Security and key management in IoT‐based wireless sensor networks: An authentication protocol using symmetric key

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) consist of hundreds of miniature sensor nodes to sense various events in the surrounding environment and report back to the base station. Sensor networks are at the base of internet of things (IoT) and smart computing applications where a function is performed as a result of sensed event or information. However, in resource‐limited WSN authenticating a remote user is a vital security concern. Recently, researchers put forth various authentication protocols to address different security issues. Gope et al presented a protocol claiming resistance against known attacks. A thorough analysis of their protocol shows that it is vulnerable to user traceability, stolen verifier, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. In this article, an enhanced symmetric key‐based authentication protocol for IoT‐based WSN has been presented. The proposed protocol has the ability to counter user traceability, stolen verifier, and DoS attacks. Furthermore, the proposed protocol has been simulated and verified using Proverif and BAN logic. The proposed protocol has the same communication cost as the baseline protocol; however, in computation cost, it has 52.63% efficiency as compared with the baseline protocol.     

Comparison of PMMA and SU-8 resist moulds for embossing of PZT to produce high-aspect-ratio microstructures using LIGA process

 In this paper results are presented from a range of experiments to explore the feasibility of inserting a ceramic material PZT (lead zirconium titanate) into different kinds of high-aspect-ratio resist moulds. Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and SU-8 on silicon substrates and free-standing SU-8 membranes with micro-cavities or through-holes (defined by X-ray lithography) have been used as moulding medium. Processing conditions for the resist materials including pre-bake, exposure, post-bake, development and stripping have been compared. The advantages of different types of resist mould for the LIGA process has been evaluated. Additionally a comparison of photosensitivity of PMMA and SU-8 has been carried out. Using a range of load pressures (5 to 60 MPa), appropriate conditions for PZT embossing into resist moulds have been determined (ensuring minimum void formation in the final PZT structures). In the final form, SU-8 moulds have been removed by laser ablation. This is the first reporting of high-aspect-ratio ceramic microstructures fabricated using a combination of SU-8 moulds and PZT embossing. Received: 10 August 2001/Accepted: 24 September 2001     

The radial spreading as a free surface layer of a vertical buoyant jet

Summary When the rising plume in a stagnant ambient fluid impinges the free surface it spreads radially as a surface layer flowing over a pool of heavier liquid. Initially the surface layer in the entrainment zone entrains the underlying fluid, but the entrainment decreases with the increasing distance from the boil. The radius of the entrainment zone depends on the initial buoyancy flux from the nozzle and also on submergence height. It was assumed that the flow in this zone has a self-preserving form. The theoretical results based upon this assumption showed that the maximum velocity and density difference of the layer decreases as powers of radius distance measured from centre of the boil and the depth varies linearly with the radius, so that the sectional Richardon's number based on maximum physical quantities of the section remain unchanged. It was further shown that the coefficient of the entrainment remains constant and is a function of the Richardson's number and the slope of the interface. The theoretical results were compared with those obtained experimentally and fair agreement was obtained.At the end of the entrainment zone the surface layer enters the zone of homogeneous flow in which the layer travels over the underlying fluid and behaves much like a free homogeneous flow over a rigid boundary: the friction at the interface replacing the friction of the boundary. In this zone the mean velocity of the layer in the radial direction was measured and found that it decreases inversely with the increase of radius. The thickness of the layer in the zone of homogeneous flow remains constant and depends, as far as experiments show, greatly on the submergence height.     

Exploring the conformational space of cyclic peptides by a stochastic search method

A stochastic search algorithm is applied in order to probe the conformations of cyclic peptides. The search is conducted in two stages. In the first stage, random conformations are generated and evaluated by a penalty function for ring closure ability, following a stepwise construction of each amino acid into the peptide by a random choice of one of its allowed conformations. The allowed conformational ranges of backbone dihedral angles for each amino acid have been extracted from a Data Bank of diverse proteins. Values of dihedral angles that do not contribute favorably to the scoring of ring closure are retained or discarded by a statistical test. Values are discarded up to a point from which all remaining combinations of angles are constructed, scored, sorted, and clustered. In the second stage, side chains have been added and fast optimization was applied to the set of diverse conformations in a "united atoms" approach, with the "Kollman forcefield" of Sybyl 6.8. This iterative stochastic elimination algorithm finds the global minimum and most of the best results, when compared to a full exhaustive search in appropriately sized problems. In larger problems, we compare the results to experimental structures. The root mean square deviation (RMSD) of our best results compared to crystal structures of cyclic peptides with sizes from 4 to 15 amino acids are mostly below 1.0 A up to 8 mers and under 2.0 A for larger cyclic peptides.     

An Empirical Study of Factors Affecting e-Commerce Adoption among Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in a Developing Country: Evidence from Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine determinants of e-commerce adoption among Malaysian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study tested eight hypotheses on determinants affecting e-commerce adoption with empirical data from several survey instruments: an online questionnaire-based survey, mailed survey and questionnaire collected in-person from a sample of 307 SMEs in Malaysia. The findings show that e-commerce adoption within Malaysian SMEs is affected by perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility, managers/owner's knowledge and expertise, management characteristics and external change agents. This study contributes to enhancing the understanding of the determinants of adopting e-commerce in SMEs and provides some interesting perspective from Malaysia. Those parties interested in promoting their business online may find these results helpful in guiding their efforts.     

Asynchronous algorithms for poisson's equation with nonlinear boundary conditions

Poisson's equation with nonlinear boundary conditions is discretized with the method of lines to obtain a system of second order differential equations with multi-point boundary conditions. This differential system is converted, using invariant imbedding for each one-dimensional problem, into a fixed point problem and then the asynchronous algorithms are applied.     

SRA-MSDU: Enhanced A-MSDU frame aggregation with selective retransmission in 802.11n wireless networks

The main goal of the IEEE 802.11n standard is to achieve more than 100 Mbps of throughput at the MAC service access point. This high throughput has been achieved via many enhancements in both the physical and MAC layers. One of the MAC enhancements is the frame aggregation in which multiple frames are concatenated into a single large frame before being transmitted. The 802.11n MAC layer defines two types of aggregation, aggregate MAC service data unit (A-MSDU) and aggregate MAC protocol data unit (A-MPDU). The A-MPDU outperforms A-MSDU due to its large aggregation size and the subframes retransmission in erroneous channels. However, in error free channels and under the same aggregation size the A-MSDU performs better than the A-MPDU due to its smaller headers. Thus, adding a selective retransmission capability to the A-MSDU would improve the system performance. In this paper, we have proposed an MSDU frame aggregation scheme that enables selective retransmission at the MSDU level without altering the original MAC header. In this proposed scheme an implicit sequence control mechanism has been introduced in order to keep the frames in sequence and preserve their correct order at the receiver side. The results show that the proposed scheme improves the system performance in terms of throughput and delay even under highly erroneous channels.     

Dynamic Bayesian networks and variable length genetic algorithm for designing cue-based model for dialogue act recognition

The automatic recognition of dialogue act is a task of crucial importance for the processing of natural language dialogue at discourse level. It is also one of the most challenging problems as most often the dialogue act is not expressed directly in speaker’s utterance. In this paper, a new cue-based model for dialogue act recognition is presented. The model is, essentially, a dynamic Bayesian network induced from manually annotated dialogue corpus via dynamic Bayesian machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, the dynamic Bayesian network’s random variables are constituted from sets of lexical cues selected automatically by means of a variable length genetic algorithm, developed specifically for this purpose. To evaluate the proposed approaches of design, three stages of experiments have been conducted. In the initial stage, the dynamic Bayesian network model is constructed using sets of lexical cues selected manually from the dialogue corpus. The model is evaluated against two previously proposed models and the results confirm the potentiality of dynamic Bayesian networks for dialogue act recognition. In the second stage, the developed variable length genetic algorithm is used to select different sets of lexical cues to constitute the dynamic Bayesian networks’ random variables. The developed approach is evaluated against some of the previously used ranking approaches and the results provide experimental evidences on its ability to avoid the drawbacks of the ranking approaches. In the third stage, the dynamic Bayesian networks model is constructed using random variables constituted from the sets of lexical cues generated in the second stage and the results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approaches for designing dialogue act recognition model.     

Study of magnetic entropy change in La0.65Sr0.35Cu0.1Mn0.9O3 complex perovskite

The magnetocaloric properties of new complex magnetic material La_0.65Sr_0.35Cu_0.1Mn_0.9O₃, suitable for the Ericsson cycle, have been investigated. For this material, the effect of Cu doping can be attributed to a combination of doping disorder, Cu-Mn super exchange interactions and a site-percolation mechanism, which suppress the metallic conduction and Curie temperature. The Curie temperature decreases to 355 K. The magnetocaloric study exposes a comparable value of the magnetic entropy change for La_0.65Sr_0.35Cu_0.1Mn_0.9O₃ sample, the value of the maximum entropy change, increases from 1.132 J/kgK to 3.11 J/kgK as magnetic field increases from 1 T to 4 T. A large relative cooling power (RCP) has been observed for La_0.65Sr_0.35Cu_0.1Mn_0.9O_3. As a result, the studied sample can be considered as potential material for magnetic refrigeration.     

Application of linearized power system model to selection of PST controller input signal

This paper presents a selection method for phase shift transformer PST controller input signal. Simple conditions of input signal selection are obtained using frequency response analysis. The proposed method requires a suitable modeling of power system including PST device. The two types of power system models described in this paper are the nonlinear equations system model and the linearized model. The linearized model is represented as a block diagram transfer function model and as a state space representation model. The block diagram model presented in this paper has been used for the PST feedback input signal selection. Five locally available measurements at the switching node of the PST are considered. The results of frequency domain tests have confirmed that the block diagram transfer function model is a useful tool for power system analysis. The LQR method is used to achieve the final verification and the choice of input control signal.