IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-03-29DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3698055
Yijing Ren;Vasilis Friderikos
{"title":"Robust mmWave Connectivity via Relay-Coordinated Path Control in Industrial Robots","authors":"Yijing Ren;Vasilis Friderikos","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3698055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3698055","url":null,"abstract":"To address the explosive demand for robust and reliable high-speed communications, millimetre-wave networks that utilize abundant bandwidth in the emerging sixth generation (6G) have been considered as key enablers in supporting diverse applications of industrial mobile robots. Millimeter-wave (mmWave) transmissions are highly susceptible to obstruction by physical obstacles, particularly in cluttered industrial/warehouse environments where mobile robots (MRs) such as humanoids autonomously navigate to carry out diverse tasks. Ensuring robust communication under non-line-of-sight (NLoS) conditions thus remains a significant and largely unresolved challenge. To this end, a novel relay selection based path planning scheme via a mixed integer linear programming formulation is proposed, where two-hop wireless links are established by selecting idle MRs as relay nodes and robots’ trajectory is jointly considered to ensure line-of-sight (LoS) communication. Extensive numerical investigations demonstrate that, compared with a shortest-path scheme that ignores NLoS propagation, the proposed relay-selection-based path-planning scheme improves the overall communication rate by 38%. Moreover, for MRs operating under NLoS conditions, the communication rate can be increased by up to a factor of six.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"296-300"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148442189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-04-07DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3681617
Jiaxin Yan;Zhiang Gao;Junling Shi
{"title":"Dynamic Priority-Aware Task Offloading With Two-Stage Multi-Agent Optimization in Multi-AAV-Assisted MEC","authors":"Jiaxin Yan;Zhiang Gao;Junling Shi","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3681617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3681617","url":null,"abstract":"In emergency and other dynamic scenarios, although autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV)-assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) alleviates the computational limitations of ground mobile devices (GMDs), its performance remains constrained in complex environments due to insufficient consideration of priority and fairness, coarse grained resource scheduling, and the strong coupling between discrete and continuous decision variables. The key novelty lies in a hierarchical decomposition framework that explicitly decouples discrete AAV quantity optimization from continuous trajectory and service control. In addition, a starvation-aware priority mechanism is tightly integrated with auction-based resource allocation, enabling joint consideration of urgency and fairness. This structured decomposition significantly reduces optimization complexity compared to conventional joint optimization approaches.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"277-281"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148442737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-02-23DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3667202
Lianglin Pan;Xiumei Yang;Yu Zhao
{"title":"Optimized Deployment of Core Network Slices for Satellite-Terrestrial Integrated Networks","authors":"Lianglin Pan;Xiumei Yang;Yu Zhao","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3667202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3667202","url":null,"abstract":"The deployment of core network slices (NSs) in the satellite-terrestrial integrated network (STIN) is pivotal for enabling low-latency communications and catering to diverse service requirements. However, the limited satellite resources and the globally distributed users pose significant challenges for on-demand NSs deployment. In this letter, we model the network function deployment for multiple core NSs in the STIN as a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem (MINLP) with the objective of minimizing the average NS delay. We further propose a hybrid algorithm combining multi-swarm particle swarm optimization (MPSO) and genetic algorithm (GA) to address high dimensionality and variable coupling challenges in solving the optimization problem. The proposed algorithm utilizes the multi-swarm structure to jointly optimize multiple variables, where the strategy of each swarm is customized based on variable types for efficient optimization. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"144-148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147665479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-07-17DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3714281
Walid Aljoby;Md. Kamrul Hossain;Mohammed Alzayani;Khaled A. Harras
{"title":"Rethinking IPv6 Defense: A Unified Edge-Centric Zero-Trust Data-Plane Architecture","authors":"Walid Aljoby;Md. Kamrul Hossain;Mohammed Alzayani;Khaled A. Harras","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3714281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3714281","url":null,"abstract":"IPv6 dependability is increasingly inseparable from IPv6 security: the control plane relies on ICMPv6’s Neighbor Discovery (ND) suite for router discovery, address resolution, and stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC), yet these trust-implicit mechanisms expose a broad attack surface for spoofing and flooding. IPv6’s massive address space further defeats per-IP reputation, making many defenses either non-scalable or narrowly scoped. We propose a <italic>zero-trust edge</i> architecture implemented in a single programmable data-plane pipeline that unifies four defense modules: external and internal spoofing, and external and internal flooding. A key architectural principle is <italic>identity plausibility before rate plausibility</i>: stateless per-packet validation eliminates spoofed traffic early, ensuring that windowed flooding statistics operate only on credible identities. We realize this design in P4 using prefix Hop-Limit bands, DAD-anchored address–port bindings, and Count-Min Sketch windowed counting, and evaluate it across a systematic 15-scenario suite spanning single-, dual-, and multi-vector attack compositions. Validation on both a BMv2 prototype and a Netronome NFP-4000 SmartNIC yields near-perfect precision (100%), recall up to 100%, and sub-millisecond latency overhead, confirming practical deployability at the network edge.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"329-333"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148836355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Latency Reduction Using Hybrid Lossy and Lossless Compression in Real-Time Wireless Systems","authors":"Rakesh Kumar;Suraj Suman;Anjali Shaw;Petar Popovski","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3715332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3715332","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents a latency reduction scheme, namely <italic>Hybrid Lossy and Lossless Compression (HLLC)</i>, to support real-time wireless systems. In the proposed <italic>HLLC</i> scheme, the raw data is compressed before transmission, wherein a fraction of data undergoes lossless compression without distortion, and the remaining fraction undergoes lossy compression having slight distortion depending upon the compression ratio. The latency in data compression and transmission has been modeled as stochastic processes. We formulate an optimization problem to analyze the latency-reliability-distortion (LRD) tradeoff with reliability guarantees tolerable distortion. This non-convex problem is transformed into a convex optimization framework, and an algorithm is proposed to find the optimal solution. The results show latency reduction close to 50% for reliability level of 0.9999 with distortion of 0.5%. These results are encouraging for applying <italic>HLLC</i> in real-time wireless systems.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"339-343"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148837335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-06-02DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3699520
E. K. Cruz Ortega;Eduardo Sandalo Porto;Ana C. V. de Melo;Daniel Macêdo Batista
{"title":"Integrating NWDAF and Federated Learning for Privacy-Preserving Intrusion Detection in B5G IoHT Networks","authors":"E. K. Cruz Ortega;Eduardo Sandalo Porto;Ana C. V. de Melo;Daniel Macêdo Batista","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3699520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3699520","url":null,"abstract":"The combination of Federated Learning and the Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF) enables new possibilities for smart, secure, and privacy-aware network analysis in Beyond 5G (B5G) environments. In this work, we present a framework that explores this analysis to support distributed intrusion detection in the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) scenario. Experimental results show that the system achieves stable convergence, with accuracy levels around 90% and high recall for major attack classes. Additionally, server-side Differential Privacy mechanisms maintain a reasonable privacy-utility balance. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of performing practical intrusion detection while preserving confidentiality in B5G-enabled IoHT environments.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"273-276"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148442468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-04-27DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3687238
Xingqi Wu;Yuhui Wang;Junaid Farooq;Hakim Ghazzai;M. Majid Butt;Gianluca Setti
{"title":"Process-Informed Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Joint Radio-Compute Orchestration in Industrial O-RAN","authors":"Xingqi Wu;Yuhui Wang;Junaid Farooq;Hakim Ghazzai;M. Majid Butt;Gianluca Setti","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3687238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3687238","url":null,"abstract":"Industrial open radio access network (O-RAN) systems must support manufacturing workloads with dynamically varying communication and computation demands driven by production processes. Existing O-RAN orchestration mechanisms remain largely network-centric and fail to capture such process-induced variability. This letter proposes a decentralized process-informed reinforcement learning (RL) framework for joint radio and compute orchestration in industrial O-RAN. Distributed agents at radio units (RUs) adapt physical resource block (PRB) and compute allocations based on workload and latency requirements. Using a multi-agent dueling deep Q-network architecture, the approach improves latency fulfillment and reliability under nonstationary industrial traffic. Simulation results demonstrate consistent gains over network-centric multi-agent baselines.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"199-203"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148491468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Non-Interactive Group Key Distribution for Reduced Communication Overhead in Smart Traffic Light Systems","authors":"Siti Agustini;Wirawan;Chi-Hung Chi;Gamantyo Hendrantoro","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3689528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3689528","url":null,"abstract":"This letter proposes a non-interactive group key distribution scheme that enables secure and low communication overhead in Smart Traffic Light Systems (STLS). The scheme integrates lightweight hash–XOR mutual authentication with polynomial-based key derivation, enabling all entities to compute the group key locally without requiring multi-round interactions. BAN logic analysis confirms mutual authentication, while the security evaluation shows resilience against common adversarial threats. NS-2 simulations using real traffic light deployment data show substantial reductions in communication overhead, computation cost, and energy consumption compared to existing methods. The design also supports dynamic membership through a single broadcast-based rekeying mechanism, demonstrating the scheme’s efficiency, scalability, adaptability, and suitability for real-time STLS deployment.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"234-238"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148492001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
IEEE Networking LettersPub Date : 2026-01-01Epub Date: 2026-03-09DOI: 10.1109/LNET.2026.3671836
Sujitha Lakshminarayana;P. Santhi Thilagam
{"title":"Quantitative Evaluation of DDoS Attacks on MQTT-Based IoT Deployments","authors":"Sujitha Lakshminarayana;P. Santhi Thilagam","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3671836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3671836","url":null,"abstract":"Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is widely adopted in IoT applications due to its lightweight header and reliable message delivery over low-power networks. The increasing popularity of MQTT has also made it a potential target among attackers. DDoS attacks exploiting MQTT protocol features remain a significant security threat impacting IoT resiliency. These attacks require limited network bandwidth and are similar to legitimate MQTT requests, hindering detection. In this work, we investigate a new attack vector wherein adversaries exploit multiple MQTT features within a single client connection to generate sophisticated DDoS attacks in IoT deployments. We systematically propose attack scenarios and compare the severity of the identified attack with the attacks targeting single MQTT features. The evaluation of the attacks on a real IoT testbed demonstrates the potency of the proposed attack in significantly degrading the timely availability of IoT services to legitimate users. Finally, we present future directions for developing more effective detection mechanisms against DDoS attacks in MQTT-based IoT systems.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"239-243"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148492005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Network Slice Embedding With Flexible Configurations in 5G Networks and Beyond","authors":"Quang-Trung Luu;Do-Minh Tran;Minh-Thanh Nguyen;Michel Kieffer;Dinh Thai Hoang;Tai-Hung Nguyen;Huu-Thanh Nguyen;Van-Dinh Nguyen","doi":"10.1109/LNET.2026.3653831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LNET.2026.3653831","url":null,"abstract":"Network slicing enables the creation of multiple virtual networks (i.e., slices) over a shared network infrastructure, each tailored to a specific service. A key challenge lies in network slice embedding, which maps virtual network functions (VNFs) and links onto the physical network. Unlike prior works that assumed fixed configurations, we design a flexible system that allows for selecting the best configuration for each slice based on current physical resource availability during embedding. This leads to a joint optimization of (<inline-formula> <tex-math>$i$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) slice configuration selection (SCS) and <inline-formula> <tex-math>$(ii)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> slice admission control and embedding (SACE). To solve this, we propose two approaches: an exact method that formulates the joint SCS-SACE problem as an integer linear program (ILP), and a scalable alternative that decouples the problem, solving SCS via reinforcement learning and SACE via either ILP or a heuristic. Simulation results show that allowing flexible configuration selection improves slice acceptance by up to 10%, enabling more efficient slice deployment in resource-constrained networks.","PeriodicalId":100628,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Networking Letters","volume":"8 ","pages":"135-139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147665312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}