routing Overhead, Packet Loss Rate, and Throughput

Patients’ Satisfaction About Health Care Services in Outpatient Department of General Surgery at PIMS, Islamabad

Objective: To assess the Patients’ satisfaction about health care services in the outpatient department of General Surgery at PIMS, Islamabad. Methodology: This is a prospective cross sectional study done for six months at General Surgery OPD, PIMS, Islamabad. All patients who attended the outpatient department of GSU-III were included. After consent patients answered a specially designed 30-item cross-sectional questionnaire regarding general convenience and satisfaction aspects regarding the OPD. Questions depicting the interpersonal relationships and the role of Doctors and the paramedic staff at the hospital are also included. All data was collected, recorded and analyzed using SPSS 17 and excel 2013. Results: A total of 410 patients were included with the mean age of 41 years and male to female ratio was≈ 1:3. 57.4% patients had completed their secondary or higher secondary education. 12.1% were labourers, 19.5% were students, 19.5% were unemployed and 34.1% were housewives. Most of the population was already registered at the general surgery department PIMS. Response to various questions regarding general convenience and satisfaction aspects regarding the OPD were averagely rated ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ by 96.3% patients, while 14.6% had their reservations. Answers depicting the interpersonal relationships and the role of Doctors and the paramedic staff at the hospital were appreciable in 71.95% and 64.6% of the cases respectively. 16.2% and 19.5% negated respectively. Interviews from all patients were taken into account in data analysis and conclusion. In sum, the patient’s satisfaction (58.5%) with the overall care (62.1%) were satisfactory. 59.7% patients wished to recommend this service to others. Conclusion: Most of the patients who visited the Outpatient department of General Surgery Unit III were satisfied regarding the overall care and the behavior of doctors and paramedical staff interacting with them

Performance Analysis of Blockchain-Enabled Security and Privacy Algorithms in Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: A Comprehensive Review

Strategic investment(s) in vehicle automation technologies led to the rapid development of technology that revolutionised transport services and reduced fatalities on a scale never seen before. Technological advancements and their integration in Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) increased uptake and adoption and pushed firmly for the development of highly supportive legal and regulatory and testing environments. However, systemic threats to the security and privacy of technologies and lack of data transparency have created a dynamic threat landscape within which the establishment and verification of security and privacy requirements proved to be an arduous task. In CAVs security and privacy issues can affect the resilience of these systems and hinder the safety of the passengers. Existing research efforts have been placed to investigate the security issues in CAVs and propose solutions across the whole spectrum of cyber resilience. This paper examines the state-of-the-art in security and privacy solutions for CAVs. It investigates their integration challenges, drawbacks and efficiencies when coupled with distributed technologies such as Blockchain. It has also listed different cyber-attacks being investigated while designing security and privacy mechanism for CAVs

Multi-agent based framework for secure and reliable communication among open clouds

Cloud Computing (CC) is an emerging field of Information Technology. CC environment completely relies on the perception of utility, service-oriented, cluster and grid computing. The idea of virtualization discriminates CC from other fields. CC environment provides better, reliable, and scalable services. Since clouds are working independently smooth, but standalone, cloud operation is complex. Therefore the need of interoperability and portability with other clouds come into play which increases the scope of the cloud environment. Then, the security threats are increased in the cloud environments. In order to address the problem, a Secure Multi-Agent based framework for Communication among Open Clouds is proposed in this paper. In the framework, each cloud has a secure Mobile Agent which is responsible of the secure communication among clouds. Thus, authentication of Mobile Agents is performed by the Directory Agent. Directory agents are included in order to avoid the joining malicious or attacker mobile agents into the cloud. The theoretical and practical results show that Multi-agent based framework is more reliable and secure than other cloud environments.Mehmood, A.; Song, H.; Lloret, J. (2014). Multi-agent based framework for secure and reliable communication among open clouds. Network Protocols and Algorithms. 6(4):60-76. doi:10.5296/npa.v6i4.6028S60766