Showing papers on "Key distribution in wireless sensor networks published in 2016"

Wireless communications with unmanned aerial vehicles: opportunities and challenges

Abstract: Wireless communication systems that include unmanned aerial vehicles promise to provide cost-effective wireless connectivity for devices without infrastructure coverage. Compared to terrestrial communications or those based on high-altitude platforms, on-demand wireless systems with low-altitude UAVs are in general faster to deploy, more flexibly reconfigured, and likely to have better communication channels due to the presence of short-range line-of-sight links. However, the utilization of highly mobile and energy-constrained UAVs for wireless communications also introduces many new challenges. In this article, we provide an overview of UAV-aided wireless communications, by introducing the basic networking architecture and main channel characteristics, highlighting the key design considerations as well as the new opportunities to be exploited.

Wireless Charging Technologies: Fundamentals, Standards, and Network Applications

Abstract: 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 powered communication networks: an overview

Abstract: Wireless powered communication networking (WPCN) is a new networking paradigm where the battery of wireless communication devices can be remotely replenished by means of microwave wireless power transfer (WPT) technology. WPCN eliminates the need for frequent manual battery replacement/recharging, and thus significantly improves the performance over conventional battery-powered communication networks in many aspects, such as higher throughput, longer device lifetime, and lower network operating cost. However, the design and future application of WPCN is essentially challenged by the low WPT efficiency over long distance, and the complex nature of joint wireless information and power transfer within the same network. In this article, we provide an overview of the key networking structures and performance enhancing techniques to build an efficient WPCN. In addition, we point out new and challenging future research directions for WPCN.

Network architecture, methods, and devices for a wireless communications network

Abstract: Methods and apparatus in a fifth-generation wireless communications, including an example method, in a wireless device, that includes receiving a downlink signal comprising an uplink access configuration index, using the uplink access configuration index to identify an uplink access configuration from among a predetermined plurality of uplink access configurations, and transmitting to the wireless communications network according to the identified uplink access configuration. The example method further includes, in the same wireless device, receiving, in a first subframe, a first Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission formatted according to a first numerology and receiving, in a second subframe, a second OFDM transmission formatted according to a second numerology, the second numerology differing from the first numerology. Variants of this method, corresponding apparatuses, and corresponding network-side methods and apparatuses are also disclosed.

Caching at the wireless edge: design aspects, challenges, and future directions

Abstract: Caching at the wireless edge is a promising way to boost spectral efficiency and reduce energy consumption of wireless systems. These improvements are rooted in the fact that popular contents are reused, asynchronously, by many users. In this article we first introduce methods to predict the popularity distributions and user preferences, and the impact of erroneous information. We then discuss the two aspects of caching systems, content placement and delivery. We expound the key differences between wired and wireless caching, and outline the differences in the system arising from where the caching takes place (e.g., at base stations or on the wireless devices themselves). Special attention is paid to the essential limitations in wireless caching, and possible trade-offs between spectral efficiency, energy efficiency, and cache size.

A Survey on Mobile Anchor Node Assisted Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Localization is one of the key technologies in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), since it provides fundamental support for many location-aware protocols and applications. Constraints on cost and power consumption make it infeasible to equip each sensor node in the network with a global position system (GPS) unit, especially for large-scale WSNs. A promising method to localize unknown nodes is to use mobile anchor nodes (MANs), which are equipped with GPS units moving among unknown nodes and periodically broadcasting their current locations to help nearby unknown nodes with localization. A considerable body of research has addressed the mobile anchor node assisted localization (MANAL) problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, no updated surveys on MAAL reflecting recent advances in the field have been presented in the past few years. This survey presents a review of the most successful MANAL algorithms, focusing on the achievements made in the past decade, and aims to become a starting point for researchers who are initiating their endeavors in MANAL research field. In addition, we seek to present a comprehensive review of the recent breakthroughs in the field, providing links to the most interesting and successful advances in this research field.

Massive MIMO and mmWave for 5G Wireless HetNet: Potential Benefits and Challenges

Abstract: There has been active research worldwide to develop the next-generation, i.e., fifth-generation (5G), wireless network. The 5G network is expected to support a significantly large amount of mobile data traffic and a huge number of wireless connections and achieve better costand energy-efficiency as well as quality of service (QoS) in terms of communication delay, reliability, and security. To this end, the 5G wireless network should exploit the potential of new developments, including superdense and heterogeneous deployment of cells and massive antenna arrays [i.e., massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) technologies] and utilization of higher frequencies, particularly millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies. This article discusses the potential benefits and challenges of the 5G wireless heterogeneous network (HetNet) that incorporates massive MIMO and mmWave technologies.

Wireless caching: technical misconceptions and business barriers

Abstract: Caching is a hot research topic and poised to develop into a key technology for the upcoming 5G wireless networks. However, the successful implementation of caching techniques crucially depends on joint research developments in different scientific domains such as networking, information theory, machine learning, and wireless communications. Moreover, there are business barriers related to the complex interactions between the involved stakeholders: users, cellular operators, and Internet content providers. In this article we discuss several technical misconceptions with the aim of uncovering enabling research directions for caching in wireless systems. Ultimately, we make a speculative stakeholder analysis for wireless caching in 5G.

Key Generation From Wireless Channels: A Review

Abstract: Key generation from the randomness of wireless channels is a promising alternative to public key cryptography for the establishment of cryptographic keys between any two users. This paper reviews the current techniques for wireless key generation. The principles, performance metrics and key generation procedure are comprehensively surveyed. Methods for optimizing the performance of key generation are also discussed. Key generation applications in various environments are then introduced along with the challenges of applying the approach in each scenario. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future studies.

Real-Time Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks for Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract: With recent adoption of wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSANs) in industrial automation, industrial wireless control systems have emerged as a frontier of cyber-physical systems. Despite their success in industrial monitoring applications, existing WSAN technologies face significant challenges in supporting control systems due to their lack of real-time performance and dynamic wireless conditions in industrial plants. This article reviews a series of recent advances in real-time WSANs for industrial control systems: 1) real-time scheduling algorithms and analyses for WSANs; 2) implementation and experimentation of industrial WSAN protocols; 3) cyber-physical codesign of wireless control systems that integrate wireless and control designs; and 4) a wireless cyber-physical simulator for codesign and evaluation of wireless control systems. This article concludes by highlighting research directions in industrial cyber-physical systems.

Wireless Sensor Network Virtualization: A Survey

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the key components of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. They are now ubiquitous and used in a plurality of application domains. WSNs are still domain specific and usually deployed to support a specific application. However, as WSNs' nodes are becoming more and more powerful, it is getting more and more pertinent to research how multiple applications could share a very same WSN infrastructure. Virtualization is a technology that can potentially enable this sharing. This paper is a survey on WSN virtualization. It provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art and an in-depth discussion of the research issues. We introduce the basics of WSN virtualization and motivate its pertinence with carefully selected scenarios. Existing works are presented in detail and critically evaluated using a set of requirements derived from the scenarios. The pertinent research projects are also reviewed. Several research issues are also discussed with hints on how they could be tackled.

ActiveTrust: Secure and Trustable Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are increasingly being deployed in security-critical applications Because of their inherent resource-constrained characteristics, they are prone to various security attacks, and a black hole attack is a type of attack that seriously affects data collection To conquer that challenge, an active detection-based security and trust routing scheme named ActiveTrust is proposed for WSNs The most important innovation of ActiveTrust is that it avoids black holes through the active creation of a number of detection routes to quickly detect and obtain nodal trust and thus improve the data route security More importantly, the generation and the distribution of detection routes are given in the ActiveTrust scheme, which can fully use the energy in non-hotspots to create as many detection routes as needed to achieve the desired security and energy efficiency Both comprehensive theoretical analysis and experimental results indicate that the performance of the ActiveTrust scheme is better than that of the previous studies ActiveTrust can significantly improve the data route success probability and ability against black hole attacks and can optimize network lifetime

A Provably Secure, Efficient, and Flexible Authentication Scheme for Ad hoc Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: In 2014, Turkanovic et al. proposed a smart card-based authentication scheme for heterogeneous ad hoc wireless sensor network. This scheme is very efficient since it employs only hash function and XOR operation. However, we found that Turkanovic et al. ’s scheme is vulnerable to impersonation attack with node capture, stolen smart card attack, sensor node spoofing attack, stolen verifier attack, and fails to ensure backward secrecy. We propose an efficient scheme to overcome all those weaknesses. Moreover, we also propose an advanced scheme, which provides perfect forward secrecy without much modification from the first proposed scheme.

A Survey on Wireless Indoor Localization from the Device Perspective

Abstract: With the marvelous development of wireless techniques and ubiquitous deployment of wireless systems indoors, myriad indoor location-based services (ILBSs) have permeated into numerous aspects of modern life. The most fundamental functionality is to pinpoint the location of the target via wireless devices. According to how wireless devices interact with the target, wireless indoor localization schemes roughly fall into two categories: device based and device free. In device-based localization, a wireless device (e.g., a smartphone) is attached to the target and computes its location through cooperation with other deployed wireless devices. In device-free localization, the target carries no wireless devices, while the wireless infrastructure deployed in the environment determines the target’s location by analyzing its impact on wireless signals. This article is intended to offer a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey on wireless indoor localization from the device perspective. In this survey, we review the recent advances in both modes by elaborating on the underlying wireless modalities, basic localization principles, and data fusion techniques, with special emphasis on emerging trends in (1) leveraging smartphones to integrate wireless and sensor capabilities and extend to the social context for device-based localization, and (2) extracting specific wireless features to trigger novel human-centric device-free localization. We comprehensively compare each scheme in terms of accuracy, cost, scalability, and energy efficiency. Furthermore, we take a first look at intrinsic technical challenges in both categories and identify several open research issues associated with these new challenges.

Device Fingerprinting in Wireless Networks: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract: Node forgery or impersonation, in which legitimate cryptographic credentials are captured by an adversary, constitutes one major security threat facing wireless networks. The fact that mobile devices are prone to be compromised and reverse engineered significantly increases the risk of such attacks in which adversaries can obtain secret keys on trusted nodes and impersonate the legitimate node. One promising approach toward thwarting these attacks is through the extraction of unique fingerprints that can provide a reliable and robust means for device identification. These fingerprints can be extracted from transmitted signal by analyzing information across the protocol stack. In this paper, the first unified and comprehensive tutorial in the area of wireless device fingerprinting for security applications is presented. In particular, we aim to provide a detailed treatment on developing novel wireless security solutions using device fingerprinting techniques. The objectives are three-fold: (i) to introduce a comprehensive taxonomy of wireless features that can be used in fingerprinting, (ii) to provide a systematic review on fingerprint algorithms including both white-list based and unsupervised learning approaches, and (iii) to identify key open research problems in the area of device fingerprinting and feature extraction, as applied to wireless security.

Evaluation of LoRa and LoRaWAN for wireless sensor networks

Abstract: LoRa is a new ISM band wireless technology designed for low power, unlicensed, Long Range operation. LoRaWAN is a Wide Area Network protocol that incorporates the LoRa wireless into a networked infrastructure. The indoor and outdoor performance of these technologies, the physical layer wireless and multi-gateway wide area network, was evaluated across the central business district (CBD) of Glasgow city (Scotland). The results indicated that this technology can be a reliable link for low cost remote sensing applications.

Wireless Software Defined Networking: A Survey and Taxonomy

Abstract: One of the primary architectural principles behind the Internet is the use of distributed protocols, which facilitates fault tolerance and distributed management. Unfortunately, having nodes (i.e., switches and routers) perform control decisions independently makes it difficult to control the network or even understand or debug its overall emergent behavior. As a result, networks are often inefficient, unstable, and fragile. This Internet architecture also poses a significant, often insurmountable, challenge to the deployment of new protocols and evolution of existing ones. Software defined networking (SDN) is a recent networking architecture with promising properties relative to these weaknesses in traditional networks. SDN decouples the control plane, which makes the network forwarding decisions, from the data plane, which mainly forwards the data. This decoupling enables more centralized control where coordinated decisions directly guide the network to desired operating conditions. Moreover, decoupling the control enables graceful evolution of protocols, and the deployment of new protocols without having to replace the data plane switches. In this survey, we review recent work that leverages SDN in wireless network settings, where they are not currently widely adopted or well understood. More specifically, we evaluate the use of SDN in four classes of popular wireless networks: cellular, sensor, mesh, and home networks. We classify the different advantages that can be obtained by using SDN across this range of networks, and hope that this classification identifies unexplored opportunities for using SDN to improve the operation and performance of wireless networks.

Lifetime and Energy Hole Evolution Analysis in Data-Gathering Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Network lifetime is a crucial performance metric to evaluate data-gathering wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where battery-powered sensor nodes periodically sense the environment and forward collected samples to a sink node. In this paper, we propose an analytic model to estimate the entire network lifetime from network initialization until it is completely disabled, and determine the boundary of energy hole in a data-gathering WSN. Specifically, we theoretically estimate the traffic load, energy consumption, and lifetime of sensor nodes during the entire network lifetime. Furthermore, we investigate the temporal and spatial evolution of energy hole and apply our analytical results to WSN routing in order to balance the energy consumption and improve the network lifetime. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed analytic model in estimating the network lifetime and energy hole evolution process.

A Realistic Lightweight Anonymous Authentication Protocol for Securing Real-Time Application Data Access in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: User authentication in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a critical security issue due to their unattended and hostile deployment in the field. Since the sensor nodes are equipped with limited computing power, storage, and communication modules, authenticating remote users in such resource-constrained environment is a paramount security concern. Until now, impressive efforts have been made for designing authentication schemes with user anonymity by using only the lightweight cryptographic primitives, such as symmetric key encryption/decryption and hash functions. However, to the best of our knowledge, none has succeeded so far. In this paper, we take an initial step to shed light on the rationale underlying this prominent issue. In order to do that here at first, we demonstrate that the existing solutions for anonymous user authentication in WSN are impractical. Subsequently, we propose a realistic authentication protocol for WSN, which can ensure various imperative security properties like user anonymity, untraceability, forward/backward secrecy, perfect forward secrecy, etc.

SDVN: enabling rapid network innovation for heterogeneous vehicular communication

Abstract: With the advances in telecommunications, more and more devices are connected to the Internet and getting smart. As a promising application scenario for carrier networks, vehicular communication has enabled many traffic-related applications. However, the heterogeneity of wireless infrastructures and the inflexibility in protocol deployment hinder the real world application of vehicular communications. SDN is promising to bridge the gaps through unified network abstraction and programmability. In this research, we propose an SDN-based architecture to enable rapid network innovation for vehicular communications. Under this architecture, heterogeneous wireless devices, including vehicles and roadside units, are abstracted as SDN switches with a unified interface. In addition, network resources such as bandwidth and spectrum can also be allocated and assigned by the logically centralized control plane, which provides a far more agile configuration capability. Besides, we also study several cases to highlight the advantages of the architecture, such as adaptive protocol deployment and multiple tenants isolation. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed architecture and cases are validated through traffic-trace-based simulation.

Power Optimization in 5G Networks: A Step Towards GrEEn Communication

Abstract: In the present scenario, an energy efficiency has become a matter of prime importance for wireless networks. To meet the demands of an increased capacity, an improved data rate, and a better quality of the service of the next-generation networks, there is a need to adopt energy-efficient architectures. Along with these requirements, it is also our social responsibility to reduce the carbon footprint by reducing the power consumption in a wireless network. Hence, a green communication is an urgent need. In this paper, we have surveyed various techniques for the power optimization of the upcoming 5G networks. The primary focus is on the use of relays and small cells to improve the energy efficiency of the network. We have discussed the various scenarios of relaying for the next-generation networks. Along with this, the importance of simultaneous wireless power and information transfer, massive multiple input multiple output, and millimeter waves has been analyzed for 5G networks.

Radio-Over-Fiber Technologies for Emerging Wireless Systems

Abstract: Radio-over-fiber transmission has extensively been studied as a means to realizing a fiber optic wireless distribution network that enables seamless integration of the optical and wireless network infrastructures. Emerging wireless communication networks that support new broadband services provide increased opportunities for photonics technologies to play a prominent role in the realization of the next generation integrated optical/wireless networks. In this paper, we present a review of recent developments in radio-over-fiber technologies that can support the distribution of broadband wireless signals in a converged optical/wireless network. We also describe some of the challenges for the successful application of radio-over-fiber technologies in future wireless systems, such as 5G and 60-GHz networks.

Optimal Charging in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed several new promising technologies to power wireless sensor networks, which motivate some key topics to be revisited. By integrating sensing and computation capabilities to the traditional radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, the Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) is an open-source platform acting as a pioneering experimental platform of wireless rechargeable sensor networks. Different from traditional tags, an RFID-based wireless rechargeable sensor node needs to charge its onboard energy storage above a threshold to power its sensing, computation, and communication components. Consequently, such charging delay imposes a unique design challenge for deploying wireless rechargeable sensor networks. In this paper, we tackle this problem by planning the optimal movement strategy of the mobile RFID reader, such that the time to charge all nodes in the network above their energy threshold is minimized. We first propose an optimal solution using the linear programming (LP) method. To further reduce the computational complexity, we then introduce a heuristic solution with a provable approximation ratio of (1 + θ)/(1 - e) by discretizing the charging power on a 2-D space. Through extensive evaluations, we demonstrate that our design outperforms the set-cover-based design by an average of 24.7%, whereas the computational complexity is O((N/e) 2 ). Finally, we consider two practical issues in system implementation and provide guidelines for parameter setting.

LC Passive Wireless Sensors Toward a Wireless Sensing Platform: Status, Prospects, and Challenges

Abstract: Inductor–capacitor ( $LC$ ) passive wireless sensors use a transformer with loose coupling between an external readout coil and an inductor that receives power through this inductive coupling. Changes in the sensor are wirelessly and remotely detected by the readout coil, which makes them highly useful in applications that require the sensor to be powered remotely and to occupy a small volume, such as harsh and sealed environments, where physical access to the sensor is difficult. Although the sensor to accomplish this function dates from the 1960’s, its rapid extension over the past decades has benefited from microelectromechanical systems. This paper provides an overview of the status and challenges in the $LC$ passive wireless sensor toward a wireless sensing platform. The basic sensing principles are first categorized into detecting changes of the sensor in response to the capacitance, resistance, inductance, or coupling distance due to the parameter of interest through monitoring the impedance magnitude and phase spectrum. The present state of the art in sensor applications for pressure, strain, temperature, humidity, biochemical, gas, and so on is then reviewed and compared. For emerging applications from many Internet of Things scenarios, geometrical constraints, such as small and non-invasive coils, reduce the magnetic coupling between the sensor and the readout coil, resulting in a limited interrogation distance. Furthermore, an increasing number of applications also require the simultaneous measurement of multiple parameters. Recent efforts to increase the interrogation distance and to extend the measurement of single parameter to multiple parameters are finally outlined. [2016-0093]

Dynamic Channel Access to Improve Energy Efficiency in Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks operating in the license-free spectrum suffer from uncontrolled interference as those spectrum bands become increasingly crowded. The emerging cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSNs) provide a promising solution to address this challenge by enabling sensor nodes to opportunistically access licensed channels. However, since sensor nodes have to consume considerable energy to support CR functionalities, such as channel sensing and switching, the opportunistic channel accessing should be carefully devised for improving the energy efficiency in CRSN. To this end, we investigate the dynamic channel accessing problem to improve the energy efficiency for a clustered CRSN. Under the primary users’ protection requirement, we study the resource allocation issues to maximize the energy efficiency of utilizing a licensed channel for intra-cluster and inter-cluster data transmission, respectively. Moreover, with the consideration of the energy consumption in channel sensing and switching, we further determine the condition when sensor nodes should sense and switch to a licensed channel for improving the energy efficiency, according to the packet loss rate of the license-free channel. In addition, two dynamic channel accessing schemes are proposed to identify the channel sensing and switching sequences for intra-cluster and inter-cluster data transmission, respectively. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed channel accessing schemes can significantly reduce the energy consumption in CRSNs.

A Study of Efficient Power Consumption Wireless Communication Techniques/ Modules for Internet of Things (IoT) Applications

Abstract: A study of wireless technologies for IoT applications in terms of power consumption has been presented in this paper. The study focuses on the importance of using low power wireless techniques and modules in IoT applications by introducing a comparative between different low power wireless communication techniques such as ZigBee, Low Power Wi-Fi, 6LowPAN, LPWA and their modules to conserve power and longing the life for the IoT network sensors. The approach of the study is in term of protocol used and the particular module that achieve that protocol. The candidate protocols are classified according to the range of connectivity between sensor nodes. For short ranges connectivity the candidate protocols are ZigBee, 6LoWPAN and low power Wi-Fi. For long connectivity the candidate is LoRaWAN protocol. The results of the study demonstrate that the choice of module for each protocol plays a vital role in battery life due to the difference of power consumption for each module/protocol. So, the evaluation of protocols with each other depends on the module used.

The Evolution of Sink Mobility Management in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Abstract: Sink mobility has long been recognized as an efficient method of improving system performance in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), e.g. relieving traffic burden from a specific set of nodes. Though tremendous research efforts have been devoted to this topic during the last decades, yet little attention has been paid for the research summarization and guidance. This paper aims to fill in the blank and presents an up-to-date survey on the sink mobility issue. Its main contribution is to review mobility management schemes from an evolutionary point of view. The related schemes have been divided into four categories: uncontrollable mobility (UMM), path-restricted mobility (PRM), location-restricted mobility (LRM) and unrestricted mobility (URM). Several representative solutions are described following the proposed taxonomy. To help readers comprehend the development flow within the category, the relationship among different solutions is outlined, with detailed descriptions as well as in-depth analysis. In this way, besides some potential extensions based on current research, we are able to identify several open issues that receive little attention or remain unexplored so far.

Comparative Examination on Architecture and Protocol of Industrial Wireless Sensor Network Standards

Abstract: This paper discusses key aspects of the four most popular industrial wireless sensor network standards: ZigBee, WirelessHART, ISA100.11a, and WIA-PA. The detailed design and protocol architectures are comparatively examined. The uniqueness of each standard is highlighted and justifications for their design are provided. Similarities and differences among these standards at each protocol layer are compared. With consideration of the scopes and the limitations of these standards, the suitability of these standards to meet the industrial requirements has also been examined.