The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next era of communication. Using the IoT, physical objects can be empowered to create, receive, and exchange data in a seamless manner. Various IoT applications focus on automating different tasks and are trying to empower the inanimate physical objects to act without any human intervention. The existing and upcoming IoT applications are highly promising to increase the level of comfort, efficiency, and automation for the users. To be able to implement such a world in an ever-growing fashion requires high security, privacy, authentication, and recovery from attacks. In this regard, it is imperative to make the required changes in the architecture of the IoT applications for achieving end-to-end secure IoT environments. In this paper, a detailed review of the security-related challenges and sources of threat in the IoT applications is presented. After discussing the security issues, various emerging and existing technologies focused on achieving a high degree of trust in the IoT applications are discussed. Four different technologies, blockchain, fog computing, edge computing, and machine learning, to increase the level of security in IoT are discussed.

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A Survey on IoT Security: Application Areas, Security Threats, and Solution Architectures

All one needs to know about fog computing and related edge computing paradigms: A complete survey

As the explosive growth of smart devices and the advent of many new applications, traffic volume has been growing exponentially. The traditional centralized network architecture cannot accommodate such user demands due to heavy burden on the backhaul links and long latency. Therefore, new architectures, which bring network functions and contents to the network edge, are proposed, i.e., mobile edge computing and caching. Mobile edge networks provide cloud computing and caching capabilities at the edge of cellular networks. In this survey, we make an exhaustive review on the state-of-the-art research efforts on mobile edge networks. We first give an overview of mobile edge networks, including definition, architecture, and advantages. Next, a comprehensive survey of issues on computing, caching, and communication techniques at the network edge is presented. The applications and use cases of mobile edge networks are discussed. Subsequently, the key enablers of mobile edge networks, such as cloud technology, SDN/NFV, and smart devices are discussed. Finally, open research challenges and future directions are presented as well.

A Survey on Mobile Edge Networks: Convergence of Computing, Caching and Communications

Network slicing has been identified as the backbone of the rapidly evolving 5G technology. However, as its consolidation and standardization progress, there are no literatures that comprehensively discuss its key principles, enablers, and research challenges. This paper elaborates network slicing from an end-to-end perspective detailing its historical heritage, principal concepts, enabling technologies and solutions as well as the current standardization efforts. In particular, it overviews the diverse use cases and network requirements of network slicing, the pre-slicing era, considering RAN sharing as well as the end-to-end orchestration and management, encompassing the radio access, transport network and the core network. This paper also provides details of specific slicing solutions for each part of the 5G system. Finally, this paper identifies a number of open research challenges and provides recommendations toward potential solutions.

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Network Slicing and Softwarization: A Survey on Principles, Enabling Technologies, and Solutions

Wireless charging is a technology of transmitting power through an air gap to electrical devices for the purpose of energy replenishment. The recent progress in wireless charging techniques and development of commercial products have provided a promising alternative way to address the energy bottleneck of conventionally portable battery-powered devices. However, the incorporation of wireless charging into the existing wireless communication systems also brings along a series of challenging issues with regard to implementation, scheduling, and power management. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of wireless charging techniques, the developments in technical standards, and their recent advances in network applications. In particular, with regard to network applications, we review the static charger scheduling strategies, mobile charger dispatch strategies and wireless charger deployment strategies. Additionally, we discuss open issues and challenges in implementing wireless charging technologies. Finally, we envision some practical future network applications of wireless charging.

Wireless Charging Technologies: Fundamentals, Standards, and Network Applications

The explosive rise of Internet of Things (IoT) systems have notably increased the potential attack surfaces for cybercriminals. Accounting for the features and constraints of IoT devices, traditional security countermeasures can be inefficient in dynamic IoT environments. In this vein, the advantages introduced by software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) have the potential to reshape the landscape of cybersecurity for IoT systems. To this aim, we provide a comprehensive analysis of security features introduced by NFV and SDN, describing the manifold strategies able to monitor, protect, and react to IoT security threats. We also present lessons learned in the adoption of SDN/NFV-based protection approaches in IoT environments, comparing them with conventional security countermeasures. Finally, we deeply discuss the open challenges related to emerging SDN- and NFV-based security mechanisms, aiming to provide promising directives to conduct future research in this fervent area.

A Survey on Emerging SDN and NFV Security Mechanisms for IoT Systems

The proliferation of heterogeneous devices connected through large-scale networks is a clear sign that the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is getting closer to becoming a reality. Many researchers and experts in the field share the opinion that the next-to-come fifth generation (5G) cellular systems will be a strong boost for the IoT deployment. Device-toDevice (D2D) appears as a key communication paradigm to support heterogeneous objects interconnection and to guarantee important benefits. In this paper, we thoroughly discuss the added-value features introduced by cellular/noncellular D2D communications and its potential in efficiently fulfilling IoT requirements in 5G networks. State-of-the-art solutions, enabling radio technologies, and current standardization activities for D2D communications are surveyed and their pros and cons with reference to manifold IoT use cases pointed out. Future research directions are then presented towards a fully converged 5G IoT ecosystem.

Device-to-Device Communications for 5G Internet of Things

The constant and fast increase in the number of heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT) devices that populate everyday life environments brings new challenges to the full exploitation of the computation, memory, sensing, and actuation resources associated to them. In this context, device virtualization solutions and platforms may definitely play a key role in enabling the desired tradeoff between flexibility and performance. This paper focuses on lightweight virtualization technologies for IoT devices, suitably thought to effectively deploy new integrated applications and to create a novel distributed and virtualized ecosystem. Two different frameworks for container-based IoT service provisioning are compared, the one based on a direct interaction between two cooperating devices and the other based on the presence of a manager supervising the operations between cooperating devices forming a cluster. In the latter case, accounting for the growing impetus to move intelligence toward the edge of the network, management features are implemented at the network access point to provide short latency responses. We also introduce the outcomes of a thorough performance evaluation campaign conducted via a real IoT testbed. The measurements, performed by accounting for the constraints of typical IoT nodes, shed light on the actual feasibility of container-based IoT frameworks.

Evaluating Performance of Containerized IoT Services for Clustered Devices at the Network Edge

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) will play a key role in next-generation mobile networks to extend the range of supported delay-sensitive applications. Furthermore, an increasing attention is paid to provide user-centric services, to better address the strict requirements of novel immersive applications. In this scenario, MEC solutions need to efficiently cope with user mobility, which requires fast relocation of service instances to guarantee the desired Quality of Experience. However, service migration is still an open issue, especially for resource-constrained edge nodes interconnected by high-latency and low-bandwidth links. In this paper, by leveraging the potential of lightweight container-based virtualization techniques, we investigate a novel approach to support service provisioning in dynamic MEC environments. In particular, we present a framework where proactive service replication for stateless applications is exploited to drastically reduce the time of service migration between different cloudlets and to meet the latency requirements. The performance evaluation shows promising results of our approach with respect to classic reactive service migration.

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Providing ultra‐short latency to user‐centric 5G applications at the mobile network edge

Extending cloud infrastructure to the Network Edge represents a breakthrough to support delay-sensitive applications in next 5G cellular systems. In this context, to enable ultrashort response times, fast relocation of service instances between edge nodes is required to cope with user mobility. To face this issue, proactive service replication is considered a promising strategy to reduce the overall migration time and to guarantee the desired Quality of Experience (QoE). On the other hand, the provisioning of replicas over multiple edge nodes increases the resource consumption of constrained edge nodes and the relevant deployment cost. Given the two conflicting objectives, in this paper we investigate different optimization models for proactive service migration at the Network Edge, which can exploit prediction of user mobility patterns. In particular, we define two Integer Linear Problem optimization schemes, which aim at respectively minimizing the QoE degradation due to service migration, and the cost of replicas' deployment. Performance evaluation shows the effectiveness of our proposed solutions.

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Ivan Farris

Papers

A Survey on Emerging SDN and NFV Security Mechanisms for IoT Systems

Device-to-Device Communications for 5G Internet of Things

Evaluating Performance of Containerized IoT Services for Clustered Devices at the Network Edge

Providing ultra‐short latency to user‐centric 5G applications at the mobile network edge

Optimizing service replication for mobile delay-sensitive applications in 5G edge network