The physical layer security (PLS) of wireless networks has witnessed significant attention in next generation communication systems due to its potential towards enabling protection at signal level in dense network environments. The growing trends towards smart mobility via sensor enabled vehicles is transforming today's traffic environment into Internet of Vehicles (IoVs). Enabling PLS for IoVs would be a significant development considering the dense vehicular network environment in the near future. In this context, this paper presents a PLS framework for a vehicular network consisting a legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper, both under the effect of interfering vehicles. The double-Rayleigh fading channel is used to capture the effect of mobility within the communication channel. The performance is analyzed in terms of the average secrecy capacity (ASC) and secrecy outage probability (SOP). We present the standard expressions for the ASC and SOP in alternative forms, to facilitate analysis in terms of the respective moment generating function (MGF) and characteristic function of the joint fading and interferer statistics. Closed-form expressions for the MGFs and characteristic functions were obtained and Monte Carlo simulations were provided to validate the results. Approximate expressions for the ASC and SOP were also provided, for easier analysis and insight into the effect of the network parameters. The results attest that the performance of the considered system was affected by the number of interfering vehicles as well as their distances. It was also demonstrated that the system performance closely correlates with the uncertainty in the eavesdropper's vehicle location.

The energy harvesting methods enable WSNs nodes to last potentially forever with the help of energy harvesting subsystems for continuously providing energy, and storing it for future use. The energy harvesting techniques can use various potential sources of energy, such as solar, wind, mechanical, and variations in temperature. Energy-constrained sensor nodes are small in size. Therefore, some mechanisms are required to reduce energy consumption and consequently to improve the network lifetime. The clustering mechanism is used for energy efficiency in WSNs. In the clustering mechanism, the group of sensor nodes forms the clusters. The performance of the clustering process depends on various factors such as the optimal number of clusters formation and the process of cluster head selection. In this paper, we propose a hybrid whale and grey wolf optimization (WGWO)-based clustering mechanism for energy harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs). In the proposed research, we use two meta-heuristic algorithms, namely, whale and grey wolf to increase the effectiveness of the clustering mechanism. The exploitation and exploration capabilities of the proposed hybrid WGWO approach are much higher than the traditional various existing metaheuristic algorithms during the evaluation of the algorithm. This hybrid approach gives the best results. The proposed hybrid whale grey wolf optimization-based clustering mechanism consists of cluster formation and dynamically cluster head (CH) selection. The performance of the proposed scheme is compared with existing state-of-art routing protocols.

By taking into account interactions of the 3-D tremor and the force data, the tremor modeling performance enhances significantly.

Microgrids (MGs) are a growing energy industry segment and represent a paradigm shift from remote central power plants to more localized distributed generation. Controlling MGs represents a challenge mainly due to their complexity and the different properties each asset in the MG has. Various methods have been proposed to address this challenging problem of MG control. Some of these methods are considered the optimal operation of MG assets. Other works are based on a systems approach and address the scalability and simplicity of synthesizing a MG's energy management system (EMS). ε-variables based logical control strategies, which are practical methods to model control strategies in MGs, can make the control structure more scalable. However, this method is not optimal. On the other hand, Switched Model Predictive Control (S-MPC) is an advanced method utilized to control power systems while satisfying several constraints to achieve an optimal solution based on various criteria. Nevertheless, its implementation is not straightforward. Therefore, to overcome these existing problems, this paper proposes a novel systems approach method called an extended optimal ε-variable method developed by combining the ε-variable based control method with the S-MPC method. This unique method has demonstrated a significant improvement in optimizing an MG's energy management and enhanced the adaptation and scalability of a control structure of the MG. Our results show that the proposed extended optimal ε-variable method: (i) reduces the operational cost of MG by nearly 35%; (ii) reduces the usage of the battery energy storage system by 42%, and (iii) enhances the practicality of photovoltaic (PV) usage by 28%. Our novel extended optimal ε-variable technique also increases the adaptation and scalability of the control structure of the MG significantly by translating the results of S-MPC to the ε-variable method.INDEX TERMS Energy management system, ε-variables, microgrids, renewable energy sources, systems approaches, switched model predictive control.

Physiological tremor is an involuntary and rhythmic movement of the body specially the hands. The vibrations in hand-held surgical instruments caused by physiological tremor can cause unacceptable imprecision in microsurgery. To rectify this problem, many adaptive filtering-based methods have been developed to model the tremor to remove it from the tip of microsurgery devices. The existing tremor modeling algorithms such as the weighted Fourier Linear Combiner (wFLC) algorithm and its extensions operate on the x, y, and z dimensions of the tremor signals independently. These algorithms are blind to the dynamic couplings between the three dimensions. We hypothesized that a system that takes these coupling information into account can model the tremor with more accuracy compared to the existing methods. Tremor data was recorded from five novice subjects and modeled with a novel quaternion weighted Fourier Linear Combiner (QwFLC). We compared the modeling performance of the proposed QwFLC with that of the conventional wFLC algorithm. Results showed that QwFLC improves the modeling performance by about 20% at the cost of higher computational complexity.