Blockchain Advances and Security Practices in WSN, CRN, SDN, Opportunistic Mobile Networks, Delay Tolerant Networks

Background

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are basically ad hoc networks, amalgamating small devices embedded with sensing capabilities deployed to monitor physical activities in the surrounding area of interest. These sensor nodes should have the characteristics of large coverage area, monitoring with high precision, self-organization, random deployment and fault-tolerance, etc. Due to the possibility of providing low cost solutions, nowadays Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are getting more and more attention in many real-world applications. However, the dense deployment of many sensor nodes cause unique security challenges in its management. In the meantime, adaptation of many security protocols to overcome those challenges are not straightforward because of inherent limits for energy consumption at sensor nodes as well as availability of lower memory and storage space. Therefore, it is timely important researchers to discuss the trade-off between resource consumption minimization and security maximization in WSNs.

Flexibility is the key feature of Software Defined Networks (SDNs) that elevate its standards beyond the conventional networking infrastructures (Kreutz, Ramos, & Verissimo, 2013). This concept offers advanced network management capabilities to the network administrator by enabling configuration of networking instances independent of the hardware layer. Infact, diversification exhibited in networking devices and their plethoric aggregate are contriving compatibility and interoperability debacles. In SDN, homogeneity of the both core and access networks are improved with standardizing the hardware specifications; and higher reliance on hardware based processing is transformed into an autonomous processing approach with software integration (Kumar et al., 2017). In fact, SDN envisages solutions for complex issues in traditional networking topologies and routing algorithms by integrating intelligence to the control plane. In addition, this is a paradigm shift for network operators that eases their issues with hardware layer and the ability to advance networking features with novel requirements to broadened avenues. Apart from flexibility, main benefits of SDN can be specified as: cost effectiveness (monetary), centralization, higher throughput, dynamic nature that support higher mobility, low communication latency, optimum network utilization, rapid and efficient load-balancing, fault tolerance, and adaptable/ context-aware security (Tomovic, Pejanovic-Djurisic, & Radusinovic, 2014; Jaballah, Conti, & Lal, 2019; Scott-Hayward, O'Callaghan, & Sezer, 2013).

Recently, research in the field of wireless communications has been focusing on the Fifth Generation (5G) cellular systems. Meanwhile, the 5G and beyond wireless network designers face challenging demands such as more capacity, higher data rates, lower latency, better connectivity for a massive number of users, lesser cost and energy, and more importantly improved quality of experience (QoE) (Munsub Ali, Liu, & Ejaz, 2020). Moreover, with the increase in the number of communication devices, the requirement for higher bandwidth is essential. However, with the limited and expensive radio spectrum resources, allocation of new frequency bands is an extremely difficult task. Therefore, efficient management of the spectrum under dynamic policies has recently become a prospective research topic.