Biblio

Intelligent Environments (IEs) enrich the physical world by connecting it to software applications in order to increase user comfort, safety and efficiency. IEs are often supported by wireless networks of smart sensors and actuators, which offer multi-year battery life within small packages. However, existing radio mesh networks suffer from high latency, which precludes their use in many user interface systems such as real-time speech, touch or positioning. While recent advances in optical networks promise low end-to-end latency through symbol-synchronous transmission, current approaches are power hungry and therefore cannot be battery powered. We tackle this problem by introducing BoboLink, a mesh network that delivers low-power and low-latency optical networking through a combination of symbol-synchronous transmission and a novel wake-up technology. BoboLink delivers mesh-wide wake-up in 1.13ms, with a quiescent power consumption of 237µW. This enables building-wide human computer interfaces to be seamlessly delivered using wireless mesh networks for the first time.

This paper proposes a RSSI-based routing protocol for smart pole mesh networks equipped with multiple IEEE 802.11p/WAVE radios. In the IEEE 802.11p based multi-radio multi-channel environments, the performance of traditional mesh routing protocols is severely degraded because of metric measurement overhead. The periodic probe messages for measuring the quality of each channel incurs a large overhead due to the channel switching delay. To solve such an overhead problem, we introduce a routing metric that estimates expected transmission time and proposes a light-weight channel allocation algorithm based on RSSI value only. We evaluate the performance of the proposed solution through simulation experiments with NS-3. Simulation results show that it can improve the network performance in terms of latency and throughput, compared to the legacy WCETT routing scheme.

Mesh networks based on the wireless local area network (WLAN) technology, as specified by the standards amendment IEEE 802.11s, provide for a flexible and low-cost interconnection of devices and embedded systems for various use cases. To assess the real-world performance of WLAN mesh networks and potential optimization strategies, suitable testbeds and measurement tools are required. Designed for highly automated transport-layer throughput and latency measurements, the software FLExible Network Tester (Flent) is a promising candidate. However, so far Flent does not integrate information specific to IEEE 802.11s networks, such as peer link status data or mesh routing metrics. Consequently, we propose Flent extensions that allow to additionally capture IEEE 802.11s information as part of the automated performance tests. For the functional validation of our extensions, we conduct Flent measurements in a mesh mobility scenario using the network emulation framework Mininet-WiFi.

This paper investigates the robustness of the received signal strength (RSS)-based physical layer authentication (PLA) for wireless mesh networks, through experimental results. Specifically, we develop a secure wireless mesh networking framework and apply the RSS-based PLA scheme, with the aim to perform continuous authentication. The mesh setup comprises three Raspberry-PI4 computing nodes (acting as Alice, Bob, and Eve) and a server. The server role is to perform the initial authentication when a new node joins the mesh network. After that, the legitimate nodes in the mesh network perform continuous authentication, by leveraging the RSS feature of wireless signals. In particular, Bob tries to authenticate Alice in the presence of Eve. The performance of the presented framework is quantified through extensive experimental results in an outdoor environment, where various nodes' positions, relative distances, and pedestrian speeds scenarios are considered. The obtained results demonstrate the robustness of the underlying model, where an authentication rate of 99% for the static case can be achieved. Meanwhile, at the pedestrian speed, the authentication rate can drop to 85%. On the other hand, the detection rate improves when the distance between the legitimate and wiretap links is large (exceeds 20 meters) or when Alice and Eve are moving in different mobility patterns.

ETSI DECT-2020 New Radio (NR) is a new flexible radio interface targeted to support a broad range of wireless Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Recent reports have shown that DECT-2020 NR achieves good delay performance and it has been shown to fulfill both massive machine-type communications (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) requirements for 5th generation (5G) networks. A unique aspect of DECT-2020 as a 5G technology is that it is an autonomous wireless mesh network (WMN) protocol where the devices construct and uphold the network independently without the need for base stations or core network architecture. Instead, DECT-2020 NR relies on part of the network devices taking the role of a router to relay data through the network. This makes deployment of a DECT-2020 NR network affordable and extremely easy, but due to the nature of the medium access protocol, the routing responsibility adds an additional energy consumption burden to the nodes, who in the IoT domain are likely to be equipped with a limited battery capacity. In this paper, we analyze by system level simulations the energy consumption of DECT-2020 NR networks with different network sizes and topologies and how the reported low latencies can be upheld given the energy constraints of IoT devices.

With current Traditional / Legacy networks, the reliance on manual intervention to solve a variety of issues be it primary operational functionalities like addressing Link-failure or other consequent complexities arising out of existing solutions for challenges like Link-flapping or facing attacks like DDoS attacks is substantial. This physical and manual approach towards network configurations to make significant changes result in very slow updates and increased probability of errors and are not sufficient to address and support the rapidly shifting workload of the networks due to the fact that networking decisions are left to the hands of physical networking devices. With the advent of Software Defined Networking (SDN) which abstracts the network functionality planes, separating it from physical hardware – and decoupling the data plane from the control plane, it is able to provide a degree of automation for the network resources and management of the services provided by the network. This paper explores some of the aspects of automation provided by SDN capabilities in a Mesh Network (provides Network Security with redundancy of communication links) which contribute towards making the network inherently intelligent and take decisions without manual intervention and thus take a step towards Intelligent Automated Networks.

Currently, the technology of wireless mesh networks is actively developing. In 2021, Gartner included mesh network technologies and the tasks to ensure their security in the TOP global trends. A large number of scientific works focus on the research and modeling the traffic transmission in such networks. At the same time, they often bring up the “bottle neck” problem, characteristic of individual mesh network nodes. To address the issue, the authors of the article propose using the data caching mechanism and placing the cache data straight on the routers. The mathematical model presented in the article allows building a route with the highest access speed to the requested content by the modified Dijkstra algorithm. Besides, if the mesh network cache lacks the required content, the routers with the Internet access are applied. Practically, the considered method of creating routes to the content, which has already been requested by the users in the mesh network, allows for the optimal efficient use of the router bandwidth capacity distribution and reduces the latency period.

When the electrical grid in a region suffers a major outage, e.g., after a catastrophic cyber attack, a “black start” may be required, where the grid is slowly restarted, carefully and incrementally adding generating capacity and demand. To ensure safe and effective black start, the grid control center has to be able to communicate with field personnel and with supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Voice and text communication are particularly critical. As part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation, and Characterization Systems (RADICS) program, we designed, tested and evaluated a self-configuring mesh network prototype called the Phoenix Secure Emergency Network (PhoenixSEN). PhoenixSEN provides a secure drop-in replacement for grid's primary communication networks during black start recovery. The network combines existing and new technologies, can work with a variety of link-layer protocols, emphasizes manageability and auto-configuration, and provides services and applications for coordination of people and devices including voice, text, and SCADA communication. We discuss the architecture of PhoenixSEN and evaluate a prototype on realistic grid infrastructure through a series of DARPA-led exercises.

The Internet of Things technology is one of the important directions of Smart Grid research, involving many wireless sensors and communication facilities, and has high requirements for security. The physical layer security technology can effectively solve the security problems under wireless communication. As the most common application scenario of wireless communication is multi-node wireless network communication, group secret key (GSK) based on physical layer security and information theory security is gradually attracting investigator’s interest. In this paper, a novel physical layer GSK generation scheme based on code-domain exchange of channel information in mesh network is proposed. Instead of traditional side-information exchange in symbol-domain, error-correcting code is applied to finish information exchange and reconciliation simultaneously in code-domain. Each node processes the known channel bit sequence and then encodes it to generate a check sequence. After broadcasting the check bit sequence to other nodes, each node decodes the received check bit sequences to obtained the unknown channel information. The simulation results show that the scheme can effectively reduce the times of information exchanges while keeping a good performance including low bit error rate and low block error rate.

Verifying the identity of nodes within a wireless ad hoc mesh network and the authenticity of their messages in sufficiently secure, yet power-efficient ways is a long-standing challenge. This paper shows how the more recent concepts of self-sovereign identity management can be applied to Internet-of-Things mesh networks, using LoRaWAN as an example and applying Sovrin's decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials in combination with Schnorr signatures for securing the communication with a focus on simplex and broadcast connections. Besides the concept and system architecture, the paper discusses an ESP32-based implementation using SX1276/SX1278 LoRa chips, adaptations made to the lmic- and MbedTLS-based software stack, and practically evaluates performance aspects in terms of data overhead, time-on-air impact, and power consumption.

Bluetooth Low Energy mesh networks are emerging as new standard of short burst communications. While security of the messages is guaranteed thought standard encryption techniques, little has been done in terms of actively protecting the overall network in case of attacks aiming to undermine its integrity. Although many network analysis and risk mitigation techniques are currently available, they require considerable amounts of data coming from both legitimate and attack scenarios to sufficiently discriminate among them, which often turns into the requirement of a complete description of the traffic flowing through the network. Furthermore, there are no publicly available datasets to this extent for BLE mesh networks, due most to the novelty of the standard and to the absence of specific implementation tools. To create a reliable mechanism of network analysis suited for BLE in this paper we propose a machine learning Intrusion Detection System (IDS) based on pattern classification and recognition of the most classical denial of service attacks affecting this kind of networks, working on a single internal node, thus requiring a small amount of information to operate. Moreover, in order to overcome the gap created by the absence of data, we present our data collection system based on ESP32 that allowed the collection of the packets from the Network and the Model layers of the BLE Mesh stack, together with a set of experiments conducted to get the necessary data to train the IDS. In the last part, we describe some preliminary results obtained by the experimental setups, focusing on its strengths, as well as on the aspects where further analysis is required, hence proposing some improvements of the classification model as future work. Index Terms-Bluetooth, BLE Mesh, Intrusion Detection System, IoT, network security.

Wireless technology is rapidly proliferating. Devices such as Laptops, PDAs and cell-phones gained a lot of importance due to the use of wireless technology. Nowadays there is also a huge demand for spectrum allocation and there is a need to utilize the maximum available spectrum in efficient manner. Cognitive Radio (CR) Network is one such intelligent radio network, designed to utilize the maximum licensed bandwidth to un-licensed users. Cognitive Radio has the capability to understand unused spectrum at a given time at a specific location. This capability helps to minimize the interference to the licensed users and improves the performance of the network. Routing protocol selection is one of the main strategies to design any wireless or wired networks. In Cognitive radio networks the selected routing protocol should be best in terms of establishing an efficient route, addressing challenges in network topology and should be able to reduce bandwidth consumption. Performance analysis of the protocols helps to select the best protocol in the network. Objective of this study is to evaluate performance of various cognitive radio network routing protocols like Spectrum Aware On Demand Routing Protocol (SORP), Spectrum Aware Mesh Routing in Cognitive Radio Networks (SAMER) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) with and without black hole attack using various performance parameters like Throughput, E2E delay and Packet delivery ratio with the help of NS2 simulator.

We use potential fields tuned by genetic algorithms to dynamically reconFigure unmanned aerial vehicles networks to serve user bandwidth needs. Such flying network base stations have applications in the many domains needing quick temporary networked communications capabilities such as search and rescue in remote areas and security and defense in overwatch and scouting. Starting with an initial deployment that covers an area and discovers how users are distributed across this area of interest, tuned potential fields specify subsequent movement. A genetic algorithm tunes potential field parameters to reposition UAVs to create and maintain a mesh network that maximizes user bandwidth coverage and network lifetime. Results show that our evolutionary adaptive network deployment algorithm outperforms the current state of the art by better repositioning the unmanned aerial vehicles to provide longer coverage lifetimes while serving bandwidth requirements. The parameters found by the genetic algorithm on four training scenarios with different user distributions lead to better performance than achieved by the state of the art. Furthermore, these parameters also lead to superior performance in three never before seen scenarios indicating that our algorithm finds parameter values that generalize to new scenarios with different user distributions.

Internet of Things (IoT) now has extremely wide applications in many areas of life such as urban management, environmental management, smart shopping, and smart home. Because of the wide range of application fields, the IoT infrastructures are built differently. To make an IoT system indoor with high efficiency and more convenience, a case study for smart home security using Bluetooth Mesh approach is introduced. By using Bluetooth Mesh technology in home security, the user can open the door everywhere inside their house. The system work in a flexible way since it can extend the working range of network. In addition, the system can monitor the state of both the lock and any node in network by using a gateway to transfer data to cloud and enable a website-based interface.

The present work describes a remote environment monitoring system based on the paradigms of mesh networks and opportunistic networks, whereby a sensor node can explore “con-nectivity windows” to transmit information that will eventually reach another network participants. We discuss the threats to the system's security and propose security mechanisms for the system ensuring the integrity and availability of monitoring information, something identified as critical to its proper operation.

This paper investigates the use of BeagleBone Black Wireless single-board Linux computers with Long Range (LoRa) transceivers to send and receive information in a mesh network while one of the transmitting/receiving nodes is acting as a relay in the system. An experiment is conducted to examine how long each LoRa node needed to learn the transmission intervals of any other transmitting nodes on the network and to synchronize with the other nodes prior to transmission. The spread factor, bandwidth, and coding rate are all varied for a total of 18 different combinations. A link to the Python code used on the BeagleBone Black is provided at the end of this paper. The best parameter combinations for each individual node and for the system as a whole is investigated. Additional experiments and applications of this technology are explored in the conclusions.

With the recent advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), embedded devices increasingly operate collaboratively in autonomous networks. A key technique to guard the secure and safe operation of connected embedded devices is remote attestation. It allows a third party, the verifier, to ensure the integrity of a remote device, the prover. Unfortunately, existing attestation protocols are impractical when applied in autonomous networks of embedded systems due to their limited scalability, performance, robustness, and security guarantees. In this work, we propose PASTA, a novel attestation protocol that is particularly suited for autonomous embedded systems. PASTA is the first that (i) enables many low-end prover devices to attest their integrity towards many potentially untrustworthy low-end verifier devices, (ii) is fully decentralized, thus, able to withstand network disruptions and arbitrary device outages, and (iii) is in addition to software attacks capable of detecting physical attacks in a much more robust way than any existing protocol. We implemented our protocol, conducted measurements, and simulated large networks. The results show that PASTA is practical on low-end embedded devices, scales to large networks with millions of devices, and improves robustness by multiple orders of magnitude compared with the best existing protocols.

More and more industrial devices are expected to connect to the internet seamlessly. IPv6-based industrial wireless network can solve the address resources limitation problem. It is a challenge about how to ensure the wireless node join security after introducing the IPv6. In this paper, we propose a multiple nodes join mechanism, which includes a timeslot allocation method and secure join process for the IPv6 over IEEE 802.15.4e network. The timeslot allocation method is designed in order to configure communication resources in the join process for the new nodes. The test platform is implemented to verify the feasibility of the mechanism. The result shows that the proposed mechanism can reduce the communication cost for multiple nodes join process and improve the efficiency.

Smart Grid is a major element of the Smart City concept that enables two-way communication of energy data between electric utilities and their consumers. These communication technologies are going through sharp modernization to meet future demand growth and to achieve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric grid. In this paper, we implement an IPv6 based two-way communication system between the transformer agent (TA), installed at local electric transformer and various customer agents (CAs), connected to customer's smart meter. Various homes share their energy usage with the TA which in turn sends the utility's recommendations to the CAs. Raspberry Pi is used as hardware for all the CAs and the TA. We implement a self-healing mesh network between all nodes using OpenLab IEEE 802.15.4 chips and Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), and the data is secured by RSA/AES keys. Several tests have been conducted in real environments, inside and outside of Carleton University, to test the performance of this communication network in various obstacle settings. In this paper, we highlight the details behind the implementation of this IPv6-based smart grid communication system, the related challenges, and the proposed solutions.

In self-organized wireless network, such as ad hoc network, sensor network or mesh network, nodes are independent individuals which have different benefit; Therefore, selfish nodes refuse to forward packets for other nodes in order to save energy which causes the network fault. At the same time, some nodes may be malicious, whose aim is to damage the network. In this paper, we analyze the cooperation stimulation and security in self-organized wireless networks under a game theoretic framework. We first analyze a four node wireless network in which nodes share the channel by relaying for others during its idle periods in order to help the other nodes, each node has to use a part of its available channel capacity. And then, the fault tolerance and security problem is modeled as a non-cooperative game in which each player maximizes its own utility function. The goal of the game is to maximize the utility function in the giving condition in order to get better network efficiency. At last, for characterizing the efficiency of Nash equilibria, we analyze the so called price of anarchy, as the ratio between the objective function at the worst Nash equilibrium and the optimal objective function. Our results show that the players can get the biggest payoff if they obey cooperation strategy.

Because major smartphone platforms are equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) capabilities, more and more smart devices have adopted BLE technologies to communicate with smartphones. In order to support the mesh topology in BLE networks, several proposals have been designed. Among them, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) recently released a specification for Bluetooth mesh networks based upon BLE technology. This paper focuses on this standard solution and analyses its security protocol with hardware security in mind. As it is expected that internet of things (IoT) devices will be deployed everywhere, the risk of physical attacks must be assessed. First, we provide a comprehensive survey of the security features involved in Bluetooth mesh. Then, we introduce some physical attacks identified as serious threats for the IoT and discuss their relevance in the case of Bluetooth mesh networks. Finally, we briefly discuss possible countermeasures to reach a secure implementation.

In modern cyber-physical systems and wireless sensor networks the complexity of crisis management processes is caused by a variety of software/hardware assets and communication protocols, the necessity of their collaborative function, possible inconsistency of data flows between particular devices and increased requirements to cyber-physical security. A crisis management oriented model of a communicational mobile network is constructed. A general architecture of network nodes by the use of XBee circuits, Arduino microcontrollers and connecting equipment are developed. An analysis of possible cyber-physical security events on the base of existing intruder models is performed. A series of experiments on modeling attacks on network nodes is conducted. Possible ways for attack revelations by means of components for security event collection and data correlation is discussed.

With the advancement of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), 3D wireless mesh networks will play a crucial role in next generation mission critical wireless networks. Along with providing coverage over difficult terrain, it provides better spectral utilization through 3D spatial reuse. However, being a wireless network, 3D meshes are vulnerable to jamming/disruptive attacks. A jammer can disrupt the communication, as well as control of the network by intelligently causing interference to a set of nodes. This paper presents a distributed mechanism of avoiding jamming attacks by means of 3D spatial filtering where adaptive beam nulling is used to keep the jammer in null region in order to bypass jamming. Kalman filter based tracking mechanism is used to estimate the most likely trajectory of the jammer from noisy observation of the jammer's position. A beam null border is determined by calculating confidence region of jammer's current and next position estimates. An optimization goal is presented to calculate optimal beam null that minimizes the number of deactivated links while maximizing the higher value of confidence for keeping the jammer inside the null. The survivability of a 3D mesh network with a mobile jammer is studied through simulation that validates an 96.65% reduction in the number of jammed nodes.

Different organizations or countries maybe adopt different PKI trust model in real applications. On a large scale, all certification authorities (CA) and end entities construct a huge mesh network. PKI trust model exhibits unstructured mesh network as a whole. However, mesh trust model worsens computational complexity in certification path processing when the number of PKI domains increases. This paper proposes an enhanced mesh trust model for PKI. Keys generation and signature are fulfilled in Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for higher security level. An algorithm is suggested to improve the performance of certification path processing in this model. This trust model is less complex but more efficient and robust than the existing PKI trust models.

Tamper detection circuits provide the first and most important defensive wall in protecting electronic modules containing security data. A widely used procedure is to cover the entire module with a foil containing fine conductive mesh, which detects intrusion attempts. Detection circuits are further classified as passive or active. Passive circuits have the advantage of low power consumption, however they are unable to detect small variations in the conductive mesh parameters. Since modern tools provide an upper leverage over the passive method, the most efficient way to protect security modules is thus to use active circuits. The active tamper detection circuits are typically probing the conductive mesh with short pulses, analyzing its response in terms of delay and shape. The method proposed in this paper generates short pulses at one end of the mesh and analyzes the response at the other end. Apart from measuring pulse delay, the analysis includes a frequency domain characterization of the system, determining whether there has been an intrusion or not, by comparing it to a reference (un-tampered with) spectrum. The novelty of this design is the combined analysis, in time and frequency domains, of the small variations in mesh characteristic parameters.