TNSM Searchable Index

Author(s)	Title	Year	Publication	Keywords
Xili Wan, Fuliang Yang, Xinjie Guan, Zuwei Zhang, Yihan Ji	Joint Dataflow and In-Network Computing Resource Optimization for Dynamic LEO Satellite Systems	2026	Early Access		Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are emerging as an important platform for distributed dataflow execution in space-terrestrial integrated networks. Existing studies largely treat routing and processing separately, while next-generation LEO systems are expected to process and transform data in transit by leveraging on-board computing and software-defined infrastructures. However, jointly optimizing routing and in-network processing in dynamic LEO satellite networks remains challenging because of time-varying connectivity, limited on-board resources, and bandwidth constraints. In this paper, we formulate the Dynamic LEO In-network Processing Dataflow Optimization (DLIDO) problem, which aims to maximize the throughput of processed dataflows by jointly optimizing routing paths and processing-resource allocation over a dynamic flow network. We present an approximation algorithm with a proven (1−ϵ) approximation guarantee for 0 < ϵ ≤ 0.5, providing near-optimal throughput under dynamic processing and communication constraints. To further improve efficiency and practicality, we develop a 2-walk based iterative heuristic algorithm that substantially reduces runtime while maintaining strong empirical performance, and in some regimes provably optimal behavior. Extensive evaluations on realistic LEO network topologies show that both algorithms significantly outperform existing approaches in throughput and adaptability, highlighting a promising direction for dataflow-aware scheduling and optimization in dynamic satellite systems.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722902
S A Harish, S Vignesh, Divya Pathak, Anil Kumar Sharma, Praveen Tammana	Anomaly Detection in In-Network Fast ReRoute Systems	2026	Early Access	Fluid flow Planing Delays	High-speed programmable data planes provide opportunities to implement data-driven fast reroute systems that quickly adapt to varying network conditions (e.g., congestion, failures) and improve network performance. The core of these systems has packet-processing algorithms running in the data plane that continuously look for traffic patterns (e.g., too many retransmissions) specific to a network condition (e.g., link failure) and take appropriate action (e.g., reroute). Despite their benefits, they also increase the potential attack surface. Adversaries can generate malicious traffic patterns resembling those anticipated by a fast reroute system and trick the system. Doing so would lead to poor network performance due to incorrect reroute decisions. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to detect whether the fast reroute systems are under the influence of malicious traffic patterns. Our key idea is to model the expected behavior using benign traffic features and use the model as a reference to determine whether the system is under the influence of adversaries. Using realistic attack traces, we demonstrate attacks on two fast reroute systems and successfully detect those attacks using the proposed detection mechanism.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3715353
Qing Wu, Xijia Dong, Leyou Zhang, Yue Lei, Zilong Yan	Cloud-Assisted Verifiable and Updatable Private Set Union Protocol for Enhancing Network Intrusion Detection	2026	Early Access	Protocols Clouds Security	As network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) play an increasingly critical role in large-scale network environments, multiple organizations, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and security service providers often maintain independent IP blacklists. Due to the dynamic nature of malicious IP addresses and their cross-organizational propagation, inter-organizational blacklist sharing is essential for improving network intrusion detection. However, traditional blacklist exchange mechanisms risk exposing participants’ complete blacklist information, and curious organizations may infer another organization’s detection strategies from the shared IP intersection, leading to privacy breaches.To address this issue, this paper proposes a Cloud-Assisted Verifiable and Updatable Private Set Union (CVU-PSU) protocol, which leverages the multi-query Reverse Private Membership Test (mq-RPMT) protocol and Oblivious Transfer (OT) technology to ensure privacy-preserving inter-organizational blacklist sharing. The protocol utilizes cloud computing to reduce the computational and communication overhead of participants in the mq-RPMT protocol while incorporating a verification mechanism to ensure the correctness of the cloud’s returned results. Furthermore, the protocol supports real-time blacklist updates, enabling adaptation to rapidly changing malicious IP addresses.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol achieves efficient inter-organizational blacklist sharing with low communication and computational costs while preserving privacy, thereby enhancing the real-time performance and accuracy of network intrusion detection systems.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3716071
Deemah H. Tashman, Soumaya Cherkaoui	Trustworthy AI-Driven Dynamic Hybrid RIS: Joint Optimization and Reward Poisoning-Resilient Control in Cognitive MISO Networks	2026	Early Access	Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces Reliability Optimization	Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are a key mechanism for alleviating spectrum scarcity by enabling secondary users (SUs) to opportunistically access licensed frequency bands without harmful interference to primary users (PUs). To address unreliable direct SU links and energy constraints common in next-generation wireless networks, this work introduces an adaptive, energy-aware hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for underlay multiple-input single-output (MISO) CRNs. Distinct from prior approaches relying on static RIS architectures, our proposed RIS dynamically alternates between passive and active operation modes in real time according to harvested energy availability. We also model our scenario under practical hardware impairments and cascaded fading channels. We formulate and solve a joint transmit beamforming and RIS phase optimization problem via the soft actor-critic (SAC) deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method, leveraging its robustness in continuous and highly dynamic environments. Notably, we conduct the first systematic study of reward poisoning attacks on DRL agents in RIS-enhanced CRNs, and propose a lightweight, real-time defense based on reward clipping and statistical anomaly filtering. Numerical results demonstrate that the SAC-based approach consistently outperforms established DRL base-lines, and that the dynamic hybrid RIS strikes a superior trade-off between throughput and energy consumption compared to fully passive and fully active alternatives. We further show the effectiveness of our defense in maintaining SU performance even under adversarial conditions. Our results advance the practical and secure deployment of RIS-assisted CRNs, and highlight crucial design insights for energy-constrained wireless systems.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3660728
Wei Sai, Yihui Lu, Xin Guo	A Privacy-Preserving Security Framework for Multi-Party Data Fusion Computing Based on Homomorphic Encryption	2026	Early Access	Security Protocols Information rates	To prevent plaintext exposure in multi-party collaborative computing, this paper proposes a distributed secure multi-party computation protocol based on the Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song (CKKS) homomorphic encryption scheme. Data is encoded and encrypted at the source into CKKS complex polynomial ciphertext, enabling vectorized fusion under shared evaluation keys and threshold decryption in a decentralized architecture without a trusted central authority. Experiments on heterogeneous multi-institution datasets demonstrate low numerical error (9.0×10⁻⁷ at polynomial order 2¹⁶ and depth 12), effective scalability (throughput increasing from 1.12×10⁵ to 1.32×10⁵ ops/s and latency decreasing from 56 ms to 38 ms as nodes scale from 4 to 16), and strong robustness (70% decryption success at a 60% threshold and 95% recovery under malicious interference), showing that the framework achieves efficient computation with strict privacy protection for cross-party data fusion.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3717343
Masoumeh Safkhani, Mohammad Reza Servati, Fatemeh Rezaei	HEIoT: A Novel Three-Factor Authentication Protocol for Enhanced Security in IoT and Next-Generation Networks	2026	Early Access	Authentication Internet of Things Protocols	The Internet has a significant impact on contemporary society, enabling a wide range of applications, including advanced cellular networks such as 4G, 5G, and 6G. Since these communications occur over shared or open channels, ensuring secure data exchange is of critical importance, as any weakness in the communication infrastructure may compromise system reliability. Device authentication in the Internet of Things (IoT) and user authentication in smart environments, such as smart homes, remain fundamental security challenges. As the first line of defense, authentication mechanisms must be robust, since vulnerabilities at this stage can expose the entire system to serious threats. To address these challenges, numerous authentication schemes based on cryptographic primitives, including Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), have been proposed. In this paper, we present a comprehensive security analysis of an ECC-based three-factor authentication protocol proposed by Yuan et al. Our analysis shows that the protocol is vulnerable to desynchronization, user impersonation, traceability, and insider attacks, all of which succeed with probability 1 by exploiting at most two protocol phases. To mitigate these weaknesses, we propose an improved authentication scheme, called HEIoT. The proposed scheme is formally analyzed under the Real-or-Random (RoR) model to establish session-key security and is further verified using the Scyther tool. Moreover, a Python-based implementation is provided to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed protocol. Comparative results indicate that HEIoT achieves stronger security while maintaining acceptable communication, computational, and storage overhead.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3702041
Jing Zhang, Chao Luo, Rui Shao	MTG-GAN: A Masked Temporal Graph Generative Adversarial Network for Cross-Domain System Log Anomaly Detection	2026	Early Access	Anomaly detection Adaptation models Generative adversarial networks	Anomaly detection of system logs is crucial for the service management of large-scale information systems. Nowadays, log anomaly detection faces two main challenges: 1) capturing evolving temporal dependencies between log events to adaptively tackle with emerging anomaly patterns, 2) and maintaining high detection capabilities across varies data distributions. Existing methods rely heavily on domain-specific data features, making it challenging to handle the heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of log data. This limitation restricts the deployment of anomaly detection systems in practical environments. In this article, a novel framework, Masked Temporal Graph Generative Adversarial Network (MTG-GAN), is proposed for both conventional and cross-domain log anomaly detection. The model enhances the detection capability for emerging abnormal patterns in system log data by introducing an adaptive masking mechanism that combines generative adversarial networks with graph contrastive learning. Additionally, MTG-GAN reduces dependency on specific data distribution and improves model generalization by using diffused graph adjacency information deriving from temporal relevance of event sequence, which can be conducive to improve cross-domain detection performance. Experimental results demonstrate that MTG-GAN outperforms existing methods on multiple real-world datasets in both conventional and cross-domain log anomaly detection.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3654642
Ping He, Yu Yao, Xu Li, Yao Hu, Wei Yang	FIGAN: Diversity-Oriented Traffic Generation for Industrial Protocol Format Inference	2026	Early Access	Protocols Modeling Fuzzing	Protocol Format Inference is a pivotal step in the reverse engineering of proprietary protocols, yet its effectiveness is constrained by the scarcity of high-quality training data. In industrial control systems, the rigid and cyclical nature of traffic results in a "long-tail" distribution, where diverse functional scenarios are severely underrepresented. Existing generative approaches, primarily designed for fuzzing or intrusion detection, fail to resolve the intrinsic conflict between syntactic validity and semantic diversity required for protocol format inference. To bridge this gap, we propose FIGAN, a stage-wise decoupled generative framework tailored to synthesize high-fidelity traffic for protocol format inference. By isolating flexible distribution learning from rigid syntax enforcement, FIGAN liberates the generative process to extrapolate novel payload variations from a continuous latent space, effectively surmounting the limitations of sparse seed data. Specifically, the framework integrates three synergistic modules: first, heuristic pre-processing that constructs semantic templates as a prior knowledge base; second, a generative adversarial architecture optimized via discrete relaxation to explore high-dimensional payload patterns independently of syntax rules; and finally, a closed-loop verification mechanism that performs syntactic calibration and functional validation against simulated device responses. Evaluations on four real-world protocols (Modbus TCP, S7Comm, Omron FINS, and DNP3) demonstrate that FIGAN significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines. The source code has been open-sourced https://github.com/MissHP111/FIGAN.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3717268
Soonbeom Kwon, Yusu Noh, Youngwoo Jang, Illyoung Choi, Byungchul Tak, In-geol Chun, Young-Kyoon Suh	Scalable and Robust Resource Provisioning via Adaptive Task Scheduling for Edge Devices	2026	Early Access	Schedules Scheduling Cloning	Edge devices, such as wearables, drones, and CCTV systems, are vital for real-time data collection in urban intelligence. However, their limited computational and storage capacities pose significant challenges. While offloading to public clouds offers scalability, it often incurs high latency and operational costs. Conversely, centralizing workloads on edge servers may result in the underutilization of high-performance edge devices. To address these limitations, we introduce ERPF, a Kubernetes-based Edge Resource Provisioning Framework that augments the capabilities of heterogeneous edge environments. ERPF orchestrates dynamic volume provisioning, GPU-aware resource allocation, execution context migration, and adaptive task distribution to improve system flexibility and efficiency. Building on this, we propose a novel adaptive task scheduling technique, termed eATS, composed of three key mechanisms: (i) Partition Smoothing Scheme for stable task granularity control, (ii) Resilient Edge Reintegration for failure detection and task reassignment, and (iii) Competitive Task Cloning for speculative execution with fastest-result commitment. The proposed eATS scheme reduces task execution time by up to 27.6%, lowers partition size variability by 8.7×, and improves scheduling robustness across heterogeneous edge devices over the baseline.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3694238
Martine S. Lenders, Carsten Bormann, Thomas C. Schmidt, Matthias Wählisch	A Leaner and Faster Web: How CBOR Can Improve Dynamic Content Encoding in JSON and DNS over HTTPS	2026	Early Access	Internet of Things Encoding Internet	The Internet community has taken major efforts to decrease latency on the World Wide Web with significant improvements in accelerating content transport and in compressing static content. Less attention, however, has been dedicated to compression of dynamic content. Such content is commonly provided by JSON and DNS over HTTPS. Dynamic content objects continue to grow in size, which increases latency and fosters the digital inequality. In this paper, we propose to mitigate this increase by utilizing Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR), a standard originally designed for the constrained Internet of Things (IoT) to restrict packet sizes and enable efficient encoding of data objects. We provide protocol design and three new data sets for the evaluation of dynamic content, DNS, and the loading of websites. Our key findings are the following: (i) Switching the data representation from JSON to CBOR reduces data by up to 80%. This size reduction can decrease loading times by up to 13.8% when downloading large objects—even in local setups. (ii) Enabling CBOR for DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over CoAP (DoC) reduces packet sizes significantly. Compressing only names combined with unpacked CBOR achieves maximum gain of 52.2%, using more complex but still lightweight Packed CBOR allows minimizing packets by up to 95.5%. Our lean decoder for name compression can fit into as little as 314 bytes of build size. Our results clearly show the potential of CBOR outside of IoT scenarios. Parts of this research have already influenced work within the IETF.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722114
Depeng Xu, Guozhen Cheng, Hongchao Hu, Quan Ren, Xiaohan Yang, Kangxu Wang	STNet: Multi-Scale Spatiotemporal Learning and Adaptive Fusion for Few-Shot Tor Traffic Classification	2026	Early Access	Modules (abstract algebra) Modeling Accuracy	The Tor network’s anonymity is increasingly exploited for cybercrime, creating a demand for accurate traffic classification under strict few-shot constraints. While recent efforts like WF-Transformer demonstrate strong temporal modeling capabilities, they still require abundant labeled data and struggle to generalize under defense-induced distortions and open-world unknown traffic. To address these gaps, we propose STNet (SpatioTemporal Multi-scale Augmentation and fusion Network), an episode-based few-shot learning architecture for Tor traffic classification. Unlike simple module stacking, STNet adopts a modular decoupling design: (1) a Multi-Scale Spatiotemporal Feature Fusion (MSMF) module captures packet-level and flow-level patterns to resist obfuscation; (2) scenario-adaptive modules tackle domain shifts in closed-world settings and feature scarcity in open-world settings; and (3) a Hierarchical Layer Attention (HLA) mechanism dynamically fuses heterogeneous features from different deployment positions. Extensive experiments on real-world Tor traffic show that STNet consistently outperforms representative baselines including WF-Transformer. In closed-world settings, it limits the accuracy drop under WalkieTalkie obfuscation to 13.6 percentage points. In open-world 10-shot evaluation, it achieves 92.1% AU-COVR and 79.1% unknown-class F1-score, surpassing the best baseline by 4.9 and 6.0 percentage points, respectively. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of decoupling universal feature extraction from scenario-specific adaptation in few-shot Tor traffic analysis.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722541
Nguyen Quang Hieu, Dinh Thai Hoang, Diep N. Nguyen, Mohammad Abu Alsheikh, Carlos C. N. Kuhn, Yibeltal F. Alem, Ibrahim Radwan	End-to-End Human Pose Reconstruction from Wearable Sensors for 6G Extended Reality Systems	2026	Early Access	Receivers OFDM Quantization (signal)	Full 3D human pose reconstruction is a critical enabler for extended reality (XR) applications in future sixth generation (6G) networks, supporting immersive interactions in gaming, virtual meetings, and remote collaboration. However, achieving accurate pose reconstruction over wireless networks remains challenging due to channel impairments, bit errors, and quantization effects. Existing approaches often assume error-free transmission in indoor settings, limiting their applicability to real-world scenarios. To address these challenges, we propose a novel deep learning-based framework for human pose reconstruction over orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The framework introduces a two-stage deep learning receiver: the first stage jointly estimates the wireless channel and decodes OFDM symbols, and the second stage maps the received sensor signals to full 3D body poses. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed neural receiver reduces bit error rate (BER), thus gaining a 5 dB gap at 10−4 BER, compared to the baseline method that employs separate signal detection steps, i.e., least squares channel estimation and linear minimum mean square error equalization. Additionally, our empirical findings show that 8-bit quantization is sufficient for accurate pose reconstruction, achieving a mean squared error of 5×10−4 for reconstructed sensor signals, and reducing joint angular error by 40% for the reconstructed human poses compared to the baseline. The practical feasibility of our framework is demonstrated through validation in an open-source ray tracing simulator incorporating realistic 3D scenes and human models.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722545
Yuyu Zhao, Siyuan Zhou, Guang Cheng, Yuyang Zhou, Zihan Chen, Wei Zhang	CPRANT: Towards a Computing Power Network Telemetry Architecture Based on Collaborative SRv6 and FPGA Optimization	2026	Early Access	Telemetry Planing Field programmable gate arrays	The emergence of Computing Power Networks (CPN) as critical AI infrastructure poses a key networking challenge: how to obtain visibility across the network into computing and transport resources in real time while minimizing the telemetry overhead on user traffic and control/forwarding devices. This paper introduces CPRANT (Computing Power Networks Telemetry based on SRv6 and FPGA), an FPGA-based plug and play In-Band Network Telemetry (INT) framework that addresses this challenge through a joint hardware and software design. The core innovation lies in using FPGA spatial parallelism to establish physically isolated processing paths for telemetry tasks and forwarding tasks, achieving line rate packet processing with a verified CPN’s forwarding latency of only 15 ns. We propose a novel INT mechanism based on SRv6 that eliminates linear metadata accumulation at each hop in traditional INT via SID reconstruction and time division multiplexing, reusing native SRv6 header space and preserving forwarding compatibility. CPRANT further incorporates adaptive sampling and redundant path elimination algorithms to dynamically optimize telemetry processes, demonstrating a 52.4% reduction in bandwidth and a 45.9% reduction in the load of the control plane. Experimental validation confirms the operational efficiency of CPRANT, maintaining high information fidelity (effective telemetry information yield > 0.85) and comprehensive coverage (path overlap < 4%) with a lightweight resource footprint (< 60 MB). This solution provides a scalable telemetry paradigm for mission critical CPN applications, particularly in large scale AI deployment scenarios requiring monitoring that does not disrupt services.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722680
Hayla Nahom Abishu, Ahmed Badawy, Amr Mohamed, Carla Fabiana Chiasserini	Reliability and Traffic Aware Resource Allocation for UAV-assisted Vehicular O-RAN	2026	Early Access	Massive machine type communications Resource management Autonomous aerial vehicles	The rapid advancements of next-generation vehicular networks require intelligent, low-latency, and efficient resource management to support heterogeneous services. In this work, we propose a Traffic-aware Dynamic Resource Allocation (TADRA) architecture for UAV-assisted vehicular O-RAN to address the challenges of dynamic traffic conditions, infrastructure failures, and stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements. Due to the dynamic mobility and flexible deployment characteristics, UAV Open Radio Units (O-RUs) in the TADRA architecture support the terrestrial infrastructure under overload or failure conditions, dynamically extending coverage, balancing traffic loads, and restoring service to maintain uninterrupted QoS across diverse and heterogeneous traffic demands. Unlike existing static or single-layer solutions, our proposed TADRA integrates RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs) with a Hierarchical Traffic-Aware Multi-Agent Twin-Delayed (TMT) algorithm to optimize the allocation of computation and radio resources. This joint optimization problem is NP-hard, highly dynamic, and coupled across agents, making TMT a tractable and adaptive alternative. This hierarchical framework performs traffic prioritization at the upper (application) layer and resource allocation at the lower (MAC) layer, facilitating adaptive decision-making under diverse vehicular traffic patterns. Numerical results demonstrate that our solution provides substantial gains over MATD3, MADDPG, and GA, achieving 17% lower latency, 10% higher throughput, 14% lower energy consumption, and 6.5% higher reliability.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3722320
Shuang Zheng, Xing Zhang, Michael Sheng, Haixu Wang, Wenbo Wang	Beam Hopping Low Earth Orbit Satellite Resource Allocation for Differentiated Services and Robustness Analysis under Model Attacks	2026	Early Access	Beams Satellites Resource management	Beam hopping (BH)-enabled Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites play a pivotal role in next-generation communication networks, providing global coverage, improving spectrum efficiency, and supporting flexible adaptation to heterogeneous service demands. To fully exploit these capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are increasingly employed for dynamic resource allocation and power management. However, limited onboard resources and potential adversarial perturbations pose challenges to both efficiency and robustness. To address these issues, we leverage digital twin technology to accurately capture the spatio-temporal dynamics of user–satellite visibility, providing precise state information for decision-making. Building on this, we formulate a joint optimization framework for BH scheduling and power allocation as a Markov Decision Process and propose the BRIDGE—BH with Reinforcement learning incorporating Integrated Dirichlet and Gumbel-TopK Exploration—which integrates a quality of service (QoS)-driven subchannel scheduling mechanism to ensure efficient and differentiated resource allocation. The model’s robustness is systematically evaluated under three classical adversarial attacks. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach achieves superior energy efficiency, service throughput, and fairness, while the robustness analysis shows stable performance under the considered bounded adversarial perturbations.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3710750
Jing Mei, Jinglei Xu, Zhao Tong, Keqin Li	Energy-Aware Multi-UAV Collaboration for Data Collection and Trajectory Planning with MADDPG	2026	Early Access	Autonomous aerial vehicles Energy Timing	Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are pivotal for facilitating data collection in emergency scenarios. Despite the potential of Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL) in coordinating such systems, existing researches struggle to resolve the high-dimensional coupling of data collection, trajectory planning, and energy scheduling under strict collision avoidance and Return-To-Base (RTB) constraints. This paper proposes a energy-aware cooperative MADRL framework designed to maximize data collection utility under energy constraints. Specifically, we employ a Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) approach featuring a Centralized Training with Decentralized Execution (CTDE) design and a multi-objective reward mechanism to balance conflicting optimization goals. Extensive simulations validate the advantages of the proposed framework over leading baselines. Notably, the algorithm exhibits significant quantitative advantages in complex high-load scenarios. These outcomes prove that our method achieves higher task completion rates while strictly adhering to RTB and safety protocols.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3721502
Franck Messaoudi, Luhan Wang, Abdelkader Mekrache, Adlen Ksentini, Bingxuan Li, Jialei Su, Sofiane Messaoudi, Salim El Ghalbzouri	The Brewing Storm in 5G’s Data Plane: Design and Evaluation of a High-Performance eBPF/XDP-Based User Plane Function	2026	Early Access	Quality of service Fluid flow Kernel	This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel 5G UPF leveraging eBPF technology to meet the stringent performance and programmability requirements of emerging 6G systems. Traditional UPF implementations often struggle to balance performance, flexibility, and resource efficiency-challenges particularly critical in CPU- and I/O-constrained edge environments. The proposed eBPF-based UPF architecture mitigates these limitations by embedding core functionalities, such as packet classification, forwarding, and QoS enforcement, directly within the Linux kernel via eBPF programs attached through XDP and tc hook points. Performance evaluation using TRex demonstrates that the proposed solution achieves competitive throughput, low packet loss, and efficient CPU utilization across traffic profiles. Moreover, it maintains full compliance with 5G Core Network standards. Comparative analysis with well-established open-source UPF implementations further underscores its advantages. This work highlights the potential of eBPF as a foundational technology for building next-generation, programmable UPFs optimized for edge cloud deployments in the 6G era.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3720812
Beom-Su Kim	A Semantic-Aware TSN Framework for Minimizing Age of Informative Data in Real-Time Industrial Monitoring Systems	2026	Vol. 23, Issue	Job shop scheduling Real-time systems Monitoring	Real-time industrial monitoring systems rely on the timely delivery of semantically important data, such as anomaly-indicating sensor readings, to enable accurate and responsive decision-making. Credit-Based Shaping (CBS), a key mechanism in Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), is well-suited for such systems due to its ability to dynamically manage aperiodic and bursty traffic without rigid transmission schedules. However, CBS was originally designed for Audio Video Bridging (AVB) traffic, which is periodic and less delay-sensitive, and thus lacks mechanisms to prioritize packets based on their semantic importance or freshness. As a result, critical updates may be delayed by the transmission of redundant or outdated packets. Motivated by these limitations, this paper presents an enhanced CBS mechanism, aiming to ensure the timeliness of semantically informative data in real-time industrial monitoring systems. Specifically, we encapsulate this enhancement within a semantic-aware TSN framework, which integrates three tightly coupled techniques: 1) semantic-based packet prioritization, 2) age-aware traffic shaping, and 3) age-aware packet forwarding and filtering. These mechanisms work in synergy to detect and expedite the transmission of high-priority, semantically meaningful packets, while suppressing redundant updates. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves anomaly detection responsiveness while maintaining efficient bandwidth utilization.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3661050
Domenico Scotece, Giuseppe Santaromita, Claudio Fiandrino, Luca Foschini, Domenico Giustiniano	On the Scalability of Access and Mobility Management Function: The Localization Management Function Use Case	2026	Vol. 23, Issue	5G mobile communication Scalability Location awareness	The adoption of Service-Based Architecture (SBA) in 5G Core Networks (5GC) has significantly transformed the design and operation of the control plane, enabling greater flexibility and agility for cloud-native deployments. While the infrastructure has initially evolved by implementing key functions, there remains significant potential for additional services, such as localization, paving the way for the integration of the Location Management Function (LMF). However, the extensive functional decomposition within SBA leads to consequences, such as the increase of control plane operations. Specifically, we observe that the additional signaling traffic introduced by the presence of the LMF overwhelms the Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) which is responsible for authentication and mobility. In fact, in mobile positioning, each connected mobile device requires a significant amount of control traffic to support location algorithms in the 5GC. To address this scalability challenge, we analyze the impact of three well-known optimization techniques on location procedures to reduce control message traffic in the specific context of the 5GC, namely a caching system, a request aggregation system, and a service scalability system. Our solutions are evaluated in an OpenAirInterface (OAI) emulated environment with real hardware. After the analysis in the emulated environment, we select the caching system–due to its feasibility–for being analyzed in a real 5G testbed. Our results demonstrate a significant reduction in the additional overhead introduced by the LMF, improving scalability by minimizing the impact on AMF processing time up to a 50% reduction.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3664546
Fengqi Li, Yudong Li, Lingshuang Ma, Kaiyang Zhang, Yan Zhang, Chi Lin, Ning Tong	Integrated Cloud-Edge-SAGIN Framework for Multi-UAV Assisted Traffic Offloading Based on Hierarchical Federated Learning	2026	Vol. 23, Issue	Resource management Autonomous aerial vehicles Heuristic algorithms	The growing number of mobile devices used by terrestrial users has significantly amplified the traffic load on cellular networks. Especially in urban environments, the high traffic demand brought about by dense user populations has bottlenecked network resources. The Space-Air-Ground-Integrated Network (SAGIN) provides a new solution to cope with this demand, enhancing data transmission efficiency through a multi-layered network structure. However, the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of SAGIN also poses significant management and resource allocation challenges. In this paper, we propose a cloud-edge-SAGIN framework for multi-UAV assisted traffic offloading based on Hierarchical Federated Learning (HFL), aiming to improve the traffic offloading ratio while optimizing the offloading resource allocation. HFL is used instead of traditional Federated Learning (FL) to solve problems such as irrational resource allocation due to heterogeneity in SAGIN. Specifically, the framework applies a hierarchical federated average algorithm and sets a reward function at the ground level, aiming to obtain better model parameters, improve model accuracy at aggregation, enhance UAV traffic offloading ratio, and optimize its scheduling and resource allocation. In addition, an improved Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithm TD3-A4C is designed in this paper to assist UAVs in realizing intelligent decision-making, reducing communication latency, and further improving resource utilization efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework and algorithms display superior performance across all dimensions and offer robust support for the comprehensive investigation of intelligent traffic offloading networks.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3658833