Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) detection in real-time is a challenging task despite the advances in computer vision and deep learning techniques. The increasing use of UAVs in numerous applications has generated worries about possible risks and misuse. Although vision-based UAV detection methods have been proposed in recent years, a standing open challenge and overlooked issue is that of adverse weather. This work is the first, to the best of our knowledge, to investigate the impact of adverse weather conditions and image distortions on vision-based UAV detection methods. To achieve this, a custom training dataset was curated with images containing a variety of UAVs in diverse complex backgrounds. In addition, this work develops a first-of-its-kind dataset, to the best of our knowledge, with UAV-containing images affected by adverse conditions. Based on the proposed datasets, a comprehensive benchmarking study is conducted to evaluate the impact of adverse weather and image distortions on the performance of popular object detection methods such as YOLOv5, YOLOv8, Faster-RCNN, RetinaNet, and YOLO-NAS. The experimental results reveal the weaknesses of the studied models and the performance degradation due to adverse weather, highlighting avenues for future improvement. The results show that even the best UAV detection model’s performance degrades in mean average precision (mAP) by $-50.62$ points in torrential rain conditions, by $-52.40$ points in high noise conditions, and by $-77.0$ points in high motion blur conditions. To increase the selected models’ resilience, we propose and evaluate a strategy to enhance the training of the selected models by introducing weather effects in the training images. For example, the YOLOv5 model with the proposed enhancement strategy gained $+35.4$, $+39.3$, and $+44.9$ points higher mAP in severe rain, noise, and motion blur conditions respectively. The findings presented in this work highlight the advantages of considering adverse weather conditions during model training and underscore the significance of data enrichment for improving model generalization. The work also accentuates the need for further research into advanced techniques and architectures to ensure more reliable UAV detection under extreme weather conditions and image distortions.

With the widespread adoption of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in various applications (e.g., aerial transportation, traffic monitoring), there have been apprehensions regarding the associated risks of employing UAVs in both civilian and military contexts, including concerns about privacy infringement, safety issues, and security threats. Although several methods have been proposed to detect UAVs, a pressing open challenge is posed by varying adverse weather conditions that could degrade the performance of many existing methods. To address these limitations, this work proposes a YOLO-based (You Only Look Once) novel model, YOLO-RAW that exhibits improved performance in adverse weather conditions and considers different scales of UAVs. Furthermore, to facilitate a more comprehensive evaluation of the proposed model’s effectiveness in UAV detection, we have curated a complex background dataset and introduced three distinct test sets affected by adverse weather conditions. These three test sets comprise the Rainy Test Set (RTS), the AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) Test Set (ATS), and the Motion Blurred Test Set (MBTS). The comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed YOLO-RAW model over its counterparts in detecting UAVs under adverse conditions. The code and datasets could be found at: https://github.com/AdnanMunir338/YOLO-RAW.

The rapid expansion of IoT devices has introduced significant security challenges, with malware authors constantly evolving their techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in IoT networks. Despite this growing threat, progress in developing effective detection solutions remains limited. In this study, we present an ML-based framework for detecting and classifying network threats targeting IoT environments. Using the CTU-IoT-Malware-Capture 2023 dataset and the UNSW Bot-IoT dataset, we transformed the task into a structured multi-class classification problem to better reflect real-world detection challenges. Our primary contribution lies in demonstrating the effectiveness of post-training quantization on gradient-boosted models, specifically a Quantized XGB variant enhanced with histogram-based quantization. This approach significantly reduces model size and inference time without sacrificing accuracy. The proposed model achieved high classification accuracies of 99.93% and 99.99% on the two datasets, while the quantization step led to 1.42× and 3× improvements in inference speed, and reductions in model size by 3.61× and 2.71×, respectively, making it well-suited for deployment in resource-constrained IoT settings. This work demonstrates not only the effectiveness of gradient boosting in handling complex traffic data but also introduces an efficient optimization strategy for real-time IoT threat detection.

After natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or wars occur, cellular communication networks often sustain significant damage or become impaired. In these critical situations, first responders must coordinate with other rescue teams to communicate essential information to central command and survivors. To address this challenge, we have developed a reliable and rapidly deployable wireless ad hoc system for post-disaster management using Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware, specifically RTI-DDS, named R-RDSP. The R-RDSP further enhances these metrics, achieving a 14.5% improvement in end-to-end delay and a 20.24% improvement in round-trip delay over the RDSP scheme. The R-RDSP system consists of three main modules: client, relay, and server. Each module connects to others via an ad hoc network, ensuring direct device-to-device communication without relying on existing infrastructure. The client module collects and sends the victim’s location and emergency messages. The relay modules forward these messages across the ad hoc networks, ensuring minimal delay and high reliability. Finally, the server module receives the messages, processes them, and coordinates the response. Leveraging RTI-DDS for reliable message distribution, the system demonstrates robust performance even under challenging network conditions.