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Multi-access edge computing (MEC) and network virtualization technologies are important enablers for fifth-generation (5G) networks to deliver diverse applications and services. Services are often provided as fully connected virtual network functions (VNF)s, through service function chaining (SFC). However, the problem of allocating SFC resources at the network edge still faces many challenges related to the way VNFs are placed, chained and scheduled. In this paper, to solve these problems, we propose a game theory-based approach with the objective to reduce service latency in the context of SFC at the network edge. The problem of allocating SFC resources can be divided into two subproblems. 1) The VNF placement and routing subproblem, and 2) the VNF scheduling subproblem. For the former subproblem, we formulate it as a mean field game (MFG) in which VNFs are modeled as entities contending over edge resources with the goal of reducing the resource consumption of MEC nodes and reducing latency for users. We propose a on a reinforcement learning-based technique, where the Ishikawa-Mann learning algorithm (IMLA) is used. For the later subproblem we formulate it as a matching game between the VFNs and an edge resources in order to find the execution order of the VNFs while reducing the latency. To efficiently solve it, we propose a modified version of the many-to-one deferred acceptance algorithm (DAA), called the enhanced multi-step deferred acceptance algorithm (eMSDA). To illustrate the performance of the proposed approaches, we perform extensive simulations. The obtained results show that the proposed approaches outperform the benchmarks other state-of-the-art methods.

This letter addresses the challenge of determining the maximum sum rate achievable in high mobility scenarios with time and frequency selectivity in 5G V2X communications, particularly in the context of IoT/sensor networks. We derive a closed-form expression for the maximum sum rate of a multicarrier non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with 𝑛 users, and validate our theoretical results through simulations by comparing them with traditional orthogonal schemes. Our work provides valuable insights into the potential of NOMA for high-speed V2X communications, and offers a novel contribution to the existing literature by presenting a closed-form expression allowing the development of efficient and reliable 5G V2X systems.

This paper studies the problem of online user grouping, scheduling and power allocation in beyond 5G cellular-based Internet of things networks. Due to the massive number of devices trying to be granted to the network, non-orthogonal multiple access method is adopted in order to accommodate multiple devices in the same radio resource block. Different from most previous works, the objective is to maximize the number of served devices while allocating their transmission powers such that their real-time requirements as well as their limited operating energy are respected. First, we formulate the general problem as a mixed integer non-linear program (MINLP) that can be transformed easily to MILP for some special cases. Second, we study its computational complexity by characterizing the NP-hardness of different special cases. Then, by dividing the problem into multiple NOMA grouping and scheduling subproblems, efficient online competitive algorithms are proposed. Further, we show how to use these online algorithms and combine their solutions in a reinforcement learning setting to obtain the power allocation and hence the global solution to the problem. Our analysis are supplemented by simulation results to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms with comparison to optimal and state-of-the-art methods.

This paper studies the multi-agent resource allocation problem in vehicular networks using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and network slicing. Vehicles want to broadcast multiple packets with heterogeneous quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, such as safety-related packets (e.g., accident reports) that require very low latency communication, while raw sensor data sharing (e.g., high-definition map sharing) requires high-speed communication. To ensure heterogeneous service requirements for different packets, we propose a network slicing architecture. We focus on a non-cellular network scenario where vehicles communicate by the broadcast approach via the direct device-to-device interface (i.e., sidelink communication). In such a vehicular network, resource allocation among vehicles is very difficult, mainly due to (i) the rapid variation of wireless channels among highly mobile vehicles and (ii) the lack of a central coordination point. Thus, the possibility of acquiring instantaneous channel state information to perform centralized resource allocation is precluded. The resource allocation problem considered is therefore very complex. It includes not only the usual spectrum and power allocation, but also coverage selection (which target vehicles to broadcast to) and packet selection (which network slice to use). This problem must be solved jointly since selected packets can be overlaid using NOMA and therefore spectrum and power must be carefully allocated for better vehicle coverage. To do so, we first provide a mathematical programming formulation and a thorough NP-hardness analysis of the problem. Then, we model it as a multi-agent Markov decision process. Finally, to solve it efficiently, we use a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach and specifically propose a deep Q learning (DQL) algorithm. The proposed DQL algorithm is practical because it can be implemented in an online and distributed manner. It is based on a cooperative learning strategy in which all agents perceive a common reward and thus learn cooperatively and distributively to improve the resource allocation solution through offline training. We show that our approach is robust and efficient when faced with different variations of the network parameters and compared to centralized benchmarks.

Low-latency IoT applications, such as autonomous vehicles, augmented/virtual reality devices, and security applications, require high computation resources to make decisions on the fly. However, these kinds of applications cannot tolerate offloading their tasks to be processed on a cloud infrastructure due to the experienced latency. Therefore, edge computing (EC) is introduced to enable low latency by moving the tasks processing closer to the users at the edge of the network. The edge of the network is characterized by the heterogeneity of edge devices (EDs) forming it; thus, it is crucial to devise novel solutions that take into account the different physical resources of each ED. In this article, we propose a resource representation scheme, allowing each ED to expose its resource information to the supervisor of the edge node through the mobile EC application programming interfaces proposed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. The information about the ED resource is exposed to the supervisor of the edge node each time a resource allocation is required. To this end, we leverage a Lyapunov optimization framework to dynamically allocate resources at the EDs. To test our proposed model, we performed intensive theoretical and experimental simulations on a testbed to validate the proposed scheme and its impact on different system’s parameters. The simulations have shown that our proposed approach outperforms other benchmark approaches and provides low latency and optimal resource consumption.

SDN is a key-enabler to achieve scalability in 5G and Multi-access Edge Computing networks. To balance the load between distributed SDN controllers, the migration of the data plane components has been proposed. Different from most previous works which use reactive mechanisms, we propose to preemptively balance the load in the SDN control plane to support network flows that require low latency communications. First, we forecast the load of SDN controllers to prevent load imbalances and schedule data plane migrations in advance. Second, we optimize the migration operations to achieve better load balancing under delay constraints. Specifically, in the first step, we construct two prediction models based on Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) approaches to forecast SDN controllers load. Then, we conduct a comparative study between these two models and calculate their accuracies and forecast errors. The results show that, in long-term predictions, the accuracy of LSTM model outperforms that of ARIMA by 55% in terms of prediction errors. In the second step, to select which data plane components to migrate and where the migration should happen under delay constraints, we formulate the problem as a non-linear binary program, prove its NP-completeness and propose a reinforcement learning algorithm to solve it. The simulations show that the proposed algorithm performs close to optimal and outperforms recent benchmark algorithms from the literature.

Radio access network (RAN) slicing is a key technology that enables 5G network to support heterogeneous requirements of generic services, namely ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB). In this paper, we propose a two time-scales RAN slicing mechanism to optimize the performance of URLLC and eMBB services. In a large time-scale, an SDN controller allocates radio resources to gNodeBs according to the requirements of the eMBB and URLLC services. In a short time-scale, each gNodeB allocates its available resources to its end-users and requests, if needed, additional resources from adjacent gNodeBs. We formulate this problem as a non-linear binary program and prove its NP-hardness. Next, for each time-scale, we model the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP), where the large-time scale is modeled as a single agent MDP whereas the shorter time-scale is modeled as a multi-agent MDP. We leverage the exponential-weight algorithm for exploration and exploitation (EXP3) to solve the single-agent MDP of the large time-scale MDP and the multi-agent deep Q-learning (DQL) algorithm to solve the multi-agent MDP of the short time-scale resource allocation. Extensive simulations show that our approach is efficient under different network parameters configuration and it outperforms recent benchmark solutions.

Recently, blockchain has gained momentum as a novel technology that gives rise to a plethora of new decentralized applications (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT)). However, its integration with the IoT is still facing several problems (e.g., scalability, flexibility). Provisioning resources to enable a large number of connected IoT devices implies having a scalable and flexible blockchain. To address these issues, we propose a scalable and trustworthy blockchain (STB) architecture that is suitable for the IoT; which uses blockchain sharding and oracles to establish trust among unreliable IoT devices in a fully distributed and trustworthy manner. In particular, we design a Peer-To-Peer oracle network that ensures data reliability, scalability, flexibility, and trustworthiness. Furthermore, we introduce a new lightweight consensus algorithm that scales the blockchain dramatically while ensuring the interoperability among participants of the blockchain. The results show that our proposed STB architecture achieves flexibility, efficiency, and scalability making it a promising solution that is suitable for the IoT context., This paper has been accepted for publication by ICC 2021-IEEE International Conference on Communications. The final version will be published by the IEEE

Fog computing is emerging as a new paradigm to deal with latency-sensitive applications, by making data process-ing and analysis close to their source. Due to the heterogeneity of devices in the fog, it is important to devise novel solutions which take into account the diverse physical resources available in each device to efficiently and dynamically distribute the processing. In this paper, we propose a resource representation scheme which allows exposing the resources of each device through Mobile Edge Computing Application Programming Interfaces (MEC APIs) in order to optimize resource allocation by the supervising entity in the fog. Then, we formulate the resource allocation problem as a Lyapunov optimization and we discuss the impact of our proposed approach on latency. Simulation results show that our proposed approach can minimize latency and improve the performance of the system.

Fog computing has emerged as a new paradigm in mobile network communications, aiming to equip the edge of the network with the computing and storing capabilities to deal with the huge amount of data and processing needs generated by the users' devices and sensors. Optimizing the assignment of users to fogs is, however, still an open issue. In this paper, we formulated the problem of users-fogs association, as a matching game with minimum and maximum quota constraints, and proposed a Multi-Stage Differed Acceptance (MSDA) in order to balance the use of fogs resources and offer a better response time for users. Simulations results show that the performance of the proposed model compared to a baseline matching of users, achieves lowers delays for users.

FEderated Edge Learning (FEEL) has emerged as a leading technique for privacy-preserving distributed training in wireless edge networks, where edge devices collaboratively train machine learning (ML) models with the orchestration of a server. However, due to frequent communication, FEEL needs to be adapted to the limited communication bandwidth. Furthermore, the statistical heterogeneity of local datasets' distributions, and the uncertainty about the data quality pose important challenges to the training's convergence. Therefore, a meticulous selection of the participating devices and an analogous bandwidth allocation are necessary. In this paper, we propose a data-quality based scheduling (DQS) algorithm for FEEL. DQS prioritizes reliable devices with rich and diverse datasets. In this paper, we define the different components of the learning algorithm and the data-quality evaluation. Then, we formulate the device selection and the bandwidth allocation problem. Finally, we present our DQS algorithm for FEEL, and we evaluate it in different data poisoning scenarios., 2021 IEEE 46th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN)

The interconnection of vehicles in the future fifth generation (5G) wireless ecosystem forms the so-called Internet of Vehicles (IoV). IoV offers new kinds of applications requiring delay-sensitive, compute-intensive, and bandwidth-hungry services. Mobile edge computing (MEC) and network slicing are two of the key enabler technologies in 5G networks that can be used to optimize the allocation of the network resources and guarantee the diverse requirements of IoV applications. As traditional model-based optimization techniques generally end up with NP-hard and strongly non-convex and nonlinear mathematical programming formulations, in this article, we introduce a model-free approach based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to solve the resource allocation problem in MEC-enabled IoV networks based on network slicing. Furthermore, the solution uses non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to enable better exploitation of the scarce channel resources. The considered problem addresses jointly the channel and power allocation, the slice selection, and the vehicle selection (vehicle grouping). We model the problem as a single-agent Markov decision process. Then we solve it using DRL with the well-known deep Q learning (DQL) algorithm. We show that our approach is robust and effective under different network conditions compared to benchmark solutions.

Federated Learning (FL) is expected to play a prominent role for privacy-preserving machine learning (ML) in autonomous vehicles. FL involves the collaborative training of a single ML model among edge devices on their distributed datasets while keeping data locally. While FL requires less communication compared to classical distributed learning, it remains hard to scale for large models. In vehicular networks, FL must be adapted to the limited communication resources, the mobility of the edge nodes, and the statistical heterogeneity of data distributions. Indeed, a judicious utilization of the communication resources alongside new perceptive learning-oriented methods are vital. To this end, we propose a new architecture for vehicular FL and corresponding learning and scheduling processes. The architecture utilizes vehicular-to-vehicular(V2V) resources to bypass the communication bottleneck where clusters of vehicles train models simultaneously and only the aggregate of each cluster is sent to the multi-access edge (MEC) server. The cluster formation is adapted for single and multi-task learning, and takes into account both communication and learning aspects. We show through simulations that the proposed process is capable of improving the learning accuracy in several non-independent and-identically-distributed (non-i.i.d) and unbalanced datasets distributions, under mobility constraints, in comparison to standard FL.

This paper studies the problem of minimizing the age of information (AoI) in cellular vehicle-to-everything communications. To provide minimal AoI and high reliability for vehicles' safety information, NOMA is exploited. We reformulate a resource allocation problem that involves half-duplex transceiver selection, broadcast coverage optimization, power allocation, and resource block scheduling. First, to obtain the optimal solution, we formulate the problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem and then study its NP-hardness. The NP-hardness result motivates us to design simple solutions. Consequently, we model the problem as a single-agent Markov decision process to solve the problem efficiently using fingerprint deep reinforcement learning techniques such as deep-Q-network (DQN) methods. Nevertheless, applying DQN is not straightforward due to the curse of dimensionality implied by the large and mixed action space that contains discrete and continuous optimization decisions. Therefore, to solve this mixed discrete/continuous problem efficiently, simply and elegantly, we propose a decomposition technique that consists of first solving the discrete subproblem using a matching algorithm based on state-of-the-art stable roommate matching and then solving the continuous subproblem using DRL algorithm that is based on deep deterministic policy gradient DDPG. We validate our proposed method through Monte Carlo simulations where we show that the decomposed matching and DRL algorithm successfully minimizes the AoI and achieves almost 66% performance gain compared to the best benchmarks for various vehicles' speeds, transmission power, or packet sizes. Further, we prove the existence of an optimal value of broadcast coverage at which the learning algorithm provides the optimal AoI., Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, 2 algorithms

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a key solution that enables operators to open their networks to new services and IT ecosystems to leverage edge-cloud benefits in their networks and systems. Located in close proximity from the end users and connected devices, MEC provides extremely low latency and high bandwidth while always enabling applications to leverage cloud capabilities as necessary. In this article, we illustrate the integration of MEC into a current mobile networks’ architecture as well as the transition mechanisms to migrate into a standard 5G network architecture. We also discuss SDN, NFV, SFC and network slicing as MEC enablers. Then, we provide a state-of-the-art study on the different approaches that optimize the MEC resources and its QoS parameters. In this regard, we classify these approaches based on the optimized resources and QoS parameters (i.e., processing, storage, memory, bandwidth, energy and latency). Finally, we propose an architectural framework for a MEC-NFV environment based on the standard SDN architecture.

There is not data involved in this research paper.

In this paper, we address the resource provisioning problem for service function chaining (SFC) in terms of the placement and chaining of virtual network functions (VNFs) within a multi-access edge computing (MEC) infrastructure to reduce service delay. We consider the VNFs as the main entities of the system and propose a mean-field game (MFG) framework to model their behavior for their placement and chaining. Then, to achieve the optimal resource provisioning policy without considering the system control parameters, we reduce the proposed MFG to a Markov decision process (MDP). In this way, we leverage reinforcement learning with an actor-critic approach for MEC nodes to learn complex placement and chaining policies. Simulation results show that our proposed approach outperforms benchmark state-of-the-art approaches.

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a key enabler to reduce the latency of vehicular network. Due to the vehicles mobility, their requested services (e.g., infotainment services) should frequently be migrated across different MEC servers to guarantee their stringent quality of service requirements. In this paper, we study the problem of service migration in a MEC-enabled vehicular network in order to minimize the total service latency and migration cost. This problem is formulated as a nonlinear integer program and is linearized to help obtaining the optimal solution using off-the-shelf solvers. Then, to obtain an efficient solution, it is modeled as a multi-agent Markov decision process and solved by leveraging deep Q learning (DQL) algorithm. The proposed DQL scheme performs a proactive services migration while ensuring their continuity under high mobility constraints. Finally, simulations results show that the proposed DQL scheme achieves close-to-optimal performance.

The exponential growth of distributed energy resources is enabling the transformation of traditional consumers in the smart grid into prosumers. Such transition presents a promising opportunity for sustainable energy trading. Yet, the integration of prosumers in the energy market imposes new considerations in designing unified and sustainable frameworks for efficient use of the power and communication infrastructure. Furthermore, several issues need to be tackled to adequately promote the adoption of decentralized renewable-oriented systems, such as communication overhead, data privacy, scalability, and sustainability. In this article, we present the different aspects and challenges to be addressed for building efficient energy trading markets in relation to communication and smart decision-making. Accordingly, we propose a multi-level pro-decision framework for prosumer communities to achieve collective goals. Since the individual decisions of prosumers are mainly driven by individual self-sufficiency goals, the framework prioritizes the individual prosumers' decisions and relies on the 5G wireless network for fast coordination among community members. In fact, each prosumer predicts energy production and consumption to make proactive trading decisions as a response to collective-level requests. Moreover, the collaboration of the community is further extended by including the collaborative training of prediction models using Federated Learning, assisted by edge servers and prosumer home-area equipment. In addition to preserving prosumers' privacy, we show through evaluations that training prediction models using Federated Learning yields high accuracy for different energy resources while reducing the communication overhead.

International audience; Recently, solutions based on mobile edge computing paradigm have been widely discussed in academia and industry. This paradigm offers solutions to address limitations, in terms of battery lifetime and processing power, of mobile and constrained devices. Despite the ever-increasing capabilities of these devices, resource requirements of applications can often transcend what is available within a single device. Offloading intensive computation tasks to a distant server can help applications reach their desired performances. In this work, we tackle the problem of offloading heavy computation tasks of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) while achieving the best possible tradeoff between energy consumption, time delay, and computation cost. We focus on a scenario of a fleet of small UAVs performing an exploration mission. During their mission, these constrained devices have to carry-out highly intensive computation tasks such as pattern recognition and video preprocessing. We formulate the problem using a non-cooperative theoretical game with N players and three pure strategies. We provide a comprehensive proof for the existence of a Nash equilibrium and implement accordingly a distributed algorithm that converges to such an equilibrium. Extensive simulations are performed in order to provide thorough results and assess the performances of the approach compared to three other models. Results show that our algorithm outperforms all the three approaches. Our approach achieved in average about 19%, 58%, and 55% better results compared to local computing, offloading to the edge server, and offloading to base station, respectively.

With increasing automation of manufacturing processes (focusing on technologies such as robotics and human-robot interaction), there is a realisation that the manufacturing process and the artefacts/products it produces can be better connected post-production. Built on this requirement, a “chatty" factory involves creating products which are able to send data back to the manufacturing/production environment as they are used, whilst still ensuring user privacy. The intended use of a product during design phase may different significantly from actual usage. Understanding how this data can be used to support continuous product refinement, and how the manufacturing process can be dynamically adapted based on the availability of this data provides a number of opportunities. We describe how data collected on product use can be used to: (i) classify product use; (ii) associate a label with product use using unsupervised learning—making use of edge-based analytics; (iii) transmission of this data to a cloud environment where labels can be compared across different products of the same type. Federated learning strategies are used on edge devices to ensure that any data captured from a product can be analysed locally (ensuring data privacy).

Federated Edge Learning (FEEL) involves the collaborative training of machine learning models among edge devices, with the orchestration of a server in a wireless edge network. Due to frequent model updates, FEEL needs to be adapted to the limited communication bandwidth, scarce energy of edge devices, and the statistical heterogeneity of edge devices' data distributions. Therefore, a careful scheduling of a subset of devices for training and uploading models is necessary. In contrast to previous work in FEEL where the data aspects are under-explored, we consider data properties at the heart of the proposed scheduling algorithm. To this end, we propose a new scheduling scheme for non-independent and-identically-distributed (non-IID) and unbalanced datasets in FEEL. As the data is the key component of the learning, we propose a new set of considerations for data characteristics in wireless scheduling algorithms in FEEL. In fact, the data collected by the devices depends on the local environment and usage pattern. Thus, the datasets vary in size and distributions among the devices. In the proposed algorithm, we consider both data and resource perspectives. In addition to minimizing the completion time of FEEL as well as the transmission energy of the participating devices, the algorithm prioritizes devices with rich and diverse datasets. We first define a general framework for the data-aware scheduling and the main axes and requirements for diversity evaluation. Then, we discuss diversity aspects and some exploitable techniques and metrics. Next, we formulate the problem and present our FEEL scheduling algorithm. Evaluations in different scenarios show that our proposed FEEL scheduling algorithm can help achieve high accuracy in few rounds with a reduced cost.

With increasing automation of manufacturing processes (focusing on technologies such as robotics and human-robot interaction), there is a realisation that the manufacturing process and the artefacts/products it produces can be better connected post-production. Built on this requirement, a “chatty” factory involves creating products which are able to send data back to the manufacturing/ production environment as they are used, whilst still ensuring user privacy. The intended use of a product during design phase may different significantly from actual usage. Understanding how this data can be used to support continuous product refinement, and how the manufacturing process can be dynamically adapted based on the availability of this data provides a number of opportunities. We describe how data collected on product use be used to: (i) classify product use; (ii) associate a label with product use using unsupervised learning – making use of edge-based analytics; (iii) transmission of this data to a cloud environment where labels can be compared across different products of the same type. Federated learning strategies are used on edge devices to ensure that any data captured from a product can be analysed locally (ensuring data privacy). Using a 6th gen. Apple iPad as a “chatty device” (with acceleration, orientation, angular velocity and magnetic field sensors) we demonstrate how product use activities can achieve a classification accuracy of 99.35%. A comparison is also undertaken with the Human Activity Recognition (HAR) data set, achieving an accuracy of 98%. Our approach demonstrates how semantic activity labels can be associated with product use, and subsequently used to improve product design.

Federated Learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning technique, where each device contributes to the learning model by independently computing the gradient based on its local training data. It has recently become a hot research topic, as it promises several benefits related to data privacy and scalability. However, implementing FL at the network edge is challenging due to system and data heterogeneity and resources constraints. In this article, we examine the existing challenges and trade-offs in Federated Edge Learning (FEEL). The design of FEEL algorithms for resources-efficient learning raises several challenges. These challenges are essentially related to the multidisciplinary nature of the problem. As the data is the key component of the learning, this article advocates a new set of considerations for data characteristics in wireless scheduling algorithms in FEEL. Hence, we propose a general framework for the data-aware scheduling as a guideline for future research directions. We also discuss the main axes and requirements for data evaluation and some exploitable techniques and metrics., Submitted to IEEE Network Magazine

Nanomachines promise to enable new medical applications, including drug delivery and real time chemical reactions' detection inside the human body. Such complex tasks need cooperation between nanomachines using a communication network. Wireless Ad hoc networks, using molecular or electromagnetic-based communication have been proposed in the literature to create flexible nanonetworks between nanomachines. In this paper, we propose a Wired Ad hoc NanoNETwork (WANNET) model design using actin-based nano-communication. In the proposed model, actin filaments self-assembly and disassembly is used to create flexible nanowires between nanomachines, and electrons are used as carriers of information. We give a general overview of the application layer, Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and a physical layer of the model. We also detail the analytical model of the physical layer using actin nanowire equivalent circuits, and we present an estimation of the circuit component's values. Numerical results of the derived model are provided in terms of attenuation, phase and delay as a function of the frequency and distances between nanomachines. The maximum throughput of the actin-based nanowire is also provided, and a comparison between the maximum throughput of the proposed WANNET, vs other proposed approaches is presented. The obtained results prove that the proposed wired ad hoc nanonetwork can give a very high achievable throughput with a smaller delay compared to other proposed wireless molecular communication networks., submitted to IEEE International Conference on Communications 2020 (ICC 2020)

In the smart grid, huge amounts of consumption data are used to train deep learning models for applications such as load monitoring and demand response. However, these applications raise concerns regarding security and have high accuracy requirements. In one hand, the data used is privacy-sensitive. For instance, the fine-grained data collected by a smart meter at a consumer's home may reveal information on the appliances and thus the consumer's behaviour at home. On the other hand, the deep learning models require big data volumes with enough variety and to be trained adequately. In this paper, we evaluate the use of Edge computing and federated learning, a decentralized machine learning scheme that allows to increase the volume and diversity of data used to train the deep learning models without compromising privacy. This paper reports, to the best of our knowledge, the first use of federated learning for household load forecasting and achieves promising results. The simulations were done using Tensorflow Federated on the data from 200 houses from Texas, USA., ICC 2020-2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)

International audience; The rapid growth of communication networking, ubiquitous sensing, and signal processing have spurred the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) era. As a novel cutting-edge technology, the IoT enables a plethora of smart-devices equipped with diverse computing, sensing, and actuation capabilities to be connected to the Internet. Thus, it promises to provide a revolutionary and fully connected “smart” world while greatly developing economies and enhancing the quality of life. IoT is indeed an emergent global phenomenon, where real-time remote access to data and applications opens new unprecedented opportunities for ubiquitous monitoring and managing. In such dynamic, interconnected, and heterogeneous environment where the context conditions (location, time, situation sensitivity, etc.) are continuously and frequently changing, context-aware and adaptive solutions for data access are required to respond to the applications’ needs. Nevertheless, until now, no schemes do provide concrete context-aware access control mechanisms in IoT. In this paper, we design a novel Context-Aware Attribute-Based Access Control (CAABAC) that considers the dynamic context changes. The proposed approach incorporates the contextual information with the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-based Encryption (CP-ABE) to guarantee adaptive contextual access to data. Extensive analysis and simulations prove both the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme. Specifically, context-aware and adaptive remote access is enabled while outperforming other benchmarked schemes in terms of storage, communication, and computational cost.

Mobile cloud computing is a revolutionary computing paradigm for mobile applications, which enables storage and computation migration from mobile users to resource-rich and powerful cloud servers. This migration causes some privacy issues in providing secure data storage, fine-grained access control and anonymity of users. Attribute-based encryption is an end-to-end public key encryption mechanism that ensures security of stored data in the cloud and provides fine-grained access control using defined policies and constraints. Location of a device is one of the contextual policies, which is used to improve data security, authenticate user and provide access to services and useful information. However, unlike other policies and attributes used in attribute-based encryption, location attribute is an intrinsic dynamic attribute. In this paper, we investigate providing Location-Based Services ( LBS s) for attribute-based access control in mobile cloud. More specifically, we propose a multi-authority attribute-based access control scheme to support coexistence of authorities, provide anonymity of users and protect their identity against malicious authorities. The proposed scheme uses dynamic location of mobile users as contextual information about those users, employs location range constraints as a policy in attribute-based encryption and authorizes users with dynamic locations satisfying access policies. The proposed attribute-based encryption is integrated with proxy re-encryption to (a) transform secret information received from different authorities and protect users' identities from disclosure to cloud server, and (b) outsource the computation to a cloud server with unlimited computational power. This results in achieving more efficiency and reducing the computation cost on resource-constrained mobile users.

International audience; The operation of modern electronic communication devices relies on constant energy sources such as DC power, obtained from AC sources via AC to DC conversion, or small chargeable/replaceable batteries. However, in some cases, providing constant energy sources may not be feasible. Advanced energy harvesting technologies can be used to power up modern day electronic communication devices [item 1) in the Appendix]. These energy harvesting technologies rely on energy sources naturally present in the environment, such as solar energy, wind energy, and heat [item 2) in the Appendix]. Moreover, energy can also be acquired from the movement of different parts of the human body such as legs (walking), heart (beating) and arms (swinging), just to name a few. All these energy harvesting technologies and techniques may satisfy the need of energy for low power communication devices and may enable the charging of electronic mobile devices anywhere and at any time [item 3) in the Appendix].

Vehicles have embedded software dedicated to diverse functionality ranging from driving assistance to entertainment. Vehicle manufacturers often need to perform updates on software installed on vehicles. Software updates can either be pushed by the manufacturer to install fixes, or be requested by vehicle owners to upgrade some functionality. We propose an architecture for distributing software updates on vehicles based on SDN and cloud computing. We show that using SDN, the emergent networking paradigm, which provides on-demand network programmability, adds substantial flexibility for deploying software updates on vehicles. We propose solutions for how vehicular networks can be modeled as connectivity graphs that can be used as input for the SDN architecture. After constructing graphs, we present an SDN-based solution where different frequency bands are assigned to different graph edges to improve the network performance.

The blockchain is a distributed technology which allows establishing trust among unreliable users who interact and perform transactions with each other. While blockchain technology has been mainly used for crypto-currency, it has emerged as an enabling technology for establishing trust in the realm of the Internet of Things (IoT). Nevertheless, a naive usage of the blockchain for IoT leads to high delays and extensive computational power. In this paper, we propose a blockchain architecture dedicated to being used in a supply chain which comprises different distributed IoT entities. We propose a lightweight consensus for this architecture, called LC4IoT. The consensus is evaluated through extensive simulations. The results show that the proposed consensus uses low computational power, storage capability and latency., Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication by IEEE 30th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC). The final version will be published by the IEEE

The tremendous progress in nanotechnology over the last century, makes it possible to engineer tiny nanodevices, which they need a nano-communication network to interact. Two solutions are proposed in literature to create a nano-communication system, either by using the classical electromagnetic paradigm with Terahertz band, or using the bio-inspired molecular communication. However, Terahertz is suffering from molecular absorption and scattering losses at nano level, and the achievable throughput of molecular communication is very low. In this paper, we propose a new solution to establish a wired nano-communication. Self-assembled actin-based is a new method that takes advantage of actin filaments self-assembly to create a nano wire between a transmitter and a receiver, and use electrons as information carriers. VPython framework is used in this paper to perform stochastic simulations of the nano wire formation. The algorithms used for the simulations are presented. The stability of the constructed nano wire is analyzed, and the error probability is calculated. Self-assembled actin-based method promises a fast and stable nano-communication system with a very high achievable throughput.

The plethora of research, standardization and developments in Internet of Things (IoT) has increased enormously in recent years. This is due to the vast scope of IoT. Internet of Things refers to the worldwide network of interconnected objects, which allow people or things to be connected anytime, anyplace, with anything and anyone, using any path, any network and any service. The objects have different characteristics: mobile or static, with or without energy constraint, different computation and storage capabilities, equipped with different communication technologies and sensors, etc.

ZigBee is often chosen as a technology to connect things because of characteristics, such as network resilience, interoperability, and low power consumption. In addition, Zigbee Pro, with its Green Power feature, allows low-power networking capable of supporting more than 64 000 devices on a single network, making it an excellent choice to connect things. However, in recent years, we have witnessed the proliferation of smart devices using either 802.11 or ZigBee technologies, which operate in the same frequency band. Proposing and developing techniques that may improve the fair operation and performance of these technologies in coexistence scenarios have been a major concern in industry and academia. In this paper, we propose the use of traffic prioritization for ZigBee nodes in order to improve their performance when coexisting with IEEE 802.11 nodes. We develop an analytical model based on Markov chains, which captures the behavior of channel access mechanisms for both 802.11 nodes and different ZigBee priority class nodes. Based on extensive simulations, we validate the accuracy of the proposed model, and demonstrate how traffic prioritization of ZigBee nodes effectively improves their performance when coexisting with 802.11 nodes. We also demonstrate that this improvement comes at the cost of negligible degradation in the performance of the 802.11 nodes.

In this paper, a vehicular cloud (VC) model is adopted where vehicles offer data as a service. We propose solutions for efficient data delivery based on transmission scheduling methods where vehicles gather data from their mounted sensors. This is done by first organizing vehicles into clusters, so that each cluster works as VC. A distributed D-hop cluster formation algorithm is presented to dynamically form vehicle clouds. The algorithm groups vehicles into non-overlapping clusters, which have adaptive sizes according to their mobility. VCs are created in such a way that each vehicle is at most D-hops away from a cloud coordinator (broker). Each vehicle chooses its broker based on relative mobility calculations within its D-hop neighbors. After cloud construction, a mathematical optimization scheduling algorithm is used to maximize throughput and minimize delay in delivering data from vehicles to their VC broker. Our proposed optimization model implements a contention-free-based medium access control where physical conditions of the channel are fully analyzed. Extensive simulations were performed for different scenarios to evaluate the performance of the proposed cloud formation and cloud-based transmission scheduling algorithms. Results show that VCs formed by our algorithms are more stable and provide higher data throughputs compared with others.

In wireless network-based node localization, the received signals are hampered by complex phenomena, such as shadowing, noise, and multi-path fading. In this work, the localization is stated as an ill-posed problem that can be solved by compressed sensing CS technique. A three dimensional 3D-CS approach using the ratio of received signal strength R2S2 and the time difference of arrival metrics was proposed to improve the localization accuracy of multiple target nodes in 3D wireless networks, and to reduce deployment complexity and processing time. Simulation and experimental tests were conducted in a large multi-floors building using the strength of the received signals and the radio map of the localization area. The results indicated that the 3D-CS approach is reliable for identifying the floor number and estimating the horizontal position. The localization precision is less affected by the propagation medium variation than the conventional 2D-CS method. The localization mean error is lower when the number of access points increases, and the radio map spacing decreases. In addition, the accuracy of the 3D-CS approach was assured as well as the building material characteristics, position of access points, and wireless-terminal real transmission power are unknown. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are becoming an important technology to enable enhanced road safety. Based on the 802.11p standard model, VANETs are known to suffer from channel congestion when the number of vehicles increases. Also, problems of fading and channel loss conditions on the road, make the effective delivery rate in VANETs very low beyond distances that are half of the transmission range. In this paper, we are interested in multi-hop message delivery in VANETs to extend the delivery range of safety messages beyond a one-hop range. We investigate the use of priority to favor on-hop messages over relayed ones according to the distance from the event originator. We also investigate the effect of using a limited delay in messages queues versus message reneging with such a scheme. An analytic and simulation study show interesting results under various constraints.

As electric vehicles EVs become more popular, public charging stations for such vehicles will become common. Because the load introduced by such stations on the grid is high, the smart grid will need to balance the load among charging stations in an area while minimizing the charging waiting time. To achieve this goal, we propose two models where vehicles communicate beforehand with the grid to convey information about their charging need and location. In the first model, we develop a mathematical formalism for handling requests for charging vehicles at public charging station based on queuing theory. The second model extends the first one by considering priority queues with two EV classes, high and low, and a cut-off service discipline. Both models are evaluated while considering mobility of vehicles in an urban scenario and time-of-use pricing. Finally, we propose two algorithms for directing vehicles to charging stations in a way to minimize either their waiting time to plug-in or their waiting time to charge completion. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches when considering both real EV and charging station characteristics and constraints. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this study, we propose a four-dimensional modulation, referred to as modulation network coding (MNC), to address the problem of decoding a signal from multiple source node transmissions in mobile fast fading channels. The MNC scheme judiciously mixes a two-dimensional (2D) pilot symbol with a 2D information symbol, and makes use of a π/4 rotated M-pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) constellation to guaranty an effective decoding of all the interfering symbols even in the case of a smaller channel Doppler spread compared with the period of the MNC symbol. In addition, because the MNC scheme makes use of an additional dimension introduced through orthogonal pulse waveform, the use of the pilot symbols does not reduce the effective information rate. The analytical and simulation results show that it is possible to achieve a low symbol error probability with a good signal-to-noise ratio when controlling a few parameters impacting the performance of the system such as the synchronisation in time and in frequency of the source nodes.