Access Control Layer Research Articles

An enhanced adaptive duty cycle scheme for energy efficiency and QoS awareness in wireless sensor networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a small device that has batteries and radios to connect to the internet. The main problem with WSNs is a limited energy source, energy studies needed to ensure that these sensor nodes can last longer, especially since a lot of energy is wasted during idle listening, overhearing, and data collision that occurs at the medium access control (MAC) layer. The common mechanism used for saving energy in WSN, specifically at the MAC layer is the duty cycle schedule. Duty cycling coordinates sleep-wake time sensor nodes to maximize network lifetime while achieving specific application goals such as high throughput or low latency. Duty cycling of every node should be adjusted separately at any runtime depending on the network conditions to achieve desired delay guarantees and energy efficiency. Recently, a few adaptive duty cycle schemes were introduced, these schemes have reduced energy consumption by some degree, this leaves an open end to the degradation of the quality of service. In this study, adaptive duty cycles enhanced with a priority queue where packet size is the parameter to adjust the duty cycle in order to get efficient energy consumption. A variant of packet size tested to ensure optimum quality of services (QoS). These factors determine the duration of a node’s listen period for various packet transmission scenarios and requirements. As the result, the proposed Enhanced S-MAC (ESMAC) shows an improvement in the energy consumption and QoS compared to the default MAC protocol and S-MAC protocol. The success of this project will contribute to the performance improvement of sensing devices.

Scenario-Based Configuration Refinement for High-Load Cellular Networks: An Operator View

With the rapid growth of users and sustained network demands powered by different industries, the quality of service (QoS) of the cellular network is affected by network traffic and computing loads. The current solutions of QoS improvement in academia focus on the fundamental algorithms within the physical and medium access control (MAC) layer. However, traffic features of various scenarios extracted from field data are rarely addressed for practical network configuration refinement. In this paper, we identify significant indicators of high traffic load cells according to the field data provided by telecommunication operators. Then, we propose the analysis flow of high traffic load cells with basic principles of network configuration refinement for QoS improvement. To demonstrate the proposed analysis flow and the refinement principles, we consider three typical scenarios of high traffic load cells, including high population density, emergency, and high-speed mobility. For each scenario, we discuss traffic features with field data. The corresponding performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed principle can significantly enhance the network performance and user experience in terms of access success rate, downlink data rate, and number of high traffic load cells.

Performances prediction in Wireless Sensor Networks: A survey on Deep learning based-approaches

The dynamism and successive changes in the distribution of nodes are among the important characteristics of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To adapt with those changes, network designers frequently have to configure multiple parameters for each layer on WSN architecture (i.e physical, medium access control, network, and application layer). This tuning has an important impact on the network performances (e.g packet loss, energy efficiency, throughput, network lifetime, etc). However, finding the optimal configuration is the main challenge. Deep learning (DL) based on neural network layers can be used to extract patterns from high-dimensional data provided by sensor nodes. In this paper, we survey the most recent DL approaches which aim to predict WSN performances by finding the pattern on the network parameters (such as transmission power level, MAC protocol type, spectrum availability, congestion points, etc.). Moreover, we classify the studied articles by considering the targeted network layer or cross-layer. This paper can be considered as a starting point for researchers to review the recent DL applications on the optimization of WSNs performances based on multiple network parameters.

A Zigbee Based Framework for Low Power Voice Communication System

IEEE standard 802.15.4 defines two layers for low rate WPANs, which are physical layer and media access control layer, which restrict the data rate to 250 kbps. This alliance took low level PHY and MAC layers as the base for the development of the network protocol, security and application for the Zigbee. To solve the Problem of reduce cost and power consumption to make this technology easily available for common crowd. This system shows the total working details of the network, i.e., wireless voice communication. This work has been done to reduce the cost of entire production of such devices that contributes in home automation system and similar projects. The main objective of the research was to transfer voice over low-power micro-controller such as 8-bit micro-controller by the implementation of Zigbee.

Big Data Warehouse for Healthcare-Sensitive Data Applications.

Obesity is a major public health problem worldwide, and the prevalence of childhood obesity is of particular concern. Effective interventions for preventing and treating childhood obesity aim to change behaviour and exposure at the individual, community, and societal levels. However, monitoring and evaluating such changes is very challenging. The EU Horizon 2020 project “Big Data against Childhood Obesity (BigO)” aims at gathering large-scale data from a large number of children using different sensor technologies to create comprehensive obesity prevalence models for data-driven predictions about specific policies on a community. It further provides real-time monitoring of the population responses, supported by meaningful real-time data analysis and visualisations. Since BigO involves monitoring and storing of personal data related to the behaviours of a potentially vulnerable population, the data representation, security, and access control are crucial. In this paper, we briefly present the BigO system architecture and focus on the necessary components of the system that deals with data access control, storage, anonymisation, and the corresponding interfaces with the rest of the system. We propose a three-layered data warehouse architecture: The back-end layer consists of a database management system for data collection, de-identification, and anonymisation of the original datasets. The role-based permissions and secured views are implemented in the access control layer. Lastly, the controller layer regulates the data access protocols for any data access and data analysis. We further present the data representation methods and the storage models considering the privacy and security mechanisms. The data privacy and security plans are devised based on the types of collected personal, the types of users, data storage, data transmission, and data analysis. We discuss in detail the challenges of privacy protection in this large distributed data-driven application and implement novel privacy-aware data analysis protocols to ensure that the proposed models guarantee the privacy and security of datasets. Finally, we present the BigO system architecture and its implementation that integrates privacy-aware protocols.

Toward an Advanced Human Monitoring System Based on a Smart Body Area Network for Industry Use

This research provides a study on a smart body area network (SmartBAN) physical layer (PHY), as an of the Internet of medical things (IoMT) technology, for an advanced human monitoring system in industrial use. The SmartBAN provides a new PHY and a medium access control (MAC) layer, improving its performance and providing very low-latency emergency information transmission with low energy consumption compared with other wireless body area network (WBAN) standards. On the other hand, IoMT applications are expected to become more advanced with smarter wearable devices, such as augmented reality-based human monitoring and work support in a factory. Therefore, it is possible to develop more advanced human monitoring systems for industrial use by combining the SmartBAN with multimedia devices. However, the SmartBAN PHY is not designed to transmit multimedia information such as audio and video. To address this issue, multilevel phase shift keying (PSK) modulation is applied to the SmartBAN PHY, and the symbol rate is improved by setting the roll-off rate appropriately to realize the system. The numerical results show that a sufficient link budget, receiver sensitivity and fade margin were obtained even when those approaches were applied to the SmartBAN PHY. The results indicate that these techniques are required for high-quality audio or video transmission, as well as vital sign data transmission, in a SmartBAN.

Super-MAC: Data Duplication and Combining for Reliability Enhancements in Next-Generation Networks

A piece of user equipment (UE), typically, has access to multiple radio access technologies (RATS). Moreover, apart from the standard primary cellular network, the secondary cellular networks can assist the primary network in downlink UE communications. In this way, the data can reach the UE through multiple entities. This paper exploits the multiple entities’ idea by proposing a cross-layer scheme that combines data to improve the block error rate (BLER) and the throughput. For this, we define a new entity, called the super-MAC, just above the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer. More specifically, we propose data duplication (at the transmitter) and combining (at UE) at the super-MAC, where the super-MAC gets the Radio Link Layer protocol data unit (RLC-PDU) and sends multiple-copies across various interfaces to different MAC-entities. In doing so, the super-MAC attaches a unique sequence number to a group of RLC-PDUs together. At the UE, the data from different MAC entities are combined at super-MAC to clear any block error. The super-MAC operates in between the Cyclic Redundancy Check and Forward Error Correction stages of the HARQ process. The additional complexity introduced by the scheme is negligible in front of the existing operations. Moreover, the average latency improves due to the significant improvement in the Block Error rate (BLER) that the combining scheme offers over the BLER of the conventional standalone system. Also, since the errors significantly reduce, the throughput shows significant improvement. Finally, the proposed scheme is an advancement in HARQ to reduce retransmissions, and hence it is suitable for the next-generation networks like B5G or 6G to adopt the super-MAC.

Towards Improving TSCH Energy Efficiency: An Analytical Approach to a Practical Implementation.

The IEEE 802.15.4-2015 standard defines a number of Medium Access Control (MAC) layer protocols for low power wireless communications, which are desirable for energy-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Originally defined in the IEEE 802.15.4e amendment, the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) has recently been attracting attention from the research community due to its reduced contention (time scheduling) and robustness against fading (channel hopping). However, it requires a certain level of synchronization between the nodes, which can increase the energy consumption. In this work, we implement the Guard Beacon (GB) strategy, aiming at reducing the guard time usually implemented to compensate for imperfect synchronization. Moreover, besides presenting a realistic energy consumption model for a Contiki Operating System-based TSCH network, we show through analytical and practical results that, without the proposed scheme, the power consumption can be more than 13% higher.

CSNOMA: Carrier Sense Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access.

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of the cross-layer design of a distributed random access scheme with considering physical (PHY) and multiple access control (MAC) layers, which utilizes the interference cancellation technique. In this regard, we propose a new multiple access protocol, named carrier sense non-orthogonal multiple access (CSNOMA). We consider the spatially randomly distributed interferers to realistically capture the effect of interference. The proposed protocol shows better area spectral efficiency than carrier sense multiple access (CSMA), as the node density increases. We also present a practical signaling design compatible with IEEE 802.11 DCF mode.

CARA-OHT: Collision-Aware Rate Adaptation for Optimal High-Throughput in IEEE 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks

The wireless mesh network (WMN) is a future network technology that develops single-hop wireless local area networks (WLANs) into multi-hop wireless mesh networks, based on the IEEE 802.11s standard. However, this development still presents many challenges, such as determining the best route between sources and destinations, especially taking into account the use of the medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers of IEEE 802.11n/ac. Some papers have proposed rate adaptation algorithms particularly for single-hop networks; however, these only focused on mechanisms to find data rates suitable for channel conditions. In IEEE 802.11s WMNs, the design of the rate adaptation algorithm is more challenging. Besides considering the problem of channel quality and optimal throughput, it is necessary to also consider the problem of collision and the best route. It is important to take collision into account because the collision probability in multi-hop mesh networks is higher than that in single-hop networks and can lead to a lower throughput. Rate adaptation algorithms for IEEE 802.11s WMNs have been proposed in other papers, but they also do not consider the use of the MAC and PHY layers of IEEE 802.11n/ac. In this paper, we propose the collision-aware rate adaptation for optimal high-throughput (CARA-OHT) algorithm for WMN IEEE 802.11s. An evaluation through the extensive use of a network NS-3 simulator shows that the proposed algorithm exhibits a higher throughput than previously developed algorithms.

Block-Chain Based Incentive in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks Using Credit Coin

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are otherwise called wise transportation frameworks. VANET guarantees auspicious and exact correspondences between vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) to improve street wellbeing and upgrade the productivity of traffic stream. Because of its open remote limit and high versatility, VANET is powerless against pernicious hubs that could get entrance into the system and do genuine medium access control (MAC) layer dangers, for example, denial of service attacks, information alteration attacks, pantomime attacks, Sybil attacks, and replay attacks. With the prevalence of Block Chain comes grave security related concerns. Accomplishing security and discernibility at the same time stays an open inquiry. Endeavors have been made to address the issues, while they may expose to explicit situations. We propose a vehicular declaration convention Echo-Announcement in Credit Coin. It accomplishes productivity and protection safeguarding for the useful use in sending declarations. We plan an impetus component dependent on Block chain in Credit Coin. Clients oversee notoriety focuses while they acquire or spend coins as motivating forces. In the interim, Credit Coin despite everything jam security and accomplishes obscurity. Besides, in view of Block chain, Credit Coin forestalls numerous security attacks and accomplishes contingent protection since Trace administrator will follow malignant hubs when a startling occasion happens.

A Review on Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications (PHY and MAC Layer Perspectives)

Fifth Generation (5G) wireless network plays major attention in the communication scenario due to the advanced features in data transmission. 5G is designed to overcome the issues, such as data rate, reliability, throughput, latency and capacity in the wireless network domains. The 5G wire-less services aim to increase the data rate through massive communication services. In this survey, well known research papers based on low latency communication at the Physical layer (PHY) and Medium Access Control layer (MAC) are reviewed based on the Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) perspective. Here, the communication techniques are categorized as, structure-based model, resource reuse-based techniques, radio resource management techniques, scheduling based approach, diversity-based techniques and network slicing model based on the purpose of data communication. The issues and challenges faced by the existing research works are reviewed and discussed in the research gaps and issues section. Moreover, the analysis carried out in this survey is based on the evaluation parameter, network layer, network parameters, system, purpose and simulation toolsets. The future work of the URLLC research is based on the issues collected from the recent research papers reviewed in this study.

A Novel QoS-Aware A-MPDU Aggregation Scheduler for Unsaturated IEEE802.11n/ac WLANs

Improving the quality of service (QoS) performance to support existing and upcoming real-time applications is critical for IEEE 802.11n/ac devices. The mechanisms of the media access control (MAC) layer, including the aggregate MAC protocol data unit (A-MPDU) aggregation, greatly affect the QoS performance in wireless local area networks (WLANs). To investigate the impact of the aggregation level on the QoS performance for real-time multimedia applications, a novel end-to-end delay model for the unsaturated settings is proposed in this paper. The presented model considers the gathering procedure of packets, queuing behaviors, and transmissions using the RTS/CTS (request to send/clear to send) mechanism on error-prone channels. Based on the model, a novel QoS-aware A-MPDU aggregation scheduler for IEEE802.11n/ac WLANs was shown to obtain better QoS performance with lower latency and less packet loss, a larger capacity to hold higher data rates, and more working nodes. The validation of the proposed model and the promotion of the proposed scheduler are well benchmarked by ns-3.

A Novel Random Access Algorithm for Very High Frequency Data Exchange (VDE)

VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) is considered as an important component of the future maritime communication system by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). On the basis of the existing Automatic Identification System (AIS), VDES adds the other two higher capacity subsystems: Application Specific Message (ASM) and VHF Data Exchange (VDE). The Random Access Channel (RACH) of VDE was first introduced in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Recommendation M.2092-0. As the slot planning principle of RACH in VDE is by interval, which is significantly different from the continuous slot map for access algorithms in AIS, the existing slot access algorithms cannot meet the requirements of VDE. The simulation results show that the VDE slot map can reduce the normalized throughput of the existing algorithm by 39%. A novel random access algorithm called Adaptive Traffic Load Contention Resolution Diversity Slotted ALOHA (ATL-CRDSA) is proposed in this paper. The algorithm combines the load control strategy and contention resolution scheme to overcome the challenges of the new RACH of VDE. Simulation results show that ATL-CRDSA has remarkable improvement on RACH, making it very efficient and providing low latency of the packets. The insights gained from this study may be of assistance to the Media Access Control (MAC) layer design for upcoming versions of VDES standard.

Proposed method: mean delays synchronization protocol (MDSP) for wireless sensor networks

PurposeMany synchronization approaches are based on low-level time capturing, causing a tight integration with the Media Access Control (MAC) layer. Alternatively, this study aims to present a hybrid approach combining both receiver–receiver and sender–receiver schemes to reduce the variation of two-way message exchange durations, in heavy-load networks. To achieve network-wide synchronization, a variant of Prim’s algorithm (Cormen et al., 2009) is used to build a spanning tree, guaranteeing the minimum number of ancestors and limited error propagation. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is very competitive with a set of the most-cited synchronization protocols. In addition, a new synchronization simulator SynSim was developed using C++ languageDesign/methodology/approachTo achieve network-wide synchronization, a variant of Prim's algorithm (Cormen et al., 2009) is used to build a spanning tree, guaranteeing the minimum number of ancestors and limited error propagation.FindingsSimulation results show that the proposed approach is very competitive with a set of the most-cited synchronization protocols. In addition, a new synchronization simulator SynSim was developed using in C++ language.Research limitations/implicationsIt can be concluded from the experiments that MDSP is suitable for WSNs especially if MAC layer timestamping is not possible. So, the mean delays synchronization protocol (MSDP) is suitable to achieve time synchronization in single-hop and multi-hop networks without the MAC layer timestamping in large wireless sensor network (WSN) deployments.Practical implicationsA future enhancement of MDSP could be switching between the traditional timestamping and the new proposed timestamping based on a given threshold, which is the number of nodes in the neighborhood and the load of the network. It will be also interesting to test it in a prototype. The proposed solution can be used in practice to implement the Time-division multiple access (TDMA) protocol in a WSN. In addition, the proposed simulator can be used in a computer network synchronization protocols course.Originality/valueTo the best of authors’ knowledge, this study’s contribution is original. In addition, the authors implemented a new synchronization simulator

Towards Microscale NFC-Enabled IoT Sensors: Physical and MAC Layer Design Analysis

Microscale sensors provide critical solutions in diverse fields, ranging from measurement, automation, and control in industrial, agricultural, and biomedical applications. However, their development is limited by many requirements and challenges, such as efficient powering and the selection of suitable wireless communication technologies. A number of wireless communication technologies have been deployed in these sensors, including terahertz (Thz) radio frequency and ultrasound. Designing sensors in micro-scale imposes challenges for any communication technique deployed. This paper investigates the use of magnetic induction-based backscatter communication in a microscale sensor. The aim here is to provide both physical and media access control (MAC) layer design analysis for a microscale mote that is powered inductively and communicates with a reader using backscattering. Magnetic induction-based communication and powering are demonstrated via analysis and simulation for the mote. Then, low-power modulation, error-correction coding, and suitable low-power MAC schemes with evidence of feasible implementation in microscale are explored. Results of the performance analysis indicate that the proposed design achieves communication at a range of at least a few centimeters (5–6 cm) with an acceptable bit error rate (BER). Finally, MAC layer analysis reveals the optimum number of motes to be deployed for various read delays and transmission rates.

Scalability Validation of the Posting Access Method through UPPAAL-SMC Model-Checker

The standard IEEE 802.15.6 provides a new phys-ical layer (PHY) and medium access control sublayer (MAC) specifications that support several challenges of wireless body area networks (WBANs). The posting is the access method of the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol that is used by the hub to send data to the nodes. In this paper, we use a formal method to evaluate the posting access method under the WBANs stochastic environment. Based on the statistical model checking (SMC) toolset UPPAAL-SMC, we model and evaluate the behavior of the posting access method in terms of scalability. The evaluation results showed that according to the allocated time intervals, the energy consumption, and the throughput the scalability was validated.

Multi-level cross-layer protocol for end-to-end delay provisioning in wireless multimedia sensor networks

Rapid developments in information and communication technology in recent years have posed a significant challenge in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs). End-to-end delay and reliability are the critical issues in multimedia applications of sensor networks. In this paper we provide a new cross-layer approach for provisioning the end-to-end delay of the network at a desirable level of the packet delivery ratio (PDR), used here as a measure of network reliability. In the proposed multi-level cross-layer (MLCL) protocol, the number of hops away from the sink is used to set a level for each node. A packet is routed through the path with the minimum hop count to the sink using this level setting. The proposed protocol uses cross-layer properties between the network and medium access control (MAC) layers to estimate the minimum delay, with which a node can deliver a packet to the sink. When a node wants to send a packet, the MLCL protocol compares this minimum delay with the time to live (TTL) of a packet. If the TTL of the packet is higher than the minimum delay, the node sends the packet through the path with the minimum delay; otherwise, the node drops the packet as the node cannot deliver it to the sink within the TTL duration. This packet dropping improves network performance because the node can send a useful packet instead of an unusable packet. The results show a superior performance in terms of end-to-end delay and reliability for the proposed protocol compared to state-of-the-art protocols.

Iterative multipacket detection with FDE based MAC protocol in vehicular ad hoc networks

Wireless access in vehicular environments (WAVE), is especially designed to support vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) requirements, where rapidly changing channel conditions introduces unsynchronized transmissions. In such networks, instead of dealing with interferences in medium access control (MAC) layer or physical layer alone, both layers should be considered to cooperate and complement each other. In this paper, multipacket detection (MPD) technique with frequency domain equalization (FDE) is proposed for VANETs, with cyclically shifted different interleavers for different nodes, to remove interference and reducing the information exchange between nodes. These promising multi-hop wireless networks are used in situations, where temporary network connectivity is needed. Therefore, to improve the communication between vehicles (V2V) and from vehicles to roadside infrastructure (V2I), MPD-FDE with interference cancellation (IC) schemes can be used iteratively to successfully decode and receive even colliding packets. For designing such a protocol, different key aspects are discussed with an emphasis on iterative MPD-FDE. Numerical results with different network nodes, show the MPD-FDE performances for coded and uncoded transmissions with different IC schemes, where successive IC (SIC) is much better than parallel IC (PIC) schemes. It is also shown that the proposed protocol provide reliable detection and excellent throughput improvements, with much less resource consumption compared to multiple random interleavers.

Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing using Multi-layer Access Control Model in Electronic Health Environment

Electronic Health Data (EHD) is an emerging health information exchange model that facilitates healthcare providers and patients to efficiently store and share their private healthcare information from any place and at any time as per demand. Generally, Cloud services provide the infrastructure by reducing the cost of storing, processing and updating information with improved efficiency and quality. However, the privacy of Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a significant hurdle while outsourcing private health data in the cloud because there is a higher peril of leaking health information to unauthorized parties. Several existing techniques are able to analyse the security and privacy issues associated with e-healthcare services. These methods are designed for single database, or databases, with an authentication centre and thus cannot adequately protect the data from insider attacks. Therefore, this research study mainly focusses on how to ensure the patient privacy while sharing the sensitive data between same or different organisations as well as healthcare providers in a cloud environment. This paper proposes a multi-layer access control mechanism named MLAC Model to construct a secure and privacy-preserving EHR system that enables patients to share their data with stakeholders. In this paper, we use a Dual layer access control model named Pseudo-Role Attribute based access control (PR-ABAC) mechanism that integrates attributes with roles for the secure sharing of EHR between multiple collaborators. The proposed framework also uses the concept of Provenance to ensure the Integrity of patient data. This work is expected to provide a foundation for developing security solutions against cyber-attacks, and thus contribute to the robustness of healthcare information sharing environments.