An Efficient Distributed Group Key Management Using Hierarchical Approach with ECDH and Symmetric Algorithm

Ensuring secure communication in an ad hoc network is extremely challenging because of the dynamic nature of the network and the lack of centralized management. For this reason, key management is particularly difficult to implement in such networks. Secure group communication is an increasingly popular research area having received much attention in recent years. Group key management is a fundamental building block for secure group communication systems. We will present an efficient many-to-many group key management protocol in distributed group communication. In this protocol, group members are managed in the hierarchical manner logically. Two kinds of keys are used, asymmetric and symmetric keys. The leaf nodes in the key tree are the asymmetric keys of the corresponding group members and all the intermediate node keys are symmetric keys assigned to each intermediate node. For asymmetric key, a more efficient key agreement will be introduced. To calculate intermediate node keys, members use codes assigned to each intermediate node key tree. Group members calculate intermediate node keys rather than distributed by a sponsor member. The features of this approach are that, no keys are exchanged between existing members at join, and only one key, the group key, is delivered to remaining members at leave. Keywords: Elliptic Curve, Distributed Group Key Management, Hierarchical Key Management, Mobile Ad-hoc network (MANET)

BEST-Blockchain-Enabled Secure and Trusted Public Emergency Services for Smart Cities Environment

[EN] In the last few years, the Internet of things (IoT) has recently gained attention in developing various smart city applications such as smart healthcare, smart supply chain, smart home, smart grid, etc. The existing literature focuses on the smart healthcare system as a public emergency service (PES) to provide timely treatment to the patient. However, little attention is given to a distributed smart fire brigade system as a PES to protect human life and properties from severe fire damage. The traditional PES are developed on a centralised system, which requires high computation and does not ensure timely service fulfilment. Furthermore, these traditional PESs suffer from a lack of trust, transparency, data integrity, and a single point of failure issue. In this context, this paper proposes a Blockchain-Enabled Secure and Trusted (BEST) framework for PES in the smart city environment. The BEST framework focuses on providing a fire brigade service as a PES to the smart home based on IoT device information to protect it from serious fire damage. Further, we used two edge computing servers, an IoT controller and a service controller. The IoT and service controller are used for local storage and to enhance the data processing speed of PES requests and PES fulfilments, respectively. The IoT controller manages an access control list to keep track of registered IoT gateways and their IoT devices, avoiding misguiding the PES department. The service controller utilised the queue model to handle the PES requests based on the minimum service queue length. Further, various smart contracts are designed on the Hyperledger Fabric platform to automatically call a PES either in the presence or absence of the smart-home owner under uncertain environmental conditions. The performance evaluation of the proposed BEST framework indicates the benefits of utilising the distributed environment and the smart contract logic. The various simulation results are evaluated in terms of service queue length, utilisation, actual arrival time, expected arrival time, number of PES departments, number of PES providers, and end-to-end delay. These simulation results show the effectiveness and feasibility of the BEST framework.This research is Funded by the B11 unit of assessment, Centre for Computing and Informatics Research Centre, Department of Computer Science, Nottingham Trent University, UK. This work is supported by the SC&SS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.Bhawana; Kumar, S.; Rathore, RS.; Mahmud, M.; Kaiwartya, O.; Lloret, J. (2022). BEST-Blockchain-Enabled Secure and Trusted Public Emergency Services for Smart Cities Environment. Sensors. 22(15). https://doi.org/10.3390/s22155733221

Modified Echo State Network-enabled Dynamic Duty Cycle for Optimal Opportunistic Routing in EH-WSNs

Minimizing energy consumption is one of the major challenges in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to the limited size of batteries and the resource constrained tiny sensor nodes. Energy harvesting in wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs) is one of the promising solutions to minimize the energy consumption in wireless sensor networks for prolonging the overall network lifetime. However, static energy harvesting in individual sensor nodes is normally limited and unbalanced among the network nodes. In this context, this paper proposes a modified echo state network (MESN) based dynamic duty cycle with optimal opportunistic routing (OOR) for EH-WSNs. The proposed model is used to act as a predictor for finding the expected energy consumption of the next slot in dynamic duty cycle. The model has adapted a whale optimization algorithm (WOA) for optimally selecting the weights of the neurons in the reservoir layer of the echo state network towards minimizing energy consumption at each node as well as at the network level. The adapted WOA enabled energy harvesting model provides stable output from the MESN relying on optimal weight selection in the reservoir layer. The dynamic duty cycle is updated based on energy consumption and optimal threshold energy for transmission and reception at bit level. The proposed OOR scheme uses multiple energy centric parameters for selecting the relay set oriented forwarding paths for each neighbor nodes. The performance analysis of the proposed model in realistic environments attests the benefits in terms of energy centric metrics such as energy consumption, network lifetime, delay, packet delivery ratio and throughput as compared to the state-of-the-art-techniques

W-GUN: Whale Optimization for Energy and Delay centric Green Underwater Networks

Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs) has witnessed significant R&D attention in both academia and industries due to its growing application domain such as border security, freight via sea or river, natural petroleum production, etc. Considering the deep underwater oriented access constraints, energy centric communication for lifetime maximization of tiny sensor nodes in UWSNs is one of the key research themes in this domain. Existing literature on green UWSNs are majorly adapted from the existing techniques in traditional wireless sensor network without giving much attention to the realistic impact of underwater network environments resulting in degraded performance. Towards this end, this paper presents an adapted whale optimization algorithm-based energy and delay centric green UWSNs framework (W-GUN). It focuses on exploiting dynamic underwater network characteristics by effectively utilizing underwater whale centric optimization in relay node selection. Firstly, an underwater relay- node optimization model is mathematically derived focusing on whale and wolf optimization algorithms for incorporating realistic underwater characteristics. Secondly, the optimization model is used to develop an adapted whale and grey wolf optimization algorithm. Thirdly, a complete work-flow of the W-GUN framework is presented with the optimization flowchart. The comparative performance evaluation attests the benefits of the proposed framework as compared to the state-of-the-art techniques considering various metrics related to underwater network environments

CLOUD COMPUTING: SECURITY ISSUES AND SECURITY MEASURES

ABSTRAC

Trust-Aware Routing Mechanism through an Edge Node for IoT-Enabled Sensor Networks

Although IoT technology is advanced, wireless systems are prone to faults and attacks. The replaying information about routing in the case of multi-hop routing has led to the problem of identity deception among nodes. The devastating attacks against the routing protocols as well as harsh network conditions make the situation even worse. Although most of the research in the literature aim at making the IoT system more trustworthy and ensuring faultlessness, it is still a challenging task. Motivated by this, the present proposal introduces a trust-aware routing mechanism (TARM), which uses an edge node with mobility feature that can collect data from faultless nodes. The edge node works based on a trust evaluation method, which segregates the faulty and anomalous nodes from normal nodes. In TARM, a modified gray wolf optimization (GWO) is used for forming the clusters out of the deployed sensor nodes. Once the clusters are formed, each cluster’s trust values are calculated, and the edge node starts collecting data only from trustworthy nodes via the respective cluster heads. The artificial bee colony optimization algorithm executes the optimal routing path from the trustworthy nodes to the mobile edge node. The simulations show that the proposed method exhibits around a 58% hike in trustworthiness, ensuring the high security offered by the proposed trust evaluation scheme when validated with other similar approaches. It also shows a detection rate of 96.7% in detecting untrustworthy nodes. Additionally, the accuracy of the proposed method reaches 91.96%, which is recorded to be the highest among the similar latest schemes. The performance of the proposed approach has proved that it has overcome many weaknesses of previous similar techniques with low cost and mitigated complexity

A novel strategy towards efficient and reliable electric vehicle charging for the realisation of a true sustainable transportation landscape

Abstract This paper proposes an innovative approach for improving the charging efficiency of electric vehicles (EVs) by combining photovoltaic (PV) systems with AC–DC Power Factor Correction (PFC). The proposed approach employs bi-directional power flow management within the PFC system, allowing for enhanced resource utilization and EV battery capacity under a variety of environmental circumstances. A modified Lyapunov-based robust model reference adaptive controller (M-LRMRAC) is developed to provide real-time Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) for the PV array. By quickly recording the MPP, this controller skilfully adjusts to shifting radiation and temperature dynamics. A noteworthy accomplishment is that the M-LRMRAC outperforms traditional Perturb and Observe (P&O) techniques by achieving quick MPP convergence (0.54 s). Additionally, the benefits of this integrated system go beyond effective MPPT. The method achieves operating at unity power factor and reduces total harmonic distortion, which results in improved power quality when charging EV Batteries (EVB). The entire solution provided by this multifaceted architecture improves the quality of electricity delivered to EV batteries while also increasing energy efficiency. This research helps to the evolution of sustainable and dependable EV charging infrastructure by solving difficulties and optimising performance. The combination of PV systems with AC–DC PFC, aided by the M-LRMRAC technology, presents a viable route for attaining efficient, clean, and high-quality EV charging, hence supporting the shift to a greener and more sustainable transportation landscape