The rise of smart cities and the increasing demand for drones has sparked considerable interest in the Internet of Drones (IoD) within the realms of academia and industry. IoD presents a multitude of advantages in smart city settings, facilitating services like traffic monitoring, environmental surveillance, and disaster management by harnessing the potential of IoT and Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANET) infrastructures. However, the transmission of sensitive messages between drones in IoD-based smart cities is disseminated over insecure channels, leaving them exposed to security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, drones operating in IoD architectures are prone to physical capture attacks as they operate in unattended environments with minimal human intervention. Moreover, the limited resources of drones pose challenges to the practicality of employing computationally intensive cryptographic methods. In response to these challenges, we introduce PAF-IoD, an authentication framework that prioritizes security and efficiency. PAF-IoD leverages physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and the AEGIS authenticated encryption scheme to guarantee trustworthy and secure communication between users and drones in smart cities. In terms of security validation, we perform both random and real model-based formal analyses. Furthermore, we employ the Scyther tool to ensure the resilience of PAF-IoD against different security vulnerabilities. Additionally, an informal analysis is conducted to demonstrate the resilience of PAF-IoD against various attacks. By introducing PAF-IoD, we offer a secure solution that addresses vulnerabilities and resource limitations associated with drone communication. The proposed framework guarantees the integrity and confidentiality of data while optimizing computational and communication resources, thereby enabling reliable and effective IoD operations in smart cities.

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based communications gained a lot of attention due to their numerous applications, especially in rescue services in post-disaster areas where the terrestrial network is wholly malfunctioned. Multiple access/gateway UAVs are distributed to fully cover the post-disaster area as flying base stations to provide communication coverage, collect valuable information, disseminate essential instructions, etc. The access UAVs after gathering/broadcasting the necessary information should select and fly towards one of the surrounding gateways for relaying their information. In this paper, the gateway UAV selection problem is addressed. The main aim is to maximize the long-term average data rates of the UAVs relays while minimizing the flights’ battery cost, where millimeter wave links, i.e., using 30~300 GHz band, employing antenna beamforming, are used for backhauling. A tool of machine learning (ML) is exploited to address the problem as a budget-constrained multi-player multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem. In this setup, access UAVs act as the players, and the arms are the gateway UAVs, while the rewards are the average data rates of the constructed relays constrained by the battery cost of the access UAV flights. In this decentralized setting, where information is neither prior available nor exchanged among UAVs, a selfish and concurrent multi-player MAB strategy is suggested. Towards this end, three battery-aware MAB (BA-MAB) algorithms, namely upper confidence bound (UCB), Thompson sampling (TS), and the exponential weight algorithm for exploration and exploitation (EXP3), are proposed to realize gateways selection efficiently. The proposed BA-MAB-based gateway UAV selection algorithms show superior performance over approaches based on near and random selections in terms of total system rate and energy efficiency.

The Mobile crowdsourcing network (MCN) leverages collaborative intelligence to solve complex tasks through group cooperation. It comprises three main components: the end-user, the service provider, and the mobile user. The end-user requests crowd-sensing and computing services from the service provider, who handles task decomposition, distribution, re-composition, and recommendation. Mobile users perform the crowd sensing and computing tasks. Despite its benefits, MCN faces significant security and privacy challenges. Communications between the service provider and the end-user involve sensitive data, and mobile users and service providers communicate over open channels, making them vulnerable to security threats. To address these concerns, we propose a secure authentication framework for MCN, called SAF-MCN. This framework combines the lightweight cryptographic primitive “ ASCON” with elliptic curve cryptography. SAF-MCN allows the service provider to authenticate mobile users before they join the MCN. Once authenticated, a secure channel is established for encrypted communication over the public Internet. The security of SAFMCN is validated using both formal and informal methods, demonstrating its resilience against potential attacks. The use of Scyther further ensures the security of SAF-MCN. Comparative analysis shows that SAF-MCN is superior in terms of security features, computational efficiency, and communication cost.

Power quality (PQ) is a major issue in today’s electrical system that affects both utilities and customers. The proliferation of power electronics devices, smart grid technology, and renewable energy sources (RES) have all contributed to the emergence of PQ concerns in today’s power system. The Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC) is a versatile tool that can be used to fix distribution grid issues caused by irregular voltage, current, or frequency. Several tuning parameters, however, restrict the effectiveness of the Fractional-Order Proportional Integral Derivative (FOPID) control technique, which is proposed to improve UPQC performance. To move beyond these restrictions and find the optimal solution for the FOPID controller problem, a hybrid optimization strategy called the Hybrid Jellyfish Search Optimizer and Particle Swarm Optimizer (HJSPSO) is employed. To meet the load requirement during PQ issue periods, the suggested model incorporates a renewable energy source into the grid system. Whether the load is linear or non-linear, the design maintains PQ problems to a minimum. Furthermore, the FOPID control technique is compared with other controllers. Results show that grid-connected RES systems using the proposed FOPID control approach for UPQC have fewer PQ problems. The presented UPQC with HJSPSO strategy significantly outperformed, with the shortest computing time of 127.474 s and an objective function value of 1.423.

This paper is dedicated to optimizing the functionality of Microgrid-Integrated Charging Stations (MICCS) through the implementation of a new control strategy, specifically the fractional-order proportional-integral (FPI) controller, aided by a hybrid optimization algorithm. The primary goal is to elevate the efficiency and stability of the MICCS-integrated inverter, ensuring its seamless integration into modern energy ecosystems. The MICCS system considered here comprises a PV array as the primary electrical power source, complemented by a proton exchange membrane fuel cell as a supporting power resource. Additionally, it includes a battery system and an electric vehicle charging station. The optimization model is formulated with the objective of minimizing the integral of square errors in both the DC-link voltage and grid current while also reducing total harmonic distortion. To enhance the precision of control parameter estimation, a hybrid of the one-to-one optimizer and sine cosine algorithm (HOOBSCA) is introduced. This hybrid approach improves the exploitation and exploration characteristics of individual algorithms. Different meta-heuristic algorithms are tested against HOOBSCA in different case studies to see how well it tunes FPI settings. Findings demonstrate that the suggested method improves the integrated inverters’ transient and steady-state performance, confirming its improved performance in generating high-quality solutions. The best fitness value achieved by the proposed optimizer was 3.9109, outperforming the other algorithms investigated in this paper. The HOOBSCA-based FPI successfully improved the response of the DC-link voltage, with a maximum overshooting not exceeding 8.5% compared to the other algorithms employed in this study.