Alexandros Fragkiadakis

Bio: Alexandros Fragkiadakis is an academic researcher from Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas. The author has contributed to research in topics: Encryption & Wireless sensor network. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 53 publications receiving 1262 citations. Previous affiliations of Alexandros Fragkiadakis include Loughborough University.

A Survey on Security Threats and Detection Techniques in Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract: With the rapid proliferation of new technologies and services in the wireless domain, spectrum scarcity has become a major concern. The allocation of the Industrial, Medical and Scientific (ISM) band has enabled the explosion of new technologies (e.g. Wi-Fi) due to its licence-exempt characteristic. The widespread adoption of Wi-Fi technology, combined with the rapid penetration of smart phones running popular user services (e.g. social online networks) has overcrowded substantially the ISM band. On the other hand, according to a number of recent reports, several parts of the static allocated licensed bands are under-utilized. This has brought up the idea of the opportunistic use of these bands through the, so-called, cognitive radios and cognitive radio networks. Cognitive radios have enabled the opportunity to transmit in several licensed bands without causing harmful interference to licensed users. Along with the realization of cognitive radios, new security threats have been raised. Adversaries can exploit several vulnerabilities of this new technology and cause severe performance degradation. Security threats are mainly related to two fundamental characteristics of cognitive radios: cognitive capability, and reconfigurability. Threats related to the cognitive capability include attacks launched by adversaries that mimic primary transmitters, and transmission of false observations related to spectrum sensing. Reconfiguration can be exploited by attackers through the use of malicious code installed in cognitive radios. Furthermore, as cognitive radio networks are wireless in nature, they face all classic threats present in the conventional wireless networks. The scope of this work is to give an overview of the security threats and challenges that cognitive radios and cognitive radio networks face, along with the current state-of-the-art to detect the corresponding attacks. In addition, future challenges are addressed.

Spectrum Assignment in Cognitive Radio Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

Abstract: Cognitive radio (CR) has emerged as a promising technology to exploit the unused portions of spectrum in an opportunistic manner. The fixed spectrum allocation of governmental agencies results in unused portions of spectrum, which are called "spectrum holes" or "white spaces". CR technology overcomes this issue, allowing devices to sense the spectrum for unused portions and use the most suitable ones, according to some pre-defined criteria. Spectrum assignment is a key mechanism that limits the interference between CR devices and licensed users, enabling a more efficient usage of the wireless spectrum. Interference is a key factor that limits the performance in wireless networks. The scope of this work is to give an overview of the problem of spectrum assignment in cognitive radio networks, presenting the state-of-the-art proposals that have appeared in the literature, analyzing the criteria for selecting the most suitable portion of the spectrum and showing the most common approaches and techniques used to solve the spectrum assignment problem. Finally, an analysis of the techniques and approaches is presented, discussing also the open issues for future research in this area.

Enabling reliable and secure IoT-based smart city applications

Abstract: Smart Cities are considered recently as a promising solution for providing efficient services to citizens with the use of Information and Communication Technologies. With the latest advances on the Internet of Things, a new era has emerged in the Smart City domain, opening new opportunities for the development of efficient and low-cost applications that aim to improve the Quality of Life in cities. Although there is much research in this area, which has resulted in the development of many commercial products, significant parameters like reliability, security and privacy have not been considered as very important up until now. The newly launched FP7-SmartCities-2013 project RERUM aims to build upon the advances in the area of Internet of Things in Smart Cities and develop a framework to enhance reliability and security of smart city applications, with the citizen at the center of attention. This work presents four applications that will be developed within RERUM, gives a general description of the open reliability and security issues that have to be taken into account and gives an overall view of the solutions that RERUM will develop to address these issues.

Anomaly-based intrusion detection of jamming attacks, local versus collaborative detection

Abstract: We present intrusion detection algorithms to detect physical layer jamming attacks in wireless networks. We compare the performance of local algorithms on the basis of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio SINR executing independently at several monitors, with a collaborative detection algorithm that fuses the outputs provided by these algorithms. The local algorithms fall into two categories: simple threshold that raise an alarm if the output of the SINR-based metrics we consider deviates from a predefined detection threshold and cumulative sum cusum algorithms that raise an alarm if the aggregated output exceeds the predefined threshold. For collaborative detection, we use the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence algorithm. We collect SINR traces from a real IEEE 802.11 network, and with the use of a new evaluation method, we evaluate both the local and the Dempster-Shafer algorithms in terms of the detection probability, false alarm rate, and their robustness to different detection threshold values, under different attack intensities. The evaluation shows that the cusums achieve higher performance than the simple threshold algorithms under all attack intensities. The Dempster-Shafer algorithm when combined with the simple algorithms, it can increase their performance by more than 80%, but for the cusum algorithms it does not substantially improve their already high performance.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ubiquitous robust communications for emergency response using multi-operator heterogeneous networks

Abstract: A number of disasters in various places of the planet have caused an extensive loss of lives, severe damages to properties and the environment, as well as a tremendous shock to the survivors. For relief and mitigation operations, emergency responders are immediately dispatched to the disaster areas. Ubiquitous and robust communications during the emergency response operations are of paramount importance. Nevertheless, various reports have highlighted that after many devastating events, the current technologies used, failed to support the mission critical communications, resulting in further loss of lives. Inefficiencies of the current communications used for emergency response include lack of technology inter-operability between different jurisdictions, and high vulnerability due to their centralized infrastructure. In this article, we propose a flexible network architecture that provides a common networking platform for heterogeneous multi-operator networks, for interoperation in case of emergencies. A wireless mesh network is the main part of the proposed architecture and this provides a back-up network in case of emergencies. We first describe the shortcomings and limitations of the current technologies, and then we address issues related to the applications and functionalities a future emergency response network should support. Furthermore, we describe the necessary requirements for a flexible, secure, robust, and QoS-aware emergency response multi-operator architecture, and then we suggest several schemes that can be adopted by our proposed architecture to meet those requirements. In addition, we suggest several methods for the re-tasking of communication means owned by independent individuals to provide support during emergencies. In order to investigate the feasibility of multimedia transmission over a wireless mesh network, we measured the performance of a video streaming application in a real wireless metropolitan multi-radio mesh network, showing that the mesh network can meet the requirements for high quality video transmissions.

Internet of Things: A Survey on Enabling Technologies, Protocols, and Applications

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) with emphasis on enabling technologies, protocols, and application issues. The IoT is enabled by the latest developments in RFID, smart sensors, communication technologies, and Internet protocols. The basic premise is to have smart sensors collaborate directly without human involvement to deliver a new class of applications. The current revolution in Internet, mobile, and machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies can be seen as the first phase of the IoT. In the coming years, the IoT is expected to bridge diverse technologies to enable new applications by connecting physical objects together in support of intelligent decision making. This paper starts by providing a horizontal overview of the IoT. Then, we give an overview of some technical details that pertain to the IoT enabling technologies, protocols, and applications. Compared to other survey papers in the field, our objective is to provide a more thorough summary of the most relevant protocols and application issues to enable researchers and application developers to get up to speed quickly on how the different protocols fit together to deliver desired functionalities without having to go through RFCs and the standards specifications. We also provide an overview of some of the key IoT challenges presented in the recent literature and provide a summary of related research work. Moreover, we explore the relation between the IoT and other emerging technologies including big data analytics and cloud and fog computing. We also present the need for better horizontal integration among IoT services. Finally, we present detailed service use-cases to illustrate how the different protocols presented in the paper fit together to deliver desired IoT services.

Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

Abstract: This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers, without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical layer message authentication is also briefly introduced. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.