Imran Raza

Identification of malicious nodes in an AODV pure ad hoc network through guard nodes

This paper presents a guard node based scheme to identify malicious nodes in Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol. In this scheme each node calculates trust level of its neighboring nodes for route selection. Trust calculation process involves opinions of other nodes about the node whose trust level is to be determined. If a neighboring node has a trust level lower than a predefined threshold value, it is identified as malicious and it is not considered for route selection. The proposed model does not use any key distribution process and no changes are made in control packets of AODV. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves performance of AODV by identifying and removing malicious nodes. Performance of the scheme has been evaluated for three different types of malicious attacks (impersonation attack, colluding nodes attack and black hole attack).

Optimised priority assignment mechanism for biomedical wireless sensor networks

Biomedical wireless sensor networks (BWSNs) need to guarantee reliable and timely transfer of crucial data in emergency and time critical situations. Current schemes use static/fixed priority assignment mechanism based on source of data and not on the urgency of the data in different situations. This study presents a novel data transmission scheme, called optimised priority assignment mechanism (OPAM) for BWSNs. The proposed work dynamically schedule different types of data flows based on their time critical nature. It smartly assigns priority to individual data packets rather to particular service or flow by continuously monitoring queuing delay providing guaranteed end-to-end quality of service (QoS) without invoking any congestion control and avoidance mechanism. Experimental results show that OPAM performs better in terms of average throughput and end-to-end delay 55 and 20.5%, respectively, than routing service framework for standard BWSNs.

Persistent packet reordering attack in TCP based Ad hoc wireless networks

This paper investigates congestion behavior of TCP and its variants TCP Reno, TCP NewReno, TCP Sack1, TCP Vegas, TCP Rbp and TCP Fack for AODV (Ad hoc Ondemand Distance Vector) and DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) routing protocols under persistent packet reordering attack through simulations in NS-2. It also proposes a solution to counter misinterpretation packet reordering with packet loss when retransmissions are due to persistent packet reordering by malicious nodes rather than packet loss due to traditional reasons.

A Trust based Security Framework for Pure AODV Network

This paper presents a trust based security framework to identify malicious nodes in ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) protocol. In this framework each node calculates trust level of its neighboring nodes for route selection. Trust calculation process involves opinions of other nodes about the node whose trust level is to be determined. If a neighboring node has a trust level lower than a predefined threshold value, it is identified as malicious and it is not considered for route selection. The proposed security framework does not use any key distribution process and no changes are made in control packets of AODV. Simulation results show that the proposed framework improves performance of AODV by identifying and removing malicious nodes. Performance of the framework has been evaluated for three different types of malicious attacks (impersonation attack, colluding nodes attack and black hole attack).

A game theory based trust model for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs)

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) facilitate road safety, transportation security, reliability and management. This paper presents a game theory based trust model for VANETs. The proposed model is based on an attacker and defender security game to identify and counter the attacker/malicious nodes. The parameters considered for attackers and defenders strategy are majority opinion, betweenness centrality, and node density. The outcome of the specific game is determined by the game matrix which contains the cost (payoff) values for possible action-reaction combination. Nash equilibrium when applied to calculate the best strategy for attacker and defender vehicles. The model is simulated in Network Simulator (ns2), and results show that the proposed model performs better than the schemes with random malicious nodes and existing game theory based approach in terms of throughput, retransmission attempts and data drop rate for different attacker and defender scenarios.

Merge-and-forward: a cooperative multimedia transmissions protocol using RaptorQ codes

Recently, nodes cooperation has emerged as a popular means for improving the quality of multimedia delivery over fifth-generation cellular networks. However, in the conventional relaying scheme such as amplify-and-forward (AaF), there is a higher probability of duplicate packets at the receiver node which affect the decoding probability and consequently deteriorate the quality of multimedia transmission. In this study, the authors propose a cooperative multimedia transmission protocol based on a novel merge-and-forward relaying and the best relay selection (RS) schemes. Their best RS scheme is based on two important parameters: (i) two-hop link distances and (ii) minimum block error rate value. Moreover, to combat the packet loss for enhanced and reliable video delivery, they adopt application layer forward error correction scheme which is based on the most improved and advanced version of fountain codes (i.e. RaptorQ codes). They evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme under different time-sharing scenarios between the direct and best indirect transmission links in terms of decoding failure probability, decoding overhead, peak signal-to-noise ratio, and mean opinion score. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional AaF relaying scheme.

Modelling cyber security for software-defined networks those grow strong when exposed to threats

With each passing day, the information and communication technologies are evolving with more and more information shared across the globe using the internet superhighway. The threats to information, while connected to the cyber world are getting more targeted, voluminous, and sophisticated requiring new antifragile and resilient network security mechanisms. Whether the information is being processed in the application, in transit within the network or residing in the storage, it is equally susceptible to attack at every level of abstraction and cannot be handled in isolation as the case has been with conventional security mechanisms. The advent of Software-Defined Networks (SDN) has given a new outlook to information protection, where the network can aid in the design of a system that is secure and dependable in case of cyber threats. The nature of SDN, mainly its programmability and centrality of network information and control has led us to think of security in an antifragile perspective. Our networks can now thrive and grow stronger when they are exposed to volatility by overwhelming cyber threats. However, SDN infrastructure itself is susceptible to severe threats that may mutilate the provision of its usability as security provider. Both these perspectives of “Security with SDN” and “Security for SDN” have invited research and innovations, yet both these approaches remain disintegrated, failing to support each other. The contribution of this paper is threefold, with first reviewing the current state of the art work for both perspectives of SDN security. Second, it advocates the necessity and introduces a novel approach of antifragile cyber security within SDN paradigm and finally it proposes a unified model for integrating both approaches of “Security with SDN” and “Security for SDN” to achieve the overall objective of protecting our information from cyber threats in this globally connected internetwork.

Multi-radio over Fiber Architecture for Road Vehicle Communication in VANETs

Abstract Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) are employing heterogeneous technologies now a days to meet the increasing demands of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications such as enriched multimedia, video conferencing, gaming and online collaboration. Deployment and maintenance cost for infrastructures are also a major concern. This work proposes a framework, capable of catering multiple technologies simultaneously (such as local area network, wide area networks and cellular networks), that deploys wired and wireless integrated technologies to exploit the advantages of both. Therefore, it offers the architecture based on radio over fiber technology to meet the future requirements of high data rate for Road Vehicle Communication (RVC) in VANETs and it comes up with the most important and perhaps desperately needed feature of ‘Future Technology Support’ yielding very high data rates support. Several traditionally deployed architectures are striving to come up with the future needs but due to their various limitations they were unable to attain their expected outcomes. The proposed RoF based architecture justifies its need inducing a true value and powerful features to dramatically enhance the overall performance of the entire system. Several evaluation parameters have been chosen that clearly present the strength of proposed RoF framework and prove that RoF framework is the better option for the service providers in the area of ITS applications.

An Efficient Channel Access Scheme for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are getting more popularity due to the potential Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) technology. It provides many efficient network services such as safety warnings (collision warning), entertainment (video and voice), maps based guidance, and emergency information. VANETs most commonly use Road Side Units (RSUs) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) referred to as Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) mode for data accessing. IEEE 802.11p standard which was originally designed for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is modified to address such type of communication. However, IEEE 802.11p uses Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) for communication between wireless nodes. Therefore, it does not perform well for high mobility networks such as VANETs. Moreover, in RSU mode timely provision of data/services under high density of vehicles is challenging. In this paper, we propose a RSU-based efficient channel access scheme for VANETs under high traffic and mobility. In the proposed scheme, the contention window is dynamically varied according to the times (deadlines) the vehicles are going to leave the RSU range. The vehicles with shorter time deadlines are served first and vice versa. Simulation is performed by using the Network Simulator (NS-3) v. 3.6. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs better in terms of throughput, backoff rate, RSU response time, and fairness.

Ontology-based service discovery framework for dynamic environments

With all the recent advancements in the electronic world, hardware is becoming smaller, cheaper and more powerful; while the software industry is moving towards service-oriented integration technologies. Hence, service oriented architecture is becoming a popular platform for the development of applications for distributed embedded real-time system (DERTS). With rapidly increasing diversity of services on the internet, new demands have been raised concerning the efficient discovery of heterogeneous device services in the dynamic environment of DERTS. Context-awareness principles have been widely studied for DERTS; hence, it can be used as an additional set of service selection criteria. However, in order to use context information effectively, it should be presented in an unambiguous way and the dynamic nature of the embedded and real-time systems should be considered. To address these challenges, the authors present a service discovery framework for DERTS which uses context-aware ontology of embedded and real-time systems and a semantic matching algorithm to facilitate the discovery of device services in embedded and real-time system environments. The proposed service discovery framework also considers the associated priorities with the requirements posed by the requester during the service discovery process.