Nowadays, the ever-increasing complication and severity of security attacks on computer networks have inspired security researchers to incorporate different machine learning methods to protect the organizations’ data and reputation. Deep learning is one of the exciting techniques which recently are vastly employed by the IDS or intrusion detection systems to increase their performance in securing the computer networks and hosts. This survey article focuses on the deep learning-based intrusion detection schemes and puts forward an in-depth survey and classification of these schemes. It first presents the primary background concepts about IDS architecture and various deep learning techniques. It then classifies these schemes according to the type of deep learning methods utilized in each of them. It describes how deep learning networks are utilized in the intrusion detection process to recognize intrusions accurately. Finally, a complete analysis of the investigated IDS frameworks is provided, and concluding remarks and future directions are highlighted.

Today, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have become very popular in military applications, commercial applications, and academic research. Flying ad hoc network (FANET) is a new type of ad hoc network, which groups small drones into an ad hoc form. These networks have unique characteristics, including moving in a 3D space, high mobility, frequent topological changes, limited resources, low density of nodes, and so on, which impose various challenges when designing a proper and efficient routing scheme. In this paper, we present a fuzzy logic-based routing scheme for flying ad hoc networks. The proposed routing scheme has two phases: route discovery phase and route maintenance phase. In the first phase, we propose a technique for calculating the score of each node in the network to prevent the broadcast storm problem and control the flood of the control messages, which have been broadcast to discover a new route in the network. This score is calculated based on various parameters such as movement direction, residual energy of nodes, link quality, and node stability. Moreover, in the route selection process, we design a fuzzy system to select routes with more fitness, less delay, and fewer hops for data transfer. The second phase includes two steps: preventing route failure in order to detect and modify paths at the failure threshold, and reconstructing failed routes in order to recognize and quickly replace these routes. Finally, the proposed routing scheme is implemented in NS2 to evaluate its performance and determine its efficiency. The simulation results are compared with three routing methods, namely ECaD, LEPR, and AODV. These results show that the proposed routing method outperforms other routing schemes in terms of end to end delay, packet delivery rate, route stability, and energy consumption. However, it has slightly increased the routing overhead.

In recent years, flying ad hoc networks have attracted the attention of many researchers in industry and universities due to easy deployment, proper operational costs, and diverse applications. Designing an efficient routing protocol is challenging due to unique characteristics of these networks such as very fast motion of nodes, frequent changes of topology, and low density. Routing protocols determine how to provide communications between drones in a wireless ad hoc network. Today, reinforcement learning (RL) provides powerful solutions to solve the existing problems in the routing protocols, and designs autonomous, adaptive, and self-learning routing protocols. The main purpose of these routing protocols is to ensure a stable routing solution with low delay and minimum energy consumption. In this paper, the reinforcement learning-based routing methods in FANET are surveyed and studied. Initially, reinforcement learning, the Markov decision process (MDP), and reinforcement learning algorithms are briefly described. Then, flying ad hoc networks, various types of drones, and their applications, are introduced. Furthermore, the routing process and its challenges are briefly explained in FANET. Then, a classification of reinforcement learning-based routing protocols is suggested for the flying ad hoc networks. This classification categorizes routing protocols based on the learning algorithm, the routing algorithm, and the data dissemination process. Finally, we present the existing opportunities and challenges in this field to provide a detailed and accurate view for researchers to be aware of the future research directions in order to improve the existing reinforcement learning-based routing algorithms.

Coverage is a fundamental issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It plays a important role in network efficiency and performance. When sensor nodes are randomly scattered in the network environment, an ON/OFF scheduling mechanism can be designed for these nodes to ensure network coverage and increase the network lifetime. In this paper, we propose an appropriate and optimal area coverage method. The proposed area coverage scheme includes four phases: (1) Calculating the overlap between the sensing ranges of sensor nodes in the network. In this phase, we present a novel, distributed, and efficient method based on the digital matrix so that each sensor node can estimate the overlap between its sensing range and other neighboring nodes. (2) Designing a fuzzy scheduling mechanism. In this phase, an ON/OFF scheduling mechanism is designed using fuzzy logic. In this fuzzy system, if a sensor node has a high energy level, a low distance to the base station, and a low overlap between its sensing range and other neighboring nodes, then this node will be in the ON state for more time. (3) Predicting the node replacement time. In this phase, we seek to provide a suitable method to estimate the death time of sensor nodes and prevent possible holes in the network, and thus the data transmission process is not disturbed. (4) Reconstructing and covering the holes created in the network. In this phase, the goal is to find the best replacement strategy of mobile nodes to maximize the coverage rate and minimize the number of mobile sensor nodes used for covering the hole. For this purpose, we apply the shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) and propose an appropriate multi-objective fitness function. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, we simulate it using NS2 simulator and compare our scheme with three methods, including CCM-RL, CCA, and PCLA. The simulation results show that our proposed scheme outperformed the other methods in terms of the average number of active sensor nodes, coverage rate, energy consumption, and network lifetime.

Blockchain technology provides a stable spot in electronic voting systems by providing a transparent platform for an election which prevents the failures faced by the traditional electronic voting systems and makes it a more accurate and secure platform for voting. However, little attention has been paid to the possible impacts of new technological disruptions on politics and the electoral systems. The main goal of this paper is to design a framework for electronic voting systems using Blockchain technology. To achieve this goal, the paper outlines these three objectives: (1) to explore and identify the challenges in existing voting systems, (2) to identify the methods that could enhance the security and privacy of the electoral voting systems using Blockchain technology, and (3) to design a framework for electronic voting systems that use Blockchain technology in order to address the flaws in current voting systems. A mixed approach is applied in this study to explore the opportunities and challenges of the Blockchain voting system, and design the framework accordingly.