Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-09DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111761
Fatma Foad Ashrif , Rami Ahmad
{"title":"A secure and efficient hybrid approach for 5G-AKA in blockchain smart contracts","authors":"Fatma Foad Ashrif , Rami Ahmad","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111761","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111761","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Next-generation networks (5 G, 6 G, and beyond) require authentication and key-agreement (AKA) protocols that are lightweight, scalable, and resilient to quantum attacks. Current blockchain-based AKA schemes impose heavy on-chain computation, which increases latency, cost, and energy consumption, while providing quantum protection. We introduce SH5-AKA, a hybrid off-chain/on-chain model that offloads expensive cryptographic operations off-chain but yet records tamper-resistant proof Merkle-tree commitments on-chain. SH5-AKA is the first 5G-AKA framework that combines to fuse the post-quantum KEM CRYSTALS-Kyber with Merkle-tree proofs inside a smart contract. The design delivers three main core benefits: (1) off-chain execution reduces gas fees and authentication delay without compromising security, (2) Kyber ensures forward-secure, quantum-resistant key exchange, and (3) Merkle-tree aggregation compresses authentication data, which increases and boosts scalability and mitigates DoS and Replay attacks. We prove the formal security in the Real-or-Random model and validate the protocol with Scyther. Experiments show a 40 % reduction in communication costs, a 58 % reduction in memory requirements, and a tripling of authentication time compared to state-of-the-art blockchain AKA solutions. These results confirm that SH5-AKA makes it a scalable and cost-effective solution for 5 G and future 6 G deployments.”</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111761"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145271063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-09DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111751
Binglin Zhao , Linbo Zhai , Jiande Sun , Chuanfen Feng , Dongsheng Wu , Jing Yan
{"title":"Beamforming design and trajectory optimization for learning-based multi-UAV-assisted integrated sensing and communication systems","authors":"Binglin Zhao , Linbo Zhai , Jiande Sun , Chuanfen Feng , Dongsheng Wu , Jing Yan","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111751","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111751","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can improve spectrum efficiency. ISAC enable the sharing of physical infrastructure for sensing and communication in sixth-generation (6G) wireless communication systems. However, existing studies mainly provide low-latency services from an overall perspective and cannot guarantee the high-quality experience of individual user devices. Therefore, we have studied a UAV-assisted ISAC framework, in which the UAV is equipped with a vertically placed uniform linear array (ULA). The UAV transmits combined information sensing signals, communicates with multiple users, and simultaneously detects ground targets. We have defined a new metric called the average rate ratio to reflect the users’ experience. Considering of the quality of service for communication and sensing, the problem is formulated to maximize the system’s average rate ratio by jointly optimizing communication and sensing beamforming as well as the UAV trajectory. Since this problem is a mixed-integer non-convex programming problem and difficult to solve within polynomial time, we have proposed an alternating optimization algorithm (AOA). This algorithm utilizes multiple learning agents to find effective strategies from experience, while ensuring communication and sensing performance, and finally performs alternating optimization. Numerical results verify the superiority and the effectiveness of the designed algorithm.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111751"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145326510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-09DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111731
Varsha Lohani, Ramon Casellas, Raul Muñoz
{"title":"Dynamic routing, waveband, and spectrum assignment for optical superchannels in IP over multi-granular optical nodes","authors":"Varsha Lohani, Ramon Casellas, Raul Muñoz","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111731","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111731","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As capacity requirements in optical networks continue to grow, there is an increasing need for high-bandwidth optical fiber links. This has led to the use of Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to utilize the unused optical spectrum for high-capacity data transmission. Another approach to enhancing capacity involves using multiple optical fibers per link. However, designing higher port count Wavelength Selective Switches (WSSs) for links with multiple fibers is costly and inefficient. To alleviate this, we explore IP over Multi-Granular-Optical Node (MG-ON) networks that incorporate waveband and wavelength layers, with Waveband Selective Switches (WBSSs) at the waveband physical layer and atop WSSs at the wavelength virtual layer. Furthermore, the need for high-line rate transmissions in the future is addressed by using the concept of optical superchannels in the MG-ON architecture. This paper introduces Routing, Waveband and Spectrum Assignment algorithms for MG-ON networks with high-capacity and high-line rate transmissions for various test cases. Additionally, we compare MG-ON performance with that of theoretical UWB-based WDM networks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111731"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145326512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-09DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111766
Abdul Mannan , Hasan Kahtan , Mumtaz Begum Mustafa , Rodina Ahmad , Mansoor Abdulhak , Mohammed Atiquzzaman
{"title":"Mobility challenges and issues in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) path planning: A systematic review","authors":"Abdul Mannan , Hasan Kahtan , Mumtaz Begum Mustafa , Rodina Ahmad , Mansoor Abdulhak , Mohammed Atiquzzaman","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111766","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111766","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are unavoidable in various real-world applications, including surveillance, agricultural and industrial monitoring, search and rescue, and other scientific applications. The flying ability and speed of UAVs make them perfect for emergency and disaster management applications. Moreover, since UAVs are pilotless vehicles, especially in disaster management operations, their deployment as an ad hoc network is crucial and safe. However, these operations present numerous challenging hurdles that must be overcome for the successful deployment of UAV networks. For example, ground user mobility, handover scheme of the user equipment from UAV to UAV, topology model for the intra-UAV communication, energy efficiency and time efficiency, obstacle avoidance, dynamic or static approach, and centralized or decentralized technique for the UAV management. In this study, a systematic literature review is carried out to find existing ways to deal with problems like autonomous path planning in 3D environments, the effects of static and dynamic altitudes on UAVs, how the UAV deals with mobile ground users on its own, and how mobility might affect packet loss during communication in the UAV network. Following a thorough screening of current studies, we selected 57 studies that addressed four research questions. We critically reviewed these studies to identify the UAV path planning models. These techniques were categorized based on different path planning approaches deployed especially related to static and mobile ground users, coverage of the area, and 3D mobility of the UAV. Studies concerning the 3D mobility of the UAV and how to handle the mobility of ground users reveal research gaps. The current evaluation metrics are also extracted from the selected studies that were used by the researchers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111766"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145326545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-09DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111754
Yiran Zhang, Huizheng Geng, Li Su, Shen He, Fang Liu
{"title":"A traceable and multi-authority CP-ABE scheme for IoT medical devices","authors":"Yiran Zhang, Huizheng Geng, Li Su, Shen He, Fang Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111754","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111754","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly transforming healthcare, enabling real-time monitoring and intelligent services. However, secure and accountable data sharing in such settings remains challenging due to stringent privacy requirements and the limited computing capabilities of IoT medical devices. Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) is widely used for fine-grained access control, and its multi-authority variant (MCP-ABE) enhances scalability by allowing decentralized attribute management. While recent works have explored traceability in MCP-ABE, most existing schemes remain too computationally heavy for practical deployment on constrained medical devices. To overcome this issue, we propose a traceable multi-authority CP-ABE scheme specifically tailored for IoT healthcare environments. The scheme introduces an IoT-aware lightweight decryption framework, where a locally deployed Data User Assistant performs all pairing-based computations and delivers a partially decrypted result to the user. Unlike traditional outsourced decryption, our scheme requires the user to encrypt only the key not the full dataset and avoids any ciphertext re-encryption. In the final decryption phase, the user device completes only a single exponentiation, reducing the decryption complexity from multiple pairing operations to a minimal computation load. This design substantially lowers the burden on user devices, making the scheme practically deployable in real-world medical IoT systems. Furthermore, our scheme integrates traceability into a decentralized multi-authority structure, supporting white-box accountability under the LRSW assumption while preserving collaborative key management and user privacy. Performance evaluation demonstrates its efficiency and suitability for resource-constrained healthcare scenarios.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111754"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145326503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Securing ultra reliability low latency communication in cooperative NOMA network with untrusted UAV relay","authors":"Shanchao Zheng, Deying Li, Yongcai Wang, Wenping Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111759","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111759","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the advent of 5G and beyond, the requirements for latency and reliability in ultra reliability low latency communication (URLLC) have become more stringent than ever. Unlike the assumption of infinite packet length based on information theory, URLLC needs short packet transmission to achieve the stringent requirements. In this background, conventional expression of secrecy rate based on Shannon capacity achieved with infinite packet length is not applicable. Moreover, due to the openness characteristics of wireless channel, security problem is a pronounced challenge for secure URLLC. In this paper, we investigate the physical layer security (PLS) of URLLC in a cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network with an untrusted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) relay. To enhance the PLS in the cooperative NOMA network, we propose an Effective Secrecy Throughput (EST) maximization problem which includes the joint optimization of packet length, power allocation and UAV relay trajectory. Specially, the expression of secrecy rate based on decoding error probability is utilized to construct the expression of EST. Since the EST maximum problem is nonconvex and difficult to find an optimal solution, we propose an EST optimization algorithm (ESTO) based on the block successive convex approximation (BSCA) by dividing the EST maximum problem into three subproblems: packet length optimization, power allocation optimization and UAV relay trajectory optimization. We solve the three subproblems alternately until the objective function convergences. Simulation results confirm the convergence of our proposed algorithm and demonstrate the secrecy performance of our cooperative NOMA network.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111759"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145326504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-08DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111753
Hamid Latif-Martínez, Jordi Paillissé, Pere Barlet-Ros, Albert Cabellos-Aparicio
{"title":"BGP anomaly detection using the raw internet topology","authors":"Hamid Latif-Martínez, Jordi Paillissé, Pere Barlet-Ros, Albert Cabellos-Aparicio","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111753","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111753","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is central to the global connectivity of the Internet, enabling fast and efficient dissemination of routing information. Hence, detecting any anomaly concerning BGP announcements is of critical importance to ensure the continuous operation of Internet services. Typically, BGP anomaly detection algorithms have relied on features of the BGP messages, such as the average length of the AS_PATH attribute, the volume of messages, or the type of message (announcement or withdrawal). Even though these algorithms provide good performance, they do not take into account the Internet topology, that is, the graph of Autonomous Systems (AS) created by the BGP announcements. In addition, some of the existing algorithms can detect only specific types of anomalies, while others require retraining them to support new scenarios.</div><div>In this paper we propose detecting BGP anomalies by leveraging the raw BGP topology graph, instead of manually curated features of the BGP messages. We implement a Machine Learning algorithm to process the entire BGP topology and evaluate it with real-world data from 4 well-known incidents. We compare our proposal against two state-of-the-art solutions and a classical method that use BGP features and features of the BGP topology, not the topology itself. Our results show that our solution obtains remarkable performance identifying the incidents. Finally, we test our model with regular data (non-anomalous) to prove that it can be used in a production scenario, with samples processed on the fly and guaranteeing a low false alarm rate.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111753"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145326511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-06DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111757
Changsong Yang , Tiantian Zhu , Yueling Liu , Yong Ding , Zhen Liu
{"title":"Differentially private adaptive noise for graph neural network in online social networks","authors":"Changsong Yang , Tiantian Zhu , Yueling Liu , Yong Ding , Zhen Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111757","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111757","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become a significant domain for studying social behaviors and information dissemination due to their unique user interactions and relational structures. These graph-structured data contain important information, and in-depth research on such data can effectively mine users’ social influence, thereby promoting the study of social applications such as information dissemination, behavior prediction, and social recommendation. Graph Neural Network (GNN) have demonstrated superior performance compared to traditional neural networks in multiple domains due to their advantages in handling graph-structured data. However, the inherent node-link structure in graph data makes privacy leakage an urgent issue to be addressed. In response to privacy protection issues in online social networks, w·e propose an adaptive differential privacy noise GNN scheme. This scheme can dynamically adjust the noise value introduced at each iteration based on historical and current model parameters, ensuring that the model meets differential privacy requirements while minimizing the impact on model accuracy. Through empirical experiments on multiple real-world datasets, this method maintains high accuracy under different privacy budgets. Even when the privacy budget <span><math><mrow><mi>ϵ</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow></math></span>, compared to the GAP algorithm and the baseline model based on Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), the model still achieved a 2.07 <span><math><mo>%</mo></math></span> increase in average accuracy, providing a superior trade-off between privacy and accuracy under a range of privacy protection requirements.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111757"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145271059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Computer NetworksPub Date : 2025-10-06DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111755
Milin Zhang , Mohammad Abdi , Jonathan Ashdown , Francesco Restuccia
{"title":"Adversarial attacks to latent representations of distributed neural networks in split computing","authors":"Milin Zhang , Mohammad Abdi , Jonathan Ashdown , Francesco Restuccia","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111755","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111755","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Distributed deep neural networks (DNNs) have been shown to reduce the computational burden of mobile devices and decrease the end-to-end inference latency in edge computing scenarios<span><span><sup>1</sup></span></span> While distributed DNNs have been studied, the resilience of distributed DNNs to adversarial action remains an open problem. In this paper, we fill the existing research gap by rigorously analyzing the robustness of distributed DNNs against adversarial action. We cast this problem in the context of information theory and rigorously provedx that (i) the compressed latent dimension improves the robustness but also affect task-oriented performance; and (ii) the deeper splitting point enhances the robustness but also increases the computational burden. These two trade-offs provide a novel perspective to design robust distributed DNN. To test our theoretical findings, we perform extensive experimental analysis by considering 6 different DNN architectures, 6 different approaches for distributed DNN and 10 different adversarial attacks using the ImageNet-1K dataset.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111755"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145271060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review and classification of the use of SMs for energy saving in next-generation radio access networks","authors":"Jann Camilo Sánchez Huertas , Greta Vallero , Loutfi Nuaymi , Anne-Cécile Orgerie","doi":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111745","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.comnet.2025.111745","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Energy consumption in 5G/6G wireless networks presents a fundamental challenge, encompassing various aspects related to energy, availability, cost, and environmental concerns. According to the literature, the use of sleep modes (SMs) has emerged as an effective strategy to improve the energy efficiency of base stations (BS) within recently proposed 5G frameworks, while also considering future 6G developments. A comprehensive review is conducted to elucidate what SMs are, the decision process to switch to and from SM BSs, and the main challenges associated with them. Additionally, power consumption models are analyzed to understand how to evaluate the performance of SMs. Following an overview of the primary SM strategies developed in recent years, we introduce a matrix model classification of these strategies. This classification is based on the policies and tools implemented for SMs in wireless networks. Finally, based on this analysis, we highlight the most promising strategies and present ideas for future research aimed at achieving an energy-efficient and sustainable use of SMs in 5G/6G wireless networks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50637,"journal":{"name":"Computer Networks","volume":"273 ","pages":"Article 111745"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145271055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}