The explosive popularity of small-cell and Internet of Everything devices has tremendously increased traffic loads. This increase has revolutionised the current network into 5G technology, which demands increased capacity, high data rate and ultra-low latency. Two of the research focus areas for meeting these demands are exploring the spectrum resource and maximising the utilisation of its bands. However, the scarcity of the spectrum resource creates a serious challenge in achieving an efficient management scheme. This work aims to conduct an in-depth survey on recent spectrum sharing (SS) technologies towards 5G development and recent 5G-enabling technologies. SS techniques are classified, and SS surveys and related studies on SS techniques relevant to 5G networks are reviewed. The surveys and studies are categorised into one of the main SS techniques on the basis of network architecture, spectrum allocation behaviour and spectrum access method. Moreover, a detailed survey on cognitive radio (CR) technology in SS related to 5G implementation is performed. For a complete survey, discussions are conducted on the issues and challenges in the current implementation of SS and CR, and the means to support efficient 5G advancement are provided.

A smart grid provides a bidirectional flow of electricity and information whilst ensuring well-balanced electricity supply and demand. The key enabler for the smart grid is its robust communication infrastructure. Choosing the best communication technology for the smart grid is crucial as it involves a mixture of critical and non-critical traffic. This study provides a comprehensive review on smart grid communication and its possible solutions for a reliable two-way communication toward supporting diversified power grid applications. Existing networking methods along with their advantages and weaknesses are highlighted for future research directions. The communication network architecture in the smart grid, with details on each networking technology, switching methods and medium for data communication, is critically reviewed to identify the existing research gaps. A discussion on issues and challenges encountered in smart grid communication for current implementation is highlighted together with the recommendations for further improvement. Overall, the highlighted issues and recommendations from this study are useful to researchers, technology providers and industries to develop new communication technologies for the smart grid that will provide reliable, robust, and suitable two-way communication in the future.

Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) helps decision makers (DMs) solve highly complex problems. Accordingly, MCDM has been widely used by DMs from various fields as an effective and reliable tool for solving various problems, such as in site and supplier selection, ranking and assessment. This work presents an in-depth survey of past and recent MCDM techniques cited in the literature. These techniques are mainly categorised into pairwise comparison, outranking and distance-based approaches. Some well-known MCDM methods include the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Analytical Network Process (ANP), Elimination et Choix Traduisant la Realité (ELECTRE), Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). Each of these methods is unique and has been used in a vast field of interest to support DMs in solving complex problems. For a complete survey, discussions related to previous issues and challenges and the current implementation of MCDM are also presented.

Hormone receptor status is determined primarily to identify breast cancer patients who may benefit from hormonal therapy. The current clinical practice for the testing using either Allred score or H-score is still based on laborious manual counting and estimation of the amount and intensity of positively stained cancer cells in immunohistochemistry (IHC)-stained slides. This work integrates cell detection and classification workflow for breast carcinoma estrogen receptor (ER)-IHC-stained images and presents an automated evaluation system. The system first detects all cells within the specific regions and classifies them into negatively, weakly, moderately, and strongly stained, followed by Allred scoring for ER status evaluation. The generated Allred score relies heavily on accurate cell detection and classification and is compared against pathologists’ manual estimation. Experiments on 40 whole-slide images show 82.5% agreement on hormonal treatment recommendation, which we believe could be further improved with an advanced learning model and enhancement to address the cases with 0% ER status. This promising system can automate the exhaustive exercise to provide fast and reliable assistance to pathologists and medical personnel. The system has the potential to improve the overall standards of prognostic reporting for cancer patients, benefiting pathologists, patients, and also the public at large.

Unsupervised lung segmentation method is one of the mandatory processes in order to develop a Content Based Medical Image Retrieval System (CBMIRS) of CXR. The purpose of the study is to present a robust solution for lung segmentation of standard and mobile chest radiographs using fully automated unsupervised method. The novel method is based on oriented Gaussian derivatives filter with seven orientations, combined with Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering and thresholding to refine the lung region. In addition, a new algorithm to automatically generate a threshold value for each Gaussian response is also proposed. The algorithms are applied to both PA and AP chest radiographs from both public JSRT dataset and our private datasets from collaborative hospital. Two pre-processing blocks are introduced to standardize the images from different machines. Comparisons with the previous works found in the literature on JSRT dataset shows that our method gives a reasonably good result. We also compare our algorithm with other unsupervised methods to provide fairly comparative measures on the performances for all datasets. Performance measures (accuracy, F-score, precision, sensitivity and specificity) for the segmentation of lung in public JSRT dataset are above 0.90 except for the overlap measure is 0.87. The standard deviations for all measures are very low, from 0.01 to 0.06. The overlap measure for the private image database is 0.81 (images from standard machine) and 0.69 (images from two mobile machines). The algorithm is fully automated and fast, with the average execution time of 12.5 s for 512 by 512 pixels resolution. Our proposed method is fully automated, unsupervised, with no training or learning stage is necessary to segment the lungs taken using both a standard machine and two different mobile machines. The proposed pre-processing blocks are significantly useful to standardize the radiographs from mobile machines. The algorithm gives good performance measures, robust, and fast for the application of the CBMIRS.

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) networks are packet‐based networks that offer considerable advantages, including improved network utilisation, reduced network latency, and the ability to meet the quality of service and strict level agreement requirements of any incoming traffic. A vast number of applications are now migrating to packet‐based conditions that cause increased pressure on network providers to change their systems. Innovations and improvements on MPLS are still on‐going to ensure that such networks can cater to the ever‐increasing bandwidth demand whenever required. This study provides a review of MPLS networks and their promising technologies, such as traffic engineering, protection and restoration, differentiated services, and MPLS‐transport profile (MPLS‐TP) and its applications. This work also reviews recent issues on MPLS networks and discusses the implementation of MPLS‐TP networks in the power grid. A review of recent literature shows that researchers should be careful in proposing new protocols or designs for MPLS to ensure that it achieves the most efficient and optimal performance. Furthermore, it can be concluded that although MPLS is a promising technology for future networks, there are challenges to overcome with regards to security and network flexibility, especially as far as migration to MPLS‐TP is concerned.