Dependable Information Exchange for the Next Generation Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems

Mobile cyber-physical systems (M-CPSs) are envisaged as an integral part of our digital future. Dependability of M-CPSs is subject to timely, reliable, and secure information exchange among M-CPS entities. Information exchange provisioning in such systems is conventionally built with sole reliance on wireless connectivity. The conventional approaches, however, fail to efficiently exploit dynamism and heterogeneity, and to incorporate computing/cooperation as alternative system-wide tools for information exchange. To address these issues, we approach M-CPSs dependability from the information exchange perspective and define dependable-exchange-of-information (DeX) indicating collective M-CPS capability of information exchange provisioning. We then propose a cloud-based architecture for DeX provisioning as a service to facilitate versatile development of dependable M-CPSs

Task-oriented and Semantics-aware Communication Framework for Augmented Reality

Upon the advent of the emerging metaverse and its related applications in Augmented Reality (AR), the current bit-oriented network struggles to support real-time changes for the vast amount of associated information, hindering its development. Thus, a critical revolution in the Sixth Generation (6G) networks is envisioned through the joint exploitation of information context and its importance to the task, leading to a communication paradigm shift towards semantic and effectiveness levels. However, current research has not yet proposed any explicit and systematic communication framework for AR applications that incorporate these two levels. To fill this research gap, this paper presents a task-oriented and semantics-aware communication framework for augmented reality (TSAR) to enhance communication efficiency and effectiveness in 6G. Specifically, we first analyse the traditional wireless AR point cloud communication framework and then summarize our proposed semantic information along with the end-to-end wireless communication. We then detail the design blocks of the TSAR framework, covering both semantic and effectiveness levels. Finally, numerous experiments have been conducted to demonstrate that, compared to the traditional point cloud communication framework, our proposed TSAR significantly reduces wireless AR application transmission latency by 95.6%, while improving communication effectiveness in geometry and color aspects by up to 82.4% and 20.4%, respectively

CRB-RPL: A Receiver-based Routing Protocol for Communications in Cognitive Radio Enabled Smart Grid

As a tool of overcoming radio spectrum shortages in wireless communications, cognitive radio technology plays a vital role in future smart grid applications, particularly in Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) networks with Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. This paper focuses on the investigation of the receiver-based routing protocol for enhancing QoS in cognitive radio-enabled AMI networks, due to their potentials of enhancing reliability and routing efficiency. In accordance with practical requirements of smart grid applications, a new routing protocol with two purposes is proposed: one is to address the realtime requirement while another protocol focuses on how to meet energy efficiency requirements. As a special feature of cognitive radio technology, the protocol have the mechanism of protecting primary (licensed) users whilst meeting the utility requirements of secondary (cognitive radio) users. System-level evaluation shows that the proposed routing protocol can achieve better performances compared with existing routing protocols for cognitive radio-enabled AMI networks

Full-Duplex MIMO Small-Cells: Secrecy Capacity Analysis

This paper studies the physical (PHY)-layer security performance in full-duplex (FD) multiple- input multiple-output (MIMO) small-cell networks. Here, we take into account (i) residual self- interference (SI) over Rician fading channels, and (ii) mutual-interference (MI) under successive interference cancellation (SIC) mechanism. Considering linear zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming, the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) average secrecy rates under both scenarios of passive and colluding eavesdropping are derived. Our findings indicate that the FD functionality can provide substantial improvements in the PHY-layer security performance, especially with the aid of MIMO communications and interference cancellation solutions