On the optimization of power assignment to support multicast applications in HAP-based systems

The goal of this research work is to investigate how efficient High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) can be in supporting Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) in scenarios in which the terrestrial coverage is not available. Specifically, we propose to implement an effective Radio Resources Management (RRM) policy into the HAP Radio Network Controller (H-RNC), whose main aim is to increase the overall system capacity. The proposed technique achieves its goal by dynamically selecting the most efficient multicast transport channel in terms of power consumption, chosen amongst Dedicated Channel (DCH), Forward Access Channel (FACH), and High Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH). Advantages deriving from the joint use of channels belonging to different categories are exploited. Results achieved when using the proposed RRM are quite manifest and witnesses to the necessity of providing such a feature when deploying integrated HAP/Terrestrial platforms supporting MBMS services.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

On the impact of the user terminal velocity on HSPA performance in MBMS multicast mode

Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services (MBMS), introduced in Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), have the aim to allow transmissions from a single source entity to multiple destinations. From the radio perspective, MBMS foresees both pointto- point (PtP) and point-to-multipoint (PtM) transmission mode, supported by Dedicated, Common, and Shared channels. The High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), analyzed in this paper, can guarantee a higher data rate through the introduction of High Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH), thus improving the performance of MBMS transmissions. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of the User Equipment (UE) speed on the maximum number of users that the HS-DSCH can support for MBMS applications. In particular, two different mobility profiles are taken into account (Pedestrian and Vehicular) and the obtained results are validated by considering different transmission power levels, cell coverage sizes and bit rates.Postprint (published version

Age of Information in Multi-hop Networks with Priorities

Age of Information is a new metric used in real-time status update tracking applications. It measures at the destination the time elapsed since the generation of the last received packet. In this paper, we consider the co-existence of critical and noncritical status updates in a two-hop system, for which the network assigns different scheduling priorities. Specifically, the high priority is reserved to the packets that traverse the two nodes, as they experience worse latency performance. We obtain the distribution of the age and its natural upper bound termed peak age. We provide tight upper and lower bounds for priority updates and the exact expressions for the non-critical flow of packets with a general service distribution. The results give fundamental insights for the design of age-sensitive multi-hop systems.Comment: Submitted for publication to IEEE Globecom Conferenc

Placement of Social Digital Twins at the Edge for Beyond 5G IoT Networks

As the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond (5G+/6G) networks move forward, and a wide variety of new advanced Internet of Things (IoT) applications are offered, effective methodologies for discovering time-relevant information, services, and resources are being demanded. To this end, computing-, storage-, and battery-constrained IoT devices are progressively augmented via digital twins (DTs) hosted on edge servers. According to recent research results, a further feature these devices may acquire is social behavior; this latter offers enormous possibilities for fast and trustworthy service discovery, although it requires new orchestration policies of DTs at the network edge. This work addresses the dynamic placement of DTs with social capabilities [social digital twins (SDTs)] at the edge, by providing an optimal solution under IoT device mobility and by accounting for edge network deployment specifics, types of devices, and their social peculiarities. The optimization problem is formulated as a particular case of the quadratic assignment problem (QAP); also, an approximation algorithm is proposed and two relaxation techniques are applied to reduce computation complexity. Results show that the proposed placement policy ensures a latency among SDTs up to 1.4 times lower than the one obtainable with a traditional proximity-based only placement while still guaranteeing appropriate proximity between physical devices and their virtual counterparts. Moreover, the proposed heuristic closely approximates the optimal solution while guaranteeing the lowest computational time

Fog Computing in IoT Smart Environments via Named Data Networking: A Study on Service Orchestration Mechanisms

[EN] By offering low-latency and context-aware services, fog computing will have a peculiar role in the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications for smart environments. Unlike the conventional remote cloud, for which consolidated architectures and deployment options exist, many design and implementation aspects remain open when considering the latest fog computing paradigm. In this paper, we focus on the problems of dynamically discovering the processing and storage resources distributed among fog nodes and, accordingly, orchestrating them for the provisioning of IoT services for smart environments. In particular, we show how these functionalities can be effectively supported by the revolutionary Named Data Networking (NDN) paradigm. Originally conceived to support named content delivery, NDN can be extended to request and provide named computation services, with NDN nodes acting as both content routers and in-network service executors. To substantiate our analysis, we present an NDN fog computing framework with focus on a smart campus scenario, where the execution of IoT services is dynamically orchestrated and performed by NDN nodes in a distributed fashion. A simulation campaign in ndnSIM, the reference network simulator of the NDN research community, is also presented to assess the performance of our proposal against state-of-the-art solutions. Results confirm the superiority of the proposal in terms of service provisioning time, paid at the expenses of a slightly higher amount of traffic exchanged among fog nodes.This research was partially funded by the Italian Government under grant PON ARS01_00836 for the COGITO (A COGnItive dynamic sysTem to allOw buildings to learn and adapt) PON Project.Amadeo, M.; Ruggeri, G.; Campolo, C.; Molinaro, A.; Loscri, V.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM. (2019). Fog Computing in IoT Smart Environments via Named Data Networking: A Study on Service Orchestration Mechanisms. Future Internet. 11(11):1-21. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi11110222S1211111Lee, I., & Lee, K. (2015). The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), 431-440. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2015.03.008Cicirelli, F., Guerrieri, A., Spezzano, G., Vinci, A., Briante, O., Iera, A., & Ruggeri, G. (2018). Edge Computing and Social Internet of Things for Large-Scale Smart Environments Development. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 5(4), 2557-2571. doi:10.1109/jiot.2017.2775739Chiang, M., & Zhang, T. (2016). Fog and IoT: An Overview of Research Opportunities. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 3(6), 854-864. doi:10.1109/jiot.2016.2584538Openfog Consortiumhttp://www.openfogconsortium.org/Zhang, L., Afanasyev, A., Burke, J., Jacobson, V., claffy, kc, Crowley, P., … Zhang, B. (2014). Named data networking. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 44(3), 66-73. doi:10.1145/2656877.2656887Amadeo, M., Ruggeri, G., Campolo, C., & Molinaro, A. (2019). IoT Services Allocation at the Edge via Named Data Networking: From Optimal Bounds to Practical Design. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 16(2), 661-674. doi:10.1109/tnsm.2019.2900274ndnSIM 2.0: A New Version of the NDN Simulator for NS-3https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Spyridon_Mastorakis/publication/281652451_ndnSIM_20_A_new_version_of_the_NDN_simulator_for_NS-3/links/5b196020a6fdcca67b63660d/ndnSIM-20-A-new-version-of-the-NDN-simulator-for-NS-3.pdfAhlgren, B., Dannewitz, C., Imbrenda, C., Kutscher, D., & Ohlman, B. (2012). A survey of information-centric networking. IEEE Communications Magazine, 50(7), 26-36. doi:10.1109/mcom.2012.6231276NFD Developer’s Guidehttps://named-data.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ndn-0021-diff-5..6-nfd-developer-guide.pdfPiro, G., Amadeo, M., Boggia, G., Campolo, C., Grieco, L. A., Molinaro, A., & Ruggeri, G. (2019). Gazing into the Crystal Ball: When the Future Internet Meets the Mobile Clouds. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 7(1), 210-223. doi:10.1109/tcc.2016.2573307Zhang, G., Li, Y., & Lin, T. (2013). Caching in information centric networking: A survey. Computer Networks, 57(16), 3128-3141. doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2013.07.007Yi, C., Afanasyev, A., Moiseenko, I., Wang, L., Zhang, B., & Zhang, L. (2013). A case for stateful forwarding plane. Computer Communications, 36(7), 779-791. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2013.01.005Amadeo, M., Briante, O., Campolo, C., Molinaro, A., & Ruggeri, G. (2016). Information-centric networking for M2M communications: Design and deployment. Computer Communications, 89-90, 105-116. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2016.03.009Tourani, R., Misra, S., Mick, T., & Panwar, G. (2018). Security, Privacy, and Access Control in Information-Centric Networking: A Survey. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 20(1), 566-600. doi:10.1109/comst.2017.2749508Ndn-ace: Access Control for Constrained Environments over Named Data Networkinghttp://new.named-data.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ndn-0036-1-ndn-ace.pdfZhang, Z., Yu, Y., Zhang, H., Newberry, E., Mastorakis, S., Li, Y., … Zhang, L. (2018). An Overview of Security Support in Named Data Networking. IEEE Communications Magazine, 56(11), 62-68. doi:10.1109/mcom.2018.1701147Cisco White Paperhttps://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/solutions/trends/iot/docs/computing-overview.pdfAazam, M., Zeadally, S., & Harras, K. A. (2018). Deploying Fog Computing in Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 14(10), 4674-4682. doi:10.1109/tii.2018.2855198Hou, X., Li, Y., Chen, M., Wu, D., Jin, D., & Chen, S. (2016). Vehicular Fog Computing: A Viewpoint of Vehicles as the Infrastructures. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 65(6), 3860-3873. doi:10.1109/tvt.2016.2532863Yousefpour, A., Fung, C., Nguyen, T., Kadiyala, K., Jalali, F., Niakanlahiji, A., … Jue, J. P. (2019). All one needs to know about fog computing and related edge computing paradigms: A complete survey. Journal of Systems Architecture, 98, 289-330. doi:10.1016/j.sysarc.2019.02.009Baktir, A. C., Ozgovde, A., & Ersoy, C. (2017). How Can Edge Computing Benefit From Software-Defined Networking: A Survey, Use Cases, and Future Directions. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 19(4), 2359-2391. doi:10.1109/comst.2017.2717482Duan, Q., Yan, Y., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2012). A Survey on Service-Oriented Network Virtualization Toward Convergence of Networking and Cloud Computing. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 9(4), 373-392. doi:10.1109/tnsm.2012.113012.120310Amadeo, M., Campolo, C., & Molinaro, A. (2016). NDNe: Enhancing Named Data Networking to Support Cloudification at the Edge. IEEE Communications Letters, 20(11), 2264-2267. doi:10.1109/lcomm.2016.2597850Krol, M., Marxer, C., Grewe, D., Psaras, I., & Tschudin, C. (2018). Open Security Issues for Edge Named Function Environments. IEEE Communications Magazine, 56(11), 69-75. doi:10.1109/mcom.2018.170111711801-2:2017 Information Technology—Generic Cabling for Customer Premiseshttps://www.iso.org/standard/66183.htm

Pro-Inflammatory and Immunological Profile of Dogs with Myxomatous Mitral Valve Disease

Simple Summary Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) is the most commonly acquired cardiac disease in dogs and is responsible for congestive heart failure. In this research, some inflammatory, immunological, and echocardiographic parameters were evaluated in dogs affected by MMVD in order to assess the involvement of additional pathophysiological mechanisms during the disease. The main results revealed that inflammation parameters increased according to the severity of the disease and suggested that inflammatory activation may play an important role in cardiac remodeling associated with the progressive volumetric overload in MMVD. Also, a relative increase in Treg cells was detected, suggesting that they could represent a regulatory mechanism for limiting the inflammatory immune response. Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) is a very frequently acquired cardiac disease in dog breeds and is responsible for congestive heart failure (CHF). The involvement of the immune system and pro-inflammatory cytokines in dogs with CHF due to mitral valve disease has not yet been extensively investigated. Here, we investigate the role of pro-inflammatory cytokines and the dysfunction of the immune system in dogs with different stages of severity through the blood assessment of CD4(+)FoxP3(+)regulatory T cells (Treg) cells, leptin, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, interleukin (IL)-1 beta and IL-6 pro-inflammatory cytokines, and immunological and echocardiographic parameters. A total of 36 cardiopathic dogs, 14 females and 22 males, with MMVD were included. Mean age and body weight (BW) at the time of enrollment were 10.7 +/- 2.77 years and 10.9 +/- 6.69 kg, respectively. For the comparison of the pro-inflammatory and immunological parameters, two groups of healthy dogs were also established. Control group 1 consisted of young animals (n. 11; 6 females and 5 males), whose age and mean weight were 4.1 +/- 0.82 years and 13.8 +/- 4.30 kg, respectively. Control group 2 consisted of elderly dogs (n. 12; 6 females and 6 males), whose age and BW were 9.6 +/- 0.98 years and 14.8 +/- 6.15 kg, respectively. Of particular interest, an increase in Treg cells was observed in the cohort of MMVD dogs, as compared to the healthy dogs, as Treg cells are involved in the maintenance of peripheral tolerance, and they are involved in etiopathogenetic and pathophysiological mechanisms in the dog. On the other hand, TNF-alpha, IL-1 beta, and IL-6 significantly increased according to the severity of the disease in MMVD dogs. Furthermore, the positive correlation between IL-6 and the left ventricle diastolic volume suggests that inflammatory activation may be involved in cardiac remodeling associated with the progressive volumetric overload in MMVD

Multiseptate gallbladder in a child

Multiseptate gallbladder (MSG) is a rare congenital anomaly. MSG may be accompanied with other abnormalities of the biliary tree. MSG can be asymptomatic and most cases are detected incidentally. Nevertheless, some patients present with biliary pain or colicky abdominal pain due to biliary stasis and calculi. We report a case of MSG in a girl who presented with recurrent abdominal pain and normal laboratory work-up recovered after laparoscopic cholecystectomy. A pediatric literature review of this rare anomaly is also performed

Flow Diversion for Acutely Ruptured Intracranial Aneurysms Treatment: A Retrospective Study and Literature Review

Objective: Flow diversion is becoming an increasingly established practice for the treatment of acutely ruptured intracranial aneurysms. In this study the authors present a literature review and meta-analysis, adding a retrospective review of institutional registry on emergency treatment of aRIA with flow diverter stent. Materials and methods: A systematic search of PubMed, SCOPUS, Ovid MEDLINE, and Ovid EMBASE was performed on April 20th, 2021, extrapolating 35 articles. R language 'meta' and 'metafor' packages were used for data pooling. The DerSimonian-Laird model was used to calculate the pooled effect. The I2 value and Q statistic evaluated study heterogeneity. Additionally, the authors retrospectively reviewed their institutional database for the treatment and outcomes of all patients with acutely ruptured intracranial aneurysms treated with flow diverter stent placement from May 2010 to November 2020 was performed. Results: From the systematic literature review and meta-analysis, the pooled proportion of complete aneurysm occlusion was 78%, with a pooled rate of 79%, 71%, 80%, and 50% for dissecting, saccular, fusiform, and mycotic aneurysms, respectively. The pooled proportion of aneurysm rebleeding and intrastent stenosis was 12% and 15% respectively, for a total of 27% rate. The analysis of authors retrospective register showed an overall mortality rate of 16.7% (3/18), with a low but not negligible post procedural rebleeding and intrastent thrombosis rates (5.6% and 11.1% respectively). Conclusion: Although increasingly utilized in the management of selected patients with acutely ruptured intracranial aneurysms, flow diversion for acutely ruptured intracranial aneurysms treatment presents rebleeding and intrastent stenosis rates not negligible