Traditional distance-based location verification system (LVS) is ineffective for some attacks in sparse mobile ad hoc networks, e.g., the similar distance-based malicious (SDM) attack. In this letter, we propose to exploit radio irregularity to build a novel LVS. Our system detects attack based on the estimated difference of radio irregularity coefficients and the claimed locations of the malicious node and an assistant node. To the best of our knowledge, our system is the first-of-its-kind that can detect SDM attack and pollution attack with only the received signal strength indicator information transmitted by a detecting node to the suspicious malicious node and an assistant node. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed system can detect the attacks that cannot be detected by traditional distance-based methods.

With the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing, more and more devices, such as sensor nodes and intelligent automated guided vehicles (AGVs), can serve as edge devices to provide Location-Based Services (LBS) through the IoT. As the number of applications increases, there is an abundance of sensitive information in the communication process, pushing the focus of privacy protection towards the communication process and edge devices. The challenge lies in the fact that most traditional location privacy protection algorithms are not suited for the IoT with edge computing, as they primarily focus on the security of remote servers. To enhance the capability of location privacy protection, this paper proposes a novel K-anonymity algorithm based on clustering. This novel algorithm incorporates a scheme that flexibly combines real and virtual locations based on the requirements of applications. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly improves location privacy protection for the IoT with edge computing. When compared to traditional K-anonymity algorithms, the proposed algorithm further enhances the security of location privacy by expanding the potential region in which the real node may be located, thereby limiting the effectiveness of “narrow-region” attacks.

The image super-resolution (SR) task in semantic communication can directly apply the delivered information to the downstream SR task, eliminating complex processing at the receiver and significantly improving communication efficiency. This approach is vital for applications in areas such as telemedicine and satellite communications. Nevertheless, developing semantic communication systems for image SR tasks confronts challenges in creating high-performance joint source-channel coding (JSCC) schemes and mitigating wireless channel interference. In this paper, a progressive refinement attention feature (PRAF) module is proposed for the image SR task in semantic communication. This module effectively extracts deep semantic information from images via a progressive feature extraction strategy and adjusts the semantic information according to the SNRs using an improved channel attention mechanism. Building on PRAF, we custom-design the JSCC scheme for image SR tasks in semantic communications. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed PRAF module and confirm its superiority over existing deep neural networks (DNNs) based JSCC schemes and traditional separated source channel coding schemes.

Preserving the location privacy of users in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is a significant challenge for location information. Most of the conventional Location Privacy Preservation (LPP) methods protect the privacy of the user while sacrificing the capability of retrieval on the server-side, that is, legitimate devices except the user itself cannot retrieve the location in most cases. On the other hand, applications such as geographic routing and location verification require the retrievability of locations on the access point, the base station, or a trusted server. Besides, with the development of networking technology such as caching technology, it is expected that more and more distributed location-based services will be deployed, which results in the risk of leaking location information in the wireless channel. Therefore, preserving location privacy in wireless channels without losing the retrievability of the real location is essential. In this paper, by focusing on the wireless channel, we propose a novel LPP enabled by distance (ranging result), angle, and the idea of spatial cloaking (DSC-LPP) to preserve location privacy in MANETs. DSC-LPP runs without the trusted third party nor the traditional cryptography tools in the line-of-sight environment, and it is suitable for MANETs such as the Internet of Things, even when the communication and computation capabilities of users are limited. Qualitative evaluation indicates that DSC-LPP can reduce the communication overhead when compared with k-anonymity, and the computation overhead of DSC-LPP is limited when compared with conventional cryptography. Meanwhile, the retrievability of DSC-LPP is higher than that of k-anonymity and differential privacy. Simulation results show that with the proper design of spatial divisions and parameters, other legitimate devices in a MANET can correctly retrieve the location of users with a high probability when adopting DSC-LPP.