Elements in massive narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) for 5G networks suffer severely from packet drops due to queue overflow. Active Queue Management (AQM) techniques help in maintaining queue length by dropping packets early, based on certain defined parameters. In this paper, we have proposed an AQM technique, called Aggressive Random Early Detection (AgRED) which, in comparison to previously used Random Early Detection (RED) and exponential RED technique, improves the overall end-to-end delay, throughput, and packet delivery ratio of the massive NB-IoT 5G network while using UDP. This improvement has been achieved due to a sigmoid function used by the AgRED technique, which aggressively and randomly drops the incoming packets preventing them from filling the queue. Because of the incorporation of the AgRED technique, the queue at different nodes will remain available throughout the operation of the network and the probability of delivering the packets will increase. We have analyzed and compared the performance of our proposed AgRED technique and have found that the performance gain for the proposed technique is higher than other techniques (RED and exponential RED) and passive queue management techniques (drop-tail and drop-head). The improvement in results is most significant in congested network deployment scenarios and provides improvements in massive Machine Type Communication, while also supporting ultra-low latency and reliable communication for 5G applications.

This article aims to investigate the problem of security and privacy in the fintech business, since the use of digital technologies has increased in last few years. In this context, we conducted a survey of fintech companies to understand how they are addressing the security and privacy issue and what are the potential risks and benefits for consumers. According to the results, fintech companies are exploiting a range of technical, regulatory, and compliance measures to ensure the security and privacy of financial data, such as encryption, access controls, and data governance policies. However, we attempted to pinpoint open issues as well as prospective research directions. In such settings, there is a need to better understand the efficiency of different privacy and security measures, as well as the potential risks and advantages for customers while they are using fintech services. This article recommends that future research broaden its scope and delve further into the security and privacy issues of specific types of fintech services.

In both developed and developing countries, air pollution is increasing daily, compromising the air quality index and causing harm to everyone. Some of the reasons for this rapid increase in air pollution include the growing population, rising number of industries, rapid urbanization, and excessive use of fuel-consuming transportation. Hence, there is an ever-increasing need to monitor air quality using an energy-efficient, ubiquitous and connected manner. In this paper, we are presenting the design, working, and results of our device named Air-MIT, which is an air quality monitoring device, which uses the Internet of Things (IoT) to populate and upload data securely to the cloud server. We have developed a low-cost IoT-based air monitoring system capable of detecting carbon dioxide (CO₂), Carbon Monoxide (CO), methane gas (CH₄), Ammonium (NH₄), with the provision of adding more sensors capable of detecting other harmful gases and particulates in the air as well. The system has been designed to monitor indoor air quality in real-time and to trigger an alarm if any one of the readings crosses the predefined threshold. The device also has the provision of turning on the exhaust fan in the house or kitchen to clear out the air and ventilate the space to minimize the exposure of harmful gases, resulting in avoidance of any accidents or fires.

Various routing protocols have been developed for wireless ad hoc networks to shift from infrastructure-based networks to self-controlling and self-configurable networks. These ad hoc networks are easy to implement and have plenty of application in the fields of healthcare, transportation, smart cities, etc. Although almost all of the routing protocols work on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model’s network layer, a few routing protocols support routing on the data link layer of the OSI model rather than the conventional one. One of these routing protocols include the Better Approach To Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (BATMAN). Though BATMAN is a comparably new routing protocol and included in the Linux kernel, it suffers from performance deterioration and latency issues that need to be addressed especially in the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper presents a symmetry-based split hop penalty for BATMAN version 4 to improve the network’s performance in multi-hop scenarios. Split hop penalty defines two different sets of penalties to accommodate the routing protocol metric based on the interface media type. The experiments were conducted within the campus building of the university with physical nodes, and the obtained results highlight that overall performance is improved in terms of throughput, latency, and jitter while no performance gain is measured in packet loss and routing loops that are still present.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are a new and emerging technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way that wireless communication systems are designed and implemented. These surfaces are made up of a large number of small, individually controllable elements, each of which can be used to manipulate the phase and amplitude of the electromagnetic waves that pass through it. This allows them to perform a wide range of functions, including wireless power transfer, beamforming, and cloaking. In this work, we provide an overview of the principles and applications of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, and we discuss the advantages and challenges of these surfaces in wireless communications. We also provide an overview of the current state of research in this area. Moreover, we outline the future directions for the development of these surfaces.

In this paper, we have presented the design and implementation of a blockchain-based approach for ensuring reliable supply chain management for commodities transported through smart containers. To administer interactions between the sender and receiver, our developed system makes use of the Ethereum blockchain’s smart contract features. Smart containers equipped with Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled sensors are used to monitor shipping conditions to check predefined shipping requirements. Smart contracts on Ethereum are used to automate payments, validate receivers, and give refunds in the case of violation of predefined requirements. We have also implemented our designed front-end decentralized WebApp and wallet that allows the sender and receiver to communicate with Ethereum smart contracts.