Xuemin (Sherman) Shen

This book investigates the modeling and optimization issues in mobile social networks (MSNs). Firstly, the architecture and applications of MSNs are examined. The existing works on MSNs are reviewed by specifying the critical challenges and research issues. Then, with the introduction of MSN-based social graph and information dissemination mechanisms, the analytical model for epidemic information dissemination with opportunistic Links in MSNs is discussed. In addition, optimal resource allocation is studied based on a heterogeneous architecture, which provides mobile social services with high capacity and low latency. Finally, this book summarize some open problems and future research directions in MSNs. Written for researchers and academics, this book is useful for anyone working on mobile networks, network architecture, or content delivery. It is also valuable for advanced-level students of computer science.

This book examines state-of-art research on designing healthcare applications with the consideration of security and privacy. It explains the Mobile Healthcare Network (MHN) architecture and its diverse applications, and reviews the existing works on security and privacy for MHNs. Critical future challenges and research problems are also identified. Using a Quality-of-Protection perspective, the authors provide valuable insights on security and privacy preservation for MHNs. Some promising solutions are proposed to accommodate the issues of secure health data transmission, misbehavior detection, health data processing with privacy preservation and access control in MHNs. Specifically, the secure health data aggregation explores social spots to help forward health data and enable users to select the optimal relay according to their social ties and health data priority. The secure aggregation achieves the desirable delivery ratio with reasonable communication costs and lower delay for the data in different priorities. A proposed misbehavior detection scheme distinguishes Sybil attackers from normal users by comparing their mobile contacts and pseudonym changing behaviors. The detection accuracy is high enough to resist various Sybil attacks including forgery. In addition, the health data processing scheme can analyze the encrypted health data and preserve user’s privacy at the same time. Attribute based access control can achieve fine-grained access control with user-defined access policy in MHNs. Security and Privacy for Mobile Healthcare Networks is designed for researchers and advanced-level students interested in healthcare security and secure data transmission.

This book introduces wireless traffic steering as a paradigm to realize green communication in multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks. By matching network resources and dynamic mobile traffic demand, traffic steering helps to reduce on-grid power consumption with on-demand services provided. This book reviews existing solutions from the perspectives of energy consumption reduction and renewable energy harvesting. Specifically, it explains how traffic steering can improve energy efficiency through intelligent traffic-resource matching. Several promising traffic steering approaches for dynamic network planning and renewable energy demand-supply balancing are discussed. This book presents an energy-aware traffic steering method for networks with energy harvesting, which optimizes the traffic allocated to each cell based on the renewable energy status. Renewable energy demand-supply balancing is a key factor in energy dynamics, aimed at enhancing renewable energy sustainability to reduce on-grid energy consumption. Dynamic network planning adjusts cell density with traffic variations to provide on-demand service, which reduces network power consumption with quality of service provisioning during off-peak hours. With intra- or inter-tier traffic steering, cell density is dynamically optimized with regards to the instant traffic load for conventional homogeneous and multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks, respectively. This book is beneficial for researchers and graduate students interested in traffic management and future wireless networking.

This book examines recent research on designing online charging and discharging strategies for mobile electric vehicles (EVs) in smart grid. First, the architecture and applications are provided. Then, the authors review the existing works on charging and discharging strategy design for EVs. Critical challenges and research problems are identified. Promising solutions are proposed to accommodate the issues of high EV mobility, vehicle range anxiety, and power systems overload. The authors investigate innovating charging and discharging potentials for mobile EVS based on real-time information collections (via VANETS and/or cellular networks) and offer the power system adjustable load management methods. Several innovative charging/discharging strategy designs to address the challenging issues in smart grid, i.e., overload avoidance and range anxiety for individual EVs, are presented. This book presents an alternative and promising way to release the pressure of the power grid caused by peak-time EV charging demand. Mobile Electric Vehicles: Online Charging and Discharging provides valuable insights on charging/ discharging strategy design for mobile EVs and the power system management in a smart grid. The authors’ findings indicate that the proposed strategies considerably outperform the traditional EV charging strategies without real-time collections on the metrics of the overall energy utilization, the average EV travel cost and the number of successfully charged EVs. Research and graduate students who are working on smart grid and vehicular communication will find this book a valuable resource. Customs and systems operators will also find this book useful.

This book examines state-of-art research on designing healthcare applications with the consideration of security and privacy. It explains the Mobile Healthcare Network (MHN) architecture and its diverse applications, and reviews the existing works on security and privacy for MHNs. Critical future challenges and research problems are also identified. Using a Quality-of-Protection perspective, the authors provide valuable insights on security and privacy preservation for MHNs. Some promising solutions are proposed to accommodate the issues of secure health data transmission, misbehavior detection, health data processing with privacy preservation and access control in MHNs. Specifically, the secure health data aggregation explores social spots to help forward health data and enable users to select the optimal relay according to their social ties and health data priority. The secure aggregation achieves the desirable delivery ratio with reasonable communication costs and lower delay for the data in different priorities. A proposed misbehavior detection scheme distinguishes Sybil attackers from normal users by comparing their mobile contacts and pseudonym changing behaviors. The detection accuracy is high enough to resist various Sybil attacks including forgery. In addition, the health data processing scheme can analyze the encrypted health data and preserve user’s privacy at the same time. Attribute based access control can achieve fine-grained access control with user-defined access policy in MHNs. Security and Privacy for Mobile Healthcare Networks is designed for researchers and advanced-level students interested in healthcare security and secure data transmission.

This Springer Brief covers emerging maritime wideband communication networks and how they facilitate applications such as maritime distress, urgency, safety and general communications. It provides valuable insight on the data transmission scheduling and protocol design for the maritime wideband network. This brief begins with an introduction to maritime wideband communication networks including the architecture, framework, operations and a comprehensive survey on current developments. The second part of the brief presents the resource allocation and scheduling for video packet transmission with a goal of maximizing the weights of uploaded video packets. Finally, an energy and content aware scheduling scheme is proposed for the most efficient vessel packet throughput. Based on the real ship route traces obtained from the navigation software BLM-Ship, simulation results demonstrate the viability of the proposed schemes. Conclusions and further research directions are discussed. Maritime Wideband Communication Networks: Video Transmission Scheduling is a valuable tool for researchers and professionals working in wireless communications and networks. Advanced-level students studying computer science and electrical engineering will also find the content valuable.

This Springer Brief focuses on cognitive resource management in heterogeneous cellular networks (Het Net) with small cell deployment for the LTE-Advanced system. It introduces the Het Net features, presents practical approaches using cognitive radio technology in accommodating small cell data relay and optimizing resource allocation and examines the effectiveness of resource management among small cells given limited coordination bandwidth and wireless channel uncertainty. The authors introduce different network characteristics of small cell, investigate the mesh of small cell access points in parallel with macrocells in network control and resource management and address resource management in the backhaul with coordination constraints and wireless channel uncertainty. The final section of this brief summarizes and provides future research directions for this topic, including a proposed framework that has been evaluated through realistic simulations. Cognitive Resource Management for Heterogeneous Cellular Networks is designed for researchers and professionals working in wireless communications and networks. Advanced-level students studying electrical and computer engineering should also find the content helpful.

This SpringerBrief presents key enabling technologies and state-of-the-art research on delivering efficient content distribution services to fast moving vehicles. It describes recent research developments and proposals towards the efficient, resilient and scalable content distribution to vehicles through both infrastructure-based and infrastructure-less vehicular networks. The authors focus on the rich multimedia services provided by vehicular environment content distribution including vehicular communications and media playback, giving passengers many infotainment applications. Common problems of vehicular network research are addressed, including network design and optimization, standardization, and the adaptive playout from a user’s perspective.

This Springer Brief discusses efficient security protocols and schemes for multi-hop wireless networks. It presents an overview of security requirements for these networks, explores challenges in securing networks and presents system models. The authors introduce mechanisms to reduce the overhead and identify malicious nodes that drop packets intentionally. Also included is a new, efficient cooperation incentive scheme to stimulate the selfish nodes to relay information packets and enforce fairness. Many examples are provided, along with predictions for future directions of the field. Security for Multi-hop Wireless Networks demonstrates recent research that enhances the efficiency and safety of these key networks. Concise and practical, it is a useful tool for researchers and professionals working in network security. It is also a valuable resource for advanced-level students interested in wireless communications and networking.

This SpringerBrief focuses on the network capacity analysis of VANETs, a key topic as fundamental guidance on design and deployment of VANETs is very limited. Moreover, unique characteristics of VANETs impose distinguished challenges on such an investigation. This SpringerBrief first introduces capacity scaling laws for wireless networks and briefly reviews the prior arts in deriving the capacity of VANETs. It then studies the unicast capacity considering the socialized mobility model of VANETs. With vehicles communicating based on a two-hop relaying scheme, the unicast capacity bound is derived and can be applied to predict the throughput of real-world scenarios of VANETs. The downlink capacity of VANETs is also investigated in which access infrastructure is deployed to provide pervasive Internet access to vehicles. Different alternatives of wireless access infrastructure are considered. A lower bound of downlink capacity is derived for each type of access infrastructure. The last section of this book presents a case study based on a perfect city grid to examine the capacity-cost trade-offs of different deployments since the deployment costs of different access infrastructure are highly variable.