Multi-HAPS Network Implementation within 3GPP’s NTN framework for 5G and beyond

High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) is part of the 3GPP defined non-terrestrial network (NTN) infrastructure for 5G networks. Various technical studies by 3GPP have addressed NTN-based implementations and have significantly studied satellite-based scenarios. However, the study does not sufficiently address HAPS or multi-HAPS based scenarios specifically. Though HAPS, is captured under Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), it has unique operational realities that set it apart from other NTN platforms. For instance, HAPS come in different variants of fixed-wing, balloons and airships. This paper highlights the need for expanded studies specifically aimed at HAPS for more seamless integration. The work also analyses the Doppler effect associated with fixed-wing HAPS systems to further demonstrate how operational scenarios may differ for these platforms and the need for targeted studies. HAPS is expected to contribute significantly to the NTN-based implementations and may require more specialised considerations within the 3GPP NTN technical specification process, especially for 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) networks.

Identifying Recurrence Behaviour in the Underlying BGP Traffic

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an Internet routing protocol responsible for exchanging network reachability information between Autonomous Systems (ASes). Monitoring and mining BGP traffic are important aspects to understand and improve the stability of the Internet. However, identifying the characteristics of BGP traffic is much harder than it seems at a first glance where BGP traffic has been identified as complex, voluminous, and noisy. In this paper, we show that BGP traffic can be understood as an aggregation of oscillations of different frequencies from different ASes. Using linear and nonlinear statistical analysis, we show that BGP traffic shows recurrent behaviour. The source of this behaviour is unsynchronised periodic behaviour from a set of ASes.

Achieving Optimal K-Anonymity Parameters for Big Data

Datasets containing private and sensitive information are useful for data analytics. Data owners cautiously release such sensitive data using privacy-preserving publishing techniques. Personal re-identification possibility is much larger than ever before. For instance, social media has dramatically increased the exposure to privacy violation. One well-known technique of k-anonymity proposes a protection approach against privacy exposure. K-anonymity tends to find k equivalent number of data records. The chosen attributes are known as Quasi-identifiers. This approach may reduce the personal re-identification. However, this may lessen the usefulness of information gained. The value of k should be carefully determined, to compromise both security and information gained. Unfortunately, there is no any standard procedure to define the value of k. The problem of the optimal k-anonymization is NP-hard. In this paper, we propose a greedy-based heuristic approach that provides an optimal value for k. The approach evaluates the empirical risk concerning our Sensitivity-Based Anonymization method. Our approach is derived from the fine-grained access and business role anonymization for big data, which forms our framework.

An Indoor Positioning System Using Multiple Methods and Tools

With many different studies showing a growing demand for the development of indoor positioning systems, numerous positioning and tracking methods and tools are available for which can be used for mobile devices. Therefore, an interest is more on development of indoor positioning and tracking systems that are accurate and effective. Presented and proposed in this work, is an indoor positioning system. As opposed to an Ad-hoc Positioning System (APS), it uses a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN). The system makes use of an already existing Wi-Fi infrastructure technology. Moreover, the approach tests the positioning of a node with its neighbours in a mesh network using multi-hopping functionality. The positioning measurements used were the ICMP echos, RSSI and RTS/CTS requests and responses. The positioning method used was the trilateral technique, in combination with the idea of the fingerprinting method. Through research and experimentation, this study developed a system which shows potential as a positioning system with an error of about 2 m to 3 m. The hybridisation of the method proves an enhancement in the system though improvements are still required.

Effectiveness of Intrusion Detection Systems in High-speed Networks

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) play a crucial role in detecting malicious activities within networks. Basically, a NIDS monitors network flows and compares them with a set of pre-defined suspicious patterns. To be effective, different intrusion detection algorithms and packet capturing methods have been implemented. With rapidly increasing network speeds, NIDSs face a challenging problem of monitoring large and diverse traffic volumes; in particular, high packet drop rates can have a significant impact on detection accuracy. In this work, we investigate three popular open-source NIDSs: Snort, Suricata, and Bro along with their comparative performance benchmarks. We investigate key factors (including system resource usage, packet processing speed and packet drop rate) that limit the applicability of NIDSs to large-scale networks. Moreover, we also analyse and compare the performance of NIDSs when configurations and traffic volumes are changed.

Performance Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4-based Wireless Body Sensor Networks: An Experimental Study

One of the most challenging issues in IEEE 802.15.4-based Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) is the mutual interference caused by neighbouring WBSNs. As the number of co-located such sensor networks becomes larger in a frequency channel, the destructive impact of mutual interference becomes stronger and eventually causes significant performance degradation mainly due to inefficient channel utilisation. In this paper, we have proposed a new scheme called “dynamic-phase-shifting” in which a WBSN is able to shift its beacon packets to other phases (time slot) to eventually find a phase with reasonably higher performance gain. A set of performance measures along with two experimental scenarios are used to evaluate the performance of dynamic-phase shifting scheme compared to a baseline scheme that follows IEEE 802.15.4 protocol standard. The obtained results show that dynamic-phase-shifting scheme is not only feasible to be implemented on real sensor devices but also, it outperforms IEEE 802.15.4 standard in terms of the considered performance measures.

Bandwidth Update Impact in Multi-Domain Software Defined Networking

The rapid growth of data transmission over digital networks, especially of delay sensitive traffic, has meant that research into improved networking has increased. Network domain boundaries are key points in the network where service provisioning, flow control, and management occur between organizations. This paper presents a flexible automated approach that utilizes Software Defined Networking (SDN) to carry out provisioning, control and management functions at domain boundaries. We propose a multi-domain SDN provisioning framework and a domain boundary bandwidth update algorithm to improve link performance between domains. Simulations were carried out using data captured from a carrier to enterprise network link. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides improved service fulfillment, lower packet loss probability and higher benefit-to-cost ratio compared to other approaches.

Data Processing of Physiological Sensor Data and Alarm Determination Utilising Activity Recognition

Current physiological sensors are passive and transmit sensed data to Monitoring centre (MC) through wireless body area network (WBAN) without processing data intelligently. We propose a solution to discern data requestors for prioritising and inferring data to reduce transactions and conserve battery power, which is important requirements of mobile health (mHealth). However, there is a problem for alarm determination without knowing the activity of the user. For example, 170 beats per minute of heart rate can be normal during exercising, however an alarm should be raised if this figure has been sensed during sleep. To solve this problem, we suggest utilising the existing activity recognition (AR) applications. Most of health related wearable devices include accelerometers along with physiological sensors. This paper presents a novel approach and solution to utilise physiological data with AR so that they can provide not only improved and efficient services such as alarm determination but also provide richer health information which may provide content for new markets as well as additional application services such as converged mobile health with aged care services. This has been verified by experimented tests and examples of using vital signs such as heart pulse rate, respiration rate and body temperature with a demonstrated outcome of AR accelerometer sensors integrated with an Android app.

On Simultaneously Increasing MANET Survivability, Capacity, Power Efficiency and Security

Increasing the capacity, survivability and power efficiency of wireless networks are often seen as competing goals. This paper shows that it is possible to pursue these goals simultaneously in ad hoc networks through the use of a multi-objective cross entropy optimisation operating on the placement of additional nodes and transmission power control. Encouraging results were obtained through simulation, with substantial capacity gains and associated transmission power savings achieved, whilst offering survivability through bi-connected topologies. This paper also discusses how the increase in power efficiency improves the security of the network by reducing the range at which messages within the network can be detected and decoded by eavesdropping nodes. A derivation of the optimal distance required between senders and receivers in the presence of noise is described, and the effects of relaying on overall network capacity and node throughput are discussed.

Three-Dimensional Video Watermarking – A Review and Open Challenges

Intellectual property (IP) protection of three-dimensional (3-D) media is an important issue for both academic and wider communities to combat the illegal distribution and pirating of this visual medium. Digital watermarking has been used to address various challenges in media IP protection. The challenge central to 3-D video as well as other audio-visual signal watermarking is that given a fixed level of perceptual transparency, a watermarking system cannot simultaneously achieve a high degree of robustness and a high watermark payload. The majority of published research reports in this field try to introduce new embedding methodologies to increase the watermark robustness with highest possible visual media quality. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art in 3-D video watermarking and assesses various watermarking techniques in the field. Some of 3-D video watermarking techniques are directly inherited from video watermarking, stereo image watermarking or 3-D mesh watermarking, and therefore the relevant techniques in these fields are reviewed in this paper as well. Key performances of various embedding algorithms are examined and compared in this review to identify a benchmark for future development and performance evaluation of new 3-D video watermarking techniques.