Thapar University

About: Thapar University is a education organization based out in Patiāla, Punjab, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Cloud computing & Fuzzy logic. The organization has 2944 authors who have published 8558 publications receiving 130392 citations.

EDL-COVID: Ensemble Deep Learning for COVID-19 Case Detection From Chest X-Ray Images

Abstract: Effective screening of COVID-19 cases has been becoming extremely important to mitigate and stop the quick spread of the disease during the current period of COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. In this article, we consider radiology examination of using chest X-ray images, which is among the effective screening approaches for COVID-19 case detection. Given deep learning is an effective tool and framework for image analysis, there have been lots of studies for COVID-19 case detection by training deep learning models with X-ray images. Although some of them report good prediction results, their proposed deep learning models might suffer from overfitting, high variance, and generalization errors caused by noise and a limited number of datasets. Considering ensemble learning can overcome the shortcomings of deep learning by making predictions with multiple models instead of a single model, we propose EDL-COVID , an ensemble deep learning model employing deep learning and ensemble learning. The EDL-COVID model is generated by combining multiple snapshot models of COVID-Net, which has pioneered in an open-sourced COVID-19 case detection method with deep neural network processed chest X-ray images, by employing a proposed weighted averaging ensembling method that is aware of different sensitivities of deep learning models on different classes types. Experimental results show that EDL-COVID offers promising results for COVID-19 case detection with an accuracy of 95%, better than COVID-Net of 93.3%.

A Provably Secure and Lightweight Anonymous User Authenticated Session Key Exchange Scheme for Internet of Things Deployment

Abstract: With the ever increasing adoption rate of Internet-enabled devices [also known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices] in applications such as smart home, smart city, smart grid, and healthcare applications, we need to ensure the security and privacy of data and communications among these IoT devices and the underlying infrastructure. For example, an adversary can easily tamper with the information transmitted over a public channel, in the sense of modification, deletion, and fabrication of data-in-transit and data-in-storage. Time-critical IoT applications such as healthcare may demand the capability to support external parties (users) to securely access IoT data and services in real-time. This necessitates the design of a secure user authentication mechanism, which should also allow the user to achieve security and functionality features such as anonymity and un-traceability. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight anonymous user authenticated session key agreement scheme in the IoT environment. The proposed scheme uses three-factor authentication, namely a user’s smart card, password, and personal biometric information. The proposed scheme does not require the storing of user specific information at the gateway node. We then demonstrate the proposed scheme’s security using the broadly accepted real-or-random (ROR) model, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, and automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPAs) software simulation tool, as well as presenting an informal security analysis to demonstrate its other features. In addition, through our simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms existing related user authentication schemes, in terms of its security and functionality features, and computation costs.

BloHosT: Blockchain Enabled Smart Tourism and Hospitality Management

Abstract: In the era of Industry 4.0, e-tourism uses bulk of digital payments through applications supported by heterogeneous payment gateways. These heterogeneous payment gateways open the doors for the attackers to perform malicious activities such as-hacking of wallet accounts, identity theft, attacks on payment clearance cycles. In e-tourism, financial data is maintained in a centralized cloud server, which can lead to payment failures during peak traffic. The aforementioned issues can be addressed by the usage of a decentralized mechanism such as-blockchain, which enables trust and reputation management among various stakeholders such as-banks, travel agencies, airports, railways, cruises, hotels, restaurants, and local taxis. Motivated by the above discussion, we propose a framework named as BloHosT (Blockchain Enabled Smart Tourism and Hospitality Management), which allows tourists to interact with various stakeholders through a single wallet identifier linked with a cryptocurrency server to initiate payments. BloHosT uses an immutable ledger, where no proofs are required during travel that provides a hassle-free experience to tourists. Also, a Tourism enabled Deep-Learning (TeDL) framework is presented as a part of BloHosT framework, which is trained on experience of previous visited travelers. It provides rating scores to prospective travelers about the recently visited locations by previous travelers. Finally, through case studies, we demonstrate that BloHosT achieves a high Return of Investment (ROI) in tourism sector as compared to traditional frameworks.