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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have enormous potential in enabling new applications in various areas, ranging from military, security, medicine, and surveillance to traffic-monitoring applications. Lately, there has been heavy investment in the development of UAVs and multi-UAVs systems that can collaborate and complete missions more efficiently and economically. Emerging technologies such as 4G/5G networks have significant potential on UAVs equipped with cameras, sensors, and GPS receivers in delivering Internet of Things (IoT) services from great heights, creating an airborne domain of the IoT. However, there are many issues to be resolved before the effective use of UAVs can be made, including security, privacy, and management. As such, in this paper we review new UAV application areas enabled by the IoT and 5G technologies, analyze the sensor requirements, and overview solutions for fleet management over aerial-networking, privacy, and security challenges. Finally, we propose a framework that supports and enables these technologies on UAVs. The introduced framework provisions a holistic IoT architecture that enables the protection of UAVs as “flying” things in a collaborative networked environment.

Internet of Things (IoT) constitutes the next step in the field of technology, bringing enormous changes in industry, medicine, environmental care, and urban development. Various challenges are to be met in forming this vision, such as technology interoperability issues, security and data confidentiality requirements, and, last but not least, the development of energy efficient management systems. In this paper, we explore existing networking communication technologies for the IoT, with emphasis on encapsulation and routing protocols. The relation between the IoT network protocols and the emerging IoT applications is also examined. A thorough layer-based protocol taxonomy is provided, while how the network protocols fit and operate for addressing the recent IoT requirements and applications is also illustrated. What is the most special feature of this paper, compared to other survey and tutorial works, is the thorough presentation of the inner schemes and mechanisms of the network protocols subject to IPv6. Compatibility, interoperability, and configuration issues of the existing and the emerging protocols and schemes are discussed based on the recent advanced of IPv6. Moreover, open networking challenges such as security, scalability, mobility, and energy management are presented in relation to their corresponding features. Lastly, the trends of the networking mechanisms in the IoT domain are discussed in detail, highlighting future challenges.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are the underlying monitoring and control components of critical infrastructures, such as power, telecommunication, transportation, pipelines, chemicals and manufacturing plants. Legacy SCADA systems operated on isolated networks, that made them less exposed to Internet threats. However, the increasing connection of SCADA systems to the Internet, as well as corporate networks, introduces severe security issues. Security considerations for SCADA systems are gaining higher attention, as the number of security incidents against these critical infrastructures is increasing. In this survey, we provide an overview of the general SCADA architecture, along with a detailed description of the SCADA communication protocols. Additionally, we discuss certain high-impact security incidents, objectives, and threats. Furthermore, we carry out an extensive review of the security proposals and tactics that aim to secure SCADA systems. We also discuss the state of SCADA system security. Finally, we present the current research trends and future advancements of SCADA security.

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Actualizing Internet of Things undoubtedly constitutes a major challenge of modern computing and is a promising next step in realizing the unification of all seamlessly interacting entities, either human users or participating machines, under a shared, coherent architecture. While it has now become common belief that the related solutions should be based on compatible network infrastructure employing widely accepted communication schemes, the specifics of the intermediate system that would act as global interface for all involved "things" are yet to be determined. A rising trend to define such machine-based entities is through cyberphysical systems, in terms of collaborating elements with physical input and output. Certainly, sensor networks constitute the most representative realization of such systems. Taking these issues and opportunities under consideration, this work proposes a bioinspired distributed architecture for an Internet of Things that exhibits self-organization properties to enable efficient interaction between entities modeled as cyber-physical systems, mainly focusing on sensor networks. Furthermore, a middleware has been implemented according to the proposed architecture, which serves the role of the backbone of this network as a multiagent and autonomous distributed system. The evaluation results demonstrate the self-optimization properties of the introduced scheme and indicate global network convergence.

5th Generation (5G) mobile networks are expected to bring higher capacity, higher density of mobile devices, lower battery consumption and improved coverage. 5G entails the convergence of wireless and wired communications in a unified, efficient architecture. Mobile nodes, as defined in 4G era, are transformed in Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) to make the front-haul wireless domains flexible and intelligent. This work highlights a set of critical challenges in advancing 5G networks, fuelled by the utilisation of the Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), the Software Defined Radio (SDR) and the Software Defined Networks (SDN) techniques. Furthermore, a novel conceptual model is presented in terms of control and management planes, where the inner architectural components are introduced in detail.

This study provides field research evidence on the efficiency of a "free-selection" peer review assignment protocol as compared to the typically implemented "assignedpair" protocol. The study employed 54 sophomore students who were randomly assigned into three groups: Assigned-Pair (AP) (the teacher assigns student works for review to student pairs), Free-Selection (FS) (students are allowed to freely explore and select peer work for review), and No Review (NR) (control group). AP and FS student groups studied and reviewed peer work in the domain of Computer Networking, supported by a web-based environment designed to facilitate the two peer review protocols. Our results indicate that students following the Free Selection protocol demonstrate (a) better domain learning outcomes, and (b) better reviewer skills, compared to the AP condition. Overall, the study analyzes the benefits and shortcomings of the FS vs. AP review assignment protocol, providing evidence that the FS condition can be multiply beneficial to students who engage in peer review activities.