Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) and millimeter wave (mmWave) communications are two major technologies to enhance the spectrum efficiency (SE). Considering that the SE improvement in the CRNs is limited due to the interference temperature imposed on the primary user (PU), and the severe path loss and high directivity in mmWave communications make it vulnerable to blockage events, we introduce an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) into mmWave CRNs. This paper investigates the robust secure beamforming (BF) design in the IRS-assisted mmWave CRNs. By using a uniform linear array (ULA) at the cognitive base station (CBS) and a uniform planar array (UPA) at the IRS, and supposing that the imperfect channel state information (CSI) of wiretap links is known, we formulate a constrained problem to maximize the worst-case achievable secrecy rate (ASR) of the secondary user (SU) by jointly designing the transmit BF at the CBS and reflect BF at the IRS. To solve the non-convex problem with coupled variables, an efficient alternating optimization algorithm is proposed. As for the transmit BF at the CBS, we propose a heuristic robust transmit BF algorithm to attain the BF vectors analytically. As for the reflect BF at the IRS, by means of an auxiliary variable, we transform the non-convex problem into a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem with rank-1 constraint, which is handled with the help of an iterative penalty function, and then obtain the optimal reflect BF through CVX. Finally, the simulation results indicate that the ASR performance of our proposed algorithm has a small gap with that of the optimal solution with perfect CSI compared with the other benchmarks.

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Anonymous authentication has significant contribution to privacy protection in safety message dissemination for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs); however, it suffers from heavy workload of vehicle revocation check and message signature verification, which leads to unsatisfactory timeliness and high message loss rate in heavy traffic situations. To manage these challenging problems, this paper proposes an efficient safety message authentication protocol for VANETs by combining batch group signature verification and our proposed Group Session Key (GSK). Specifically, our signature verification method for safety message can both achieve computation efficiency by reducing the number of computation operations of bilinear pairing and resist impersonation attack by using tracking key implement. GSK is associated with the forward and backward keys and is only shared among unrevoked vehicle within a group. Performance analysis and simulations demonstrate that our protocol can provide promising security against various common types of attackers and is more efficient than traditional group-signature-based authentication protocols, in terms of computation time cost, authentication delay and message loss rate.

Positional modulation (PM) has been introduced recently where a given modulation pattern can only be received at certain desired positions. To achieve it, the multi-path effect is exploited for positional modulation with the aid of metasurface acting as a low-cost flexible reflecting surface. In this paper, sparse antenna array based positional modulation design is proposed for the first time; to reduce the implementation complexity of the metasurface, the number of active units is also minimised for a given PM design requirement. Design examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed design.

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Naphthylacetic acid (NAA) was used to increase the tuberous root yield of Rehmannia glutinosa, but the differences between its NAA-treated and control tuberous roots (NT and CG) and the regulatory mechanism of NAA effect remain unclear. In order to investigate them, NTs and CGs were used as materials, and both yield-related indices were measured; the metabolomics and transcriptomics were used to capture differentially accumulated metabolites (DAM) and to validate them via mining differentially expressed genes (DEGs), respectively. The effects of NAA treatment: increased NT mass per plant by 21.14%, through increasing the number of roots and increasing the mean root diameter; increased catalpol content by 1.2234% (p < 0.05); up-regulated 11DAMs and 596DEGs; and down-regulated 18 DAMs and 517DEGs. In particular, we discovered that NAA regulated its DAMs and biomass via 10 common metabolic pathways, and that the number of NAA-down-regulated DAMs was more than that of NAA-up-regulated DAMs in its tuberous root. Furthermore, HPLC validated the changes of several DAMs and 15 DEGs (4CL, ARF, CCoAOMT, ARGOS, etc.) associated with the yield increase and DAMs were verified by RT-qPCR. This study provided some valuable resources, such as tuberous root indices, key genes, and DAMs of Rehmannia glutinosa in response to NAA for distinguishing the CGs from NTs, and novel insights into the regulatory mechanism of NAA effects on both at the transcriptomic and metabolomic levels, so it will lay a theoretical foundation for NAA-regulated plant yield and quality, and provide references for prohibiting the uses of NAA as a swelling agent in medicinal tuber plants in China.