Now showing 1 - 10 of 19
  • Publication
    AGE: authentication in gadget-free healthcare environments
    Mobile and sensor related technologies are significantly revolutionizing the medical healthcare sectors. In current healthcare systems, gadgets are the prominent way of acquiring medical services. However, the recent technological advancements in smart and ambient environments are offering users new ways to access the healthcare services without using any explicit gadgets. One of the key challenges in such gadget-free environments is performing secure user authentication with the intelligent surroundings. For example, a secure, efficient and user-friendly authentication mechanism is essential for elderly/disabled people or patients in critical conditions requiring medical services. Hence, modern authentication systems should be sophisticated enough to identify such patients without requiring their physical efforts or placing gadgets on them. This paper proposes an anonymous and privacy-preserving biometrics based authentication scheme for such gadget-free healthcare environment. We performed formal security verification of our proposed scheme using CDVT/AD tool and our results indicate that the proposed scheme is secure for such smart and gadget-free environments. We verify that the proposed scheme can resist against various well-known security attacks. Moreover, the proposed system showed better performance as compared with existing biometrics base remote user authentication schemes.
      269
  • Publication
    Blockchain-based Roaming and Offload Service Platform for Local 5G Operators
    Local 5G Operator (L5GO) concept is one of the most prominent versatile applications of the 5G in the near future. The popularity of L5GOs will trigger a greater number of roaming and offloading events between mobile operators. However, existing static and the operator-assisted roaming and offloading procedures are inefficient for L5GO ecosystem due to poor service quality, data privacy issues, data transferring delays, excessive costs for intermediary parties and existence of roaming fraud. To address these challenges, we propose a blockchain / Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based service platform for L5GOs to facilitate efficient roaming and offload services. As the key contribution, blockchain-based smart contract scheme is proposed to establish dynamic and automated agreements between operators. By using smart contracts, we introduce several novel features such as universal wallet for subscribers, service quality based L5GO rating system, user-initiated roaming process and the roaming fraud prevention system to improve the operational quality of a L5GO. A prototype of the proposed platform is emulated with the Ethereum blockchain platform and Rinkeby Testnet to evaluate the performance and justify the feasibility of the proposal. Upon an extensive evaluation on the prototype, it was observed that the proposed platform offered benefits such as cost effective, more secure and reliable experience.
      402Scopus© Citations 7
  • Publication
    A Survey on Mobile Augmented Reality with 5G Mobile Edge Computing: Architectures, Applications and Technical Aspects
    The Augmented Reality (AR) technology enhances the human perception of the world by combining the real environment with the virtual space. With the explosive growth of powerful, less expensive mobile devices, and the emergence of sophisticated communication infrastructure, Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) applications are gaining increased popularity. MAR allows users to run AR applications on mobile devices with greater mobility and at a lower cost. The emerging 5G communication technologies act as critical enablers for future MAR applications to achieve ultra-low latency and extremely high data rates while Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) brings enhanced computational power closer to the users to complement MAR. This paper extensively discusses the landscape of MAR through the past and its future prospects with respect to the 5G systems and complementary technology MEC. The paper especially provides an informative analysis of the network formation of current and future MAR systems in terms of cloud, edge, localized, and hybrid architectural options. The paper discusses key application areas for MAR and their future with the advent of 5G technologies. The paper also discusses the requirements and limitations of MAR technical aspects such as communication, mobility management, energy management, service offloading and migration, security, and privacy and analyzes the role of 5G technologies.
      544Scopus© Citations 284
  • Publication
    The Fight against COVID-19 Pandemic with 5G Technologies
    COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world in an unexpected manner. The human race is battling against the pandemic while schools, universities, industries, hospitals and governments are seeking new methods and technologies to seamlessly continue their usual operations. In response, this paper presents how 5G and IoT (Internet of Things) related technologies can be efficiently utilized and developed to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Several use-cases on how 5G and IoT can be enablers to provide innovative solutions in the areas of telehealth, contact tracing, education, retail and supply chains, e-government/ remote office/ information sharing, smart manufacturing and factory automation, e-tourism and entertainment are presented along with their technical requirements and challenges. It is envisaged that the proposed solutions will be instrumental to facilitate the usual lifestyle, work and other day-to-day activities of humans in the post-pandemic world.
      262Scopus© Citations 123
  • Publication
    How DoS attacks can be mounted on Network Slice Broker and can they be mitigated using blockchain?
    Several recent works talk about the potential use of network slice brokering mechanism to facilitate the resource allocation of network slicing in next generation networks. This involves network tenants on the one hand and resource/infrastructure providers on the other hand. However, the potential downside of deploying Network Slice Broker (NSB) is that it can be victimized by DoS (Denial of Service) attack. Thus, the aim of this work is three fold. First, to present the possible ways in which DoS/DDoS attacks can be mounted on NSB and their adverse effects. Second, to propose and implement initial blockchain-based solution named as Security Service Blockchain (SSB) to prevent DoS attacks on NSB. Third, to enumerate the challenges and future research directions to effectively utilize blockchain for mitigating DoS/DDoS attacks on NSB. To evaluate the performance the proposed SSB framework is implemented using Hyperledger Fabric. The results manifest that the latency impact of the legitimate slice creation over scaled up malicious traffic remains minimal with the use of SSB framework. The integration of SSB with NSB results in gaining several fold reduction in latency under DoS attack scenario.
      10Scopus© Citations 7
  • Publication
    Multi-Access Edge Computing and Blockchain-based Secure Telehealth System Connected with 5G and IoT
    There is a global hype in the development of digital healthcare infrastructure to cater the massive elderly population and infectious diseases. The digital facilitation is expected to ensure the patient privacy, scalability, and data integrity on the sensitive life critical healthcare data, while aligning to the global healthcare data protection standards. The patient data sharing to third parties such as research institutions and universities is also concerned as a significant contribution to the society to sharpen the research and investigations. The emergence of 5G communication technologies eradicates the borders between patients, hospital and other institutions with high end service standards. In patients' perspective, healthcare service delivery through the digital medium is beneficial in terms of time, costs, and risks. In this paper, we propose a novel Multi-access Edge Computing(MEC) and blockchain based service architecture utilizing the lightweight ECQV (Elliptic Curve Qu-Vanstone) certificates for the realtime data privacy, integrity, and authentication between IoT, MEC, and cloud. We further attached storage offloading capability to the blockchain to ensure scalability with a massive number of connected medical devices to the cloud. We introduced a rewarding scheme to the patients and hospitals through the blockchain to encourage data sharing. The access control is handled through the smart contracts. We evaluated the proposed system in a near realistic implementation using Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform with Raspberry Pi devices to simulate the activity of the medical sensors.
      597Scopus© Citations 27
  • Publication
    Robust and Resilient Federated Learning for Securing Future Networks
    Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are widely adopted in the telecommunication industry, especially to automate beyond 5G networks. Federated Learning (FL) recently emerged as a distributed ML approach that enables localized model training to keep data decentralized to ensure data privacy. In this paper, we identify the applicabil- ity of FL for securing future networks and its limitations due to the vulnerability to poisoning attacks. First, we investigate the shortcomings of state-of-the-art security algorithms for FL and perform an attack to circumvent FoolsGold algorithm, which is known as one of the most promising defense techniques currently available. The attack is launched with the addition of intelligent noise at the poisonous model updates. Then we propose a more sophisticated defense strategy, a threshold-based clustering mechanism to complement FoolsGold. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the attack scenario and the performance of the defense mechanism.
      191Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Performance Analysis of Local 5G Operator Architectures for Industrial Internet
    5G calls for a network architecture that ensures ultra-responsive and ultra-reliable communication links, in addition to the high degree of flexibility and customization required by different vertical sectors. The novel concept called local 5G networks enables a versatile set of stakeholders to operate 5G networks within their premises with guaranteed quality and reliability to complement Mobile Network Operators’ (MNOs) offerings. In this paper, we propose a descriptive architecture for a local 5G operator which provides user specific and location specific services in a spatially confined environment i.e. industrial internet environment. In addition to that, we propose hybrid architecture options where both the local 5G operator and MNO collaboratively contribute to establishing the core network to cater to such communications. The architecture is discussed in terms of network functions and the operational units which entail the core and radio access networks in a smart factory environment which supports Industry 4.0 standards. Moreover, to realize the conceptual design, we provide simulation results for the latency measurements of the proposed architecture options with respect to an Augmented Reality (AR), massive wireless sensor networks and mobile robots use cases. Thereby we discuss the benefits of deploying core network functions locally to cater to specialized user requirements, rather than continuing with the conventional approach where only MNOs can deploy cellular networks.
      453Scopus© Citations 30
  • Publication
    A Novel Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) Platform for Local 5G Operators
    5G is a promising technology that has the potential to support verticals and applications such as Industrial Internet of Things IoT (IIoT), smart cities, autonomous vehicles, remote surgeries, virtual and augmented realities, and so on. These verticals have a diverse set of network connectivity requirements, and it is challenging to deliver customized services for each by using a common 5G infrastructure. Thus, the operation of Local 5G operator (L5GO) networks or private 5G networks are a viable option to tackle this challenge. A L5GO network is a localized small cell network which can offer tailored service delivery. The adaptation of network softwarization in 5G allows vertical owners to deploy and operate L5GO networks. However, the deployment of L5GOs raises various issues related to management of subscribers, roaming users, spectrum, security, and also the infrastructure. This paper proposes a blockchain-based platform to address these issues. The paper introduces a set of blockchain-based modularized functions such as service rating systems, bidding techniques, and selection functions, which can be used to deploy different services for L5GOs. Exploitation of blockchain technology ensures availability, non-reliance on trusted third parties, secure transfer payments, and stands to gain many more advantages. The performance and the viability of the proposed platform are analyzed by using simulations and a prototype implementation.
      245Scopus© Citations 29
  • Publication
    Proxy re-encryption enabled secure and anonymous IoT data sharing platform based on blockchain
    Data is central to the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. With billions of devices connected, most of the current IoT systems are using centralized cloud-based data sharing systems, which will be difficult to scale up to meet the demands of future IoT systems. The involvement of such a third-party service provider requires also trust from both the sensor owner and sensor data user. Moreover, fees need to be paid for their services. To tackle both the scalability and trust issues and to automatize the payments, this paper presents a blockchain-based marketplace for sharing of the IoT data. We also use a proxy re-encryption scheme for transferring the data securely and anonymously, from data producer to the consumer. The system stores the IoT data in cloud storage after encryption. To share the collected IoT data, the system establishes runtime dynamic smart contracts between the sensor and data consumer without the involvement of a trusted third-party. It also uses a very efficient proxy re-encryption scheme which allows that the data is only visible by the owner and the person present in the smart contract. This novel combination of smart contracts with proxy re-encryption provides an efficient, fast and secure platform for storing, trading and managing sensor data. The proposed system is implemented using off-the-shelf IoT sensors and computer devices. We also analyze the performance of our hybrid system by using the permission-less Ethereum blockchain and compare it to the IBM Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned blockchain.
      369Scopus© Citations 72