Last updated: 2026-11-12 05:01 UTC
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Number of pages: 178
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Publication | Keywords | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jian Ye, Gaolei Fei, Jiajie Li, Xuemeng Zhai, Guangmin Hu, Ming Liang | Network topology inference via time-frequency consistency analysis of end-to-end traffic time series | 2026 | Early Access | Timing Topology Measurement Probes Frequency Modeling Trees (botanical) Vegetation Joining processes Tomography Network topology inference network tomography time-frequency consistency contrastive learning | In this paper, we study the classical network tomography problem of tree topology inference using end-to-end measurement. Traditional methods rely on time series correlations to measure shared path lengths. However, time-varying and non-stationary background traffic often biases these measurements. To overcome this, we comprehensively explore end-to-end traffic time series via time-frequency consistency analysis. Specifically, we jointly characterize time series in both time and frequency domains, imposing a consistency constraint. This ensures embeddings of the same time series across domains remain close in the latent space, providing a robust description of traffic dynamics. Our contrastive learning approach effectively highlights similarities among flows on common paths and distinguishes those on disjoint paths, thereby mitigating background traffic interference. Extensive evaluations across widely used probing strategies and metrics demonstrate that our embedding significantly enhances time series correlation and accurately measures shared paths. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3749558 |
| Shyam Kumar Shrestha, Shiva Raj Pokhrel, Jonathan Kua | Adapting Large Language Models for TCP Fairness over Wi-Fi | 2026 | Early Access | Large language models TCP Modeling Training Fluid flow Information rates Throughput Wireless fidelity Learning (artificial intelligence) Management Transmission Control Protocol Congestion Control Algorithms Fairness Wi-Fi | Designing Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Congestion Control Algorithms (CCAs) for heterogeneous Wi-Fi networks remains a challenge due to rapidly varying delay, loss, and contention dynamics. These effects often lead to CCA incompatibility, flow unfairness, and starvation among competing TCP flows. Although Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has shown promise in mitigating these challenges, its slow convergence, high training costs, and limited generalization hinder practical deployments. In this paper, we propose TCP-LLM, a learning-augmented transport framework that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) for compatibility-aware CCA selection. TCP-LLM encodes multivariate TCP time-series into token embeddings and performs single-step discrete CCA decisions through a lightweight LLM decision head. Parameter-efficient low-rank adaptation (LoRA) reduces the number of trainable parameters by approximately two orders of magnitude. Evaluation using traces collected from a physicalWi-Fi testbed with competing TCP Cubic, Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time (BBR), and Performance-oriented Congestion Control (PCC) flows shows that TCP-LLM achieves the highest mean, geometric-mean, and minimum per-flow throughput among the evaluated schemes. TCP-LLM also exhibits faster and more stable training convergence and supports low-latency bounded inference. These results demonstrate the feasibility of LLM-based sequence adaptation for compatibility-aware transport-layer supervision under heterogeneous wireless conditions. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3739364 |
| 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 Feature extraction Data models Load modeling Accuracy Robustness Contrastive learning Chaos Log Anomaly Detection Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Temporal Data Analysis | 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 |
| Zijian Zhao, Davide Di Monda, Domenico Ciuonzo, Yipeng Wang, Antonio Pescapè | Network Intrusion Detection Adaptability under Spurious Labels: A Noise-Aware Few-Shot Class-Incremental Learning Framework | 2026 | Early Access | Labeling Noise Internet of Things Noise reduction Modeling Signal detection Training Industrial Internet of Things Learning (artificial intelligence) Incremental learning Network Intrusion Detection System Few-Shot Learning Class-Incremental Learning Network Security Label Noise | Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) must incrementally adapt to emerging attacks, even when only a limited amount of labeled network traffic is available. Consequently, Few-Shot Class-Incremental Learning (FSCIL)-based NIDSs have gained growing attention. However, existing FSCIL-based NIDSs are highly vulnerable to label noise in newly-observed attack classes. To address this limitation, we propose NAFN, a noise-aware FSCIL-based NIDS framework that reduces the impact of mislabeled data during incremental adaptation. NAFN consists of two components: (i) Noise Detection, which identifies and removes mislabeled biflows using noise-detection algorithms, and (ii) Feature Sampling, which estimates class-conditional embeddings from clean biflows, calibrates them with base-class statistics, and resamples synthetic features to recover the original biflow count. The framework follows the Rethink Few-Shot (RFS) teacher–student paradigm with lightweight nearest-neighbor or logistic regression classifiers, and various pretraining & memory selection strategies. Experiments on CSE-CIC-IDS2018, Edge-IIoT, and IoT-NID datasets show that NAFN effectively preserves prior knowledge and maintains strong incremental performance even under 50% label noise, consistently improving new-class F1-scores over non-denoised baselines, up to +52%, while being time-efficient and robust in cross-network and high-noise incremental settings. The implementation is publicly available to foster reproducibility. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3752751 |
| Mayank Ramnani, Shasank Dixit, Sushil Yadav, Saad Ahmed, Sidharth Sharma | Split-Aware Function Placement with Availability Guarantees and Optical Provisioning in vRANs | 2026 | Early Access | Radio access networks 5G mobile communication Joining processes Topology Regional area networks Gallium Modeling Copper Optimization Costing 5G virtualized RAN VNF placement network slicing lightpath provisioning DWDM shared backup functional splitting genetic algorithm | The rapid evolution of beyond-5G and emerging 6G networks is driving the need for flexible, reliable, and cost-efficient virtualized Radio Access Network (vRAN) architectures capable of supporting heterogeneous services such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC), and Massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC). Future disaggregated RAN systems are expected to rely heavily on network slicing, functional split flexibility, and optical x-haul infrastructures to support stringent performance, scalability, and availability requirements. In this paper, we present an integrated framework for reliable, slice-aware, and functional split-aware Virtual Network Function (VNF) placement with lightpath provisioning in disaggregated vRAN environments. The proposed approach maximizes mobile network operators’ profit by jointly optimizing function placement and optical resource allocation under latency, processing, bandwidth, and availability constraints. We formulate the problem as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model with two variants: one that employs unshared backups and another that uses a more cost-efficient shared backup scheme. To address ILP complexity, we develop a heuristic algorithm and a GA-based metaheuristic that provide computationally efficient alternatives for larger instances. Extensive evaluations on topologies up to 128 nodes show that shared backup variants yield up to 18% higher profit, while maintaining up to 5–10% lower normalized CPU usage than unshared counterparts. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3751852 |
| Ivette Kembely Carrera Manosalvas, Paulo Freitas De Araujo-Filho, Georges Kaddoum, Hadi Otrok | Unsupervised Hybrid Quantum-Classical Generative Adversarial Network-Based Intrusion Detection System for 6G-enabled Internet of Things | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Signal detection Generative adversarial networks Timing Internet of Things Training Architecture Computer architecture Machine learning Fluid flow 6G Internet of Things (IoT) Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) Quantum Machine Learning (QML) Security | The emergence of sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks contributes to the widespread adoption of critical Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, such as telesurgery and autonomous vehicles. However, such advancements expand attack surfaces and make traditional security mechanisms insufficient. While machine learning (ML)-based intrusion detection systems (IDSs) have been increasingly adopted to detect attacks in such heterogeneous and dynamic environments, their complex architectures often result in high computational costs and latency, making them unsuitable for the real-time demands of 6G-enabled IoT applications. To address these challenges, we propose a novel unsupervised quantum generative adversarial network (QGAN)-based IDS. Our solution enhances the GAN generator’s ability to model complex data distributions by combining a parametrized quantum circuit with a classical neural network (NN), while maintaining a lightweight classical discriminator (fewer than 2.000 parameters) at the edge. This design significantly reduces computational complexity and minimizes detection times, since only the classical discriminator is used during inference. Experimental results demonstrate that our solution achieves competitive detection rates with an ultra-low inference latency of 0,22 ms, outperforming state-of-the-art GAN-based and transformer-based IDSs by over 2,81 times. Therefore, our architecture provides a resource-efficient security framework that delivers the ultra-low latency and high detection rates essential for next-generation IoT applications. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3747752 |
| Shengye Gong, Hui Yang, Qiuyan Yao, Xin Li, Tiankuo Yu, Wenxin Liu, Yang Zhao, Yucong Liu, Jie Zhang, Mohamed Cheriet | Resilient Hierarchical Polyhedron-based Configuration Protection for Large-Scale Multi-Domain Optical Networks | 2026 | Early Access | High performance computing Joining processes Protection Topology Costing Optical fiber networks Algorithms Modeling Architecture Computer architecture Network survivability multi-domain optical network network protection hierarchical polyhedron-based protection | Large-scale multi-domain optical networks are increasingly exposed to spatially correlated and concurrent failures, while monolithic pre-configured protection structures incur rapidly increasing global search complexity and protection-resource costs under heterogeneous physical constraints. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a resilient Hierarchical Polyhedron-based Configuration (HPC) architecture that decomposes a monolithic global survivability requirement into adaptive intra-domain connectivity constraints and a compact inter-domain connectivity constraint. To alleviate resource imbalance caused by topology-only network partitioning, a Topology-Resource Aware Domain Partitioning (TRADP) algorithm is developed to construct protection-supportable sub-domains by jointly considering topological structure and physical resource distribution. To avoid imposing a rigid protection level on heterogeneous domains, HPC assigns adaptive intra-domain connectivity targets according to local failure exposure and physical resource supportability. To reduce the complexity of cross-domain protection while preserving physical feasibility, a super-node abstraction and physical bridge-link mapping mechanism is employed to construct the inter-domain protection backbone under capacity, spectrum, and SRLG constraints. Extensive evaluations on networks of up to 1000 nodes and representative GEANT and NSFNET topologies demonstrate that HPC-TRADP maintains a recovery rate of 92.94% at 1000 nodes and 85.82% even when 30% of physical links fail concurrently. It further reduces protection overhead by up to 79.60% relative to p-KECS while maintaining efficient recovery paths, demonstrating a favorable balance between survivability, resource efficiency, and scalability. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3750417 |
| Aleksandar Avdalović, Joseph Khoury, Ibrahem AlJabea, Mustafa Hajij, Elias Bou-Harb | Beyond Flat Models: Preserving ICS Topology using Combinatorial Complexes for Hierarchy-Aware Intrusion Detection | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Cells (biology) Integrated circuits Tagging Ranking (statistics) Image sensors Location awareness Signal detection Security Conferences Industrial Control Systems Intrusion Detection Anomaly Localization Topological Deep Learning Combinatorial Complexes Purdue Model Cyber-Physical Security | Industrial Control Systems (ICS) follow the Purdue model hierarchy, organizing sensors, actuators, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), and supervisory control into distinct hierarchical layers. Despite this inherent structure, existing data-driven intrusion detectors still fail to model this intricate property. To address this gap, we introduce a Hierarchy-Aware Intrusion Detector, HAID, a topology-preserving framework that models an ICS as a Combinatorial Complex (CC), operating solely on process telemetry and trained on benign traces to detect falsified sensor measurements and unauthorized actuator commands. The complex captures devices, functional interactions, and PLC control zones within an ICS. CCs (unlike flat models) encode telemetry across hierarchical levels for training a Topological Neural Network (TNN). As such, HAID enables the embedding of the ICS Purdue model into the learning process, yielding anomaly scores and localization at each of the aforementioned levels. Evaluated on two water testbeds, SWaT and WADI, and on a simulated chemical process, TEP, HAID achieves competitive detection performance (82.7% F1 on SWaT and 50.1% on WADI, averaged over five runs), while providing explicit hierarchical localization unavailable in prior work. Through ablations, we confirm the added-value of hierarchical modeling, as removing the PLC-zone representation reduces F1 by 5.8 percentage points on SWaT and causes detection on WADI to collapse. The largest losses are on attacks that manipulate several devices at once, which device- and interactionlevel signals usually miss. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3746967 |
| Ting-Yu Chang, Cooper Cheng-Yuan Ku | Two-tier Framework with AutoML for Detection and Classification of Multiple Types of Anomalies in Intrusion Attacks | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Optimization Probability Automated machine learning Labeling Training Algorithms Stacking Accuracy Tuning Intrusion Detection Anomaly Classification Cybersecurity Data Imbalance Computational Efficiency Two-tier Framework Machine Learning Probability Stacking Method | Ensuring cybersecurity is paramount for protecting sensitive data and defending against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Consequently, intrusion detection (ID) has become a critical area of research in network security. This paper proposes a two-tier framework that leverages efficient automated machine learning (AutoML) techniques to address data imbalance and optimize feature combinations for ID and classification of multiple types of anomalies. In the first tier, two complementary models are selected: a primary model optimized for overall dataset performance and a secondary model specifically chosen for its effectiveness on balanced data distributions. In the second tier, a probability stacking approach, supported by Out-of-Fold (OOF) cross-validation, integrates insights from the first-tier models. It acts as a binary safety net that successfully recovers rare minority attacks while preventing irreversible information loss. The proposed framework effectively mitigates the adverse effects of data imbalance while requiring only a minimal runtime memory footprint of approximately 44 MB (NSL-KDD) and a total process footprint of 165.52 MB (CIC-IIoT-2025), and achieves a rapid cold-start initialization of 0.85 seconds. These advantages make it well-suited for edge computing. Experimental results on the NSL-KDD dataset demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves an overall accuracy of 99.73%, outperforming many state-of-the-art methods by 0.4-20.6%. Furthermore, evaluations on the CIC-IDS-2017 dataset show a 6.3% accuracy improvement and a significant 36% increase in macro-average recall compared with a random-forest-only (RF-only) model. Moreover, extensive validation on the contemporary CIC-IIoT-2025 dataset reveals a significant 4.20% improvement in Macro F1-score over up-to-date baselines. Finally, evaluations on an independent set with novel attack types (KDDTest+) confirm strong generalization capability, achieving 77.10% accuracy and underscoring the framework's robustness in modern industrial scenarios. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3747311 |
| 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 Timing Educational institutions Computers Transcoding Videos Tail Edge computing Edge devices Edge server Resource augmentation Task distribution Kubernetes | 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 |
| Martha Cash, Charlotte Fowler, Alexander M. Wyglinski | On the Role of Time Series Clustering in Traffic Matrix Prediction | 2026 | Early Access | Fluid flow Timing Modeling Matrices Histograms Training Distance measurement Forecasting Runtime Clustering methods Traffic Matrix Prediction Time Series Clustering Traffic Flows Machine Learning Network Management | This paper analyzes the role of time-series clustering in traffic matrix (TM) prediction. Traffic flows within a TM often exhibit heterogeneous behavior, which can reduce the effectiveness of global forecasting models that predict all flows jointly. To address this, we propose a clustering-based prediction framework that groups flows into smaller subsets and trains separate predictors for each group. We evaluate four traffic-flow representations for clustering, namely histogram, autocorrelation function (ACF), power spectral density (PSD), and naïve partitioning, and analyze how both the representation choice and the number of clusters affect prediction performance. Experiments using the publicly available Abilene and GÉANT datasets show that clustering consistently improves over global forecasting baselines, while remaining substantially less costly than local prediction. The results further show that most of the performance gain is achieved at moderate values of K, with diminishing returns as the number of clusters increases. Although different clustering representations produce different partitions of the traffic flows, they often achieve similar root mean squared error (RMSE). This suggests that the main benefit of clustering lies in decomposing the TM prediction task into smaller subproblems, while the exact cluster structure plays a more limited role in determining overall prediction accuracy. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3747898 |
| Byungchang Kim, Shinyoung Lue, Seonyeong Hwang, Youhee Park, Yeji Lee, Jaemin Jeong, Peter Bloodsworth, Euiseok Hwang | GRIDS: Generalized Representation-based Intrusion Detection System via Federated Contrastive Learning | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Labeling Intrusion detection Training Federated learning Fluid flow Internet of Things Contrastive learning Artificial intelligence Signal detection Intrusion detection system federated learning contrastive learning anomaly detection network security transformer encoder | Existing AI-based intrusion detection systems are typically trained for specific network environments, leading to significant performance degradation when deployed in different settings or exposed to evolving attack strategies. We propose GRIDS (Generalized Representation-based Intrusion Detection System), a federated contrastive learning framework for cross-environment intrusion detection that keeps raw traffic data local. GRIDS employs a Transformer-based encoder trained with supervised contrastive learning across distributed network environments, learning a shared representation without exchanging sensitive traffic data. The encoder embeds network flow features into a latent space where semantically similar traffic patterns cluster together, enabling effective anomaly detection via k-nearest neighbor scoring. Evaluated on four heterogeneous NetFlow datasets, GRIDS outperforms existing federated IDS baselines on average with a single unified model. In leave-one-out cross-validation, a substantial portion of the detection capability of GRIDS transfers to network environments unseen during training, and the level of transfer varies across target networks. Deployment at such a network requires no labeled attack data or fine-tuning. It uses the benign traffic of the network as the kNN reference set and its unlabeled traffic for normalization and threshold calibration. The framework targets deployments in which a single model protects multiple heterogeneous networks. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3748922 |
| Mohammad Saberi, Ali Ahmadi Esfidi, Mahdi Dolati, Naeimeh Omidvar | FlexINA: In-Network Aggregation for Accelerating Distributed Machine Learning with Flexible Routing | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Switches Timing Routing Machine learning Training Runtime Memory Loading Topology Distributed Machine Learning Programmable Networks In-Network Computing | The growing scale and complexity of modern machine learning (ML) models have rendered distributed training indispensable. However, as model dimensions expand, communication overhead increasingly dominates the overall training time, creating a critical performance bottleneck. While techniques such as gradient compression offer partial relief, they often incur substantial computational overhead or require specialized hardware. In-network aggregation (INA) has emerged as a compelling alternative, offloading partial computations—such as gradient reduction—directly onto programmable network switches. Yet, current INA frameworks predominantly rely on rigid, static routing schemes or uncoordinated, opportunistic aggregation, fundamentally limiting their capacity to exploit the full potential of programmable data planes. To address this limitation, we formulate the Joint Scheduling-Routing for In-Network Aggregation (JINA) problem. JINA introduces a time-slotted execution model to enable fine-grained temporal scheduling synchronously with spatial routing. By leveraging source routing, it dictates perpacket forwarding paths while explicitly coordinating multi-hop partial aggregation across the network. Furthermore, we propose FlexINA, a scalable optimization framework that solves the JINA problem through a three-phase dimensionality reduction strategy: host-level pre-aggregation, topological switch filtration, and temporal window partitioning. Extensive evaluations across fifteen diverse network topologies demonstrate that FlexINA reduces the total network load by up to 8.3% compared to INA baselines, while maintaining high computational efficiency. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3740503 |
| Rosario Patanè | Dynamic Coalition Formation Under Capacity Constraints: A Regime-Switching Value-Investing Game | 2026 | Early Access | Games Modeling Resource management Seeds (agriculture) Gain Service level agreements Pricing Internet of Things Terminology Investment Edge computing network service management coalition formation resource allocation Shapley value audit mechanisms | Edge computing service deployment requires the Network Operator (NO) and Service Providers (SPs) to coordinate investment and resource allocation under uncertain demand. This paper develops an audit-based service management framework for daily coalition formation with fixed capacity and service-level agreement (SLA) reservations. A two-stage coalitional game separates infrastructure investment from operational participation. Demand follows a Geometric Random Walk (GRW), and SPs apply an ordered admission and suspension rule using reported marginal contributions. With the NO held fixed, the operational coalition value is submodular; mandatory reservations can produce negative Shapley payoffs. We derive a separable benchmark, compute operational Shapley allocations, and give a sufficient condition for convergence to an individual equilibrium. A probabilistic audit mechanism provides a conditional daily truthfulness guarantee under verified settlement and enforceable penalties. For five service classes over three years, the reference run gains 12.4% over static grand-coalition membership and recovers 94.6% of the full-information optimum. Across 30 runs, the median gain is 13.3%. Sensitivity tests examine policy parameters, capacity and alternative demand models. The gain depends on capacity and update order; abundant capacity can make the admission rule underperform static membership. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3750592 |
| Imran Ahmed, Yudai Ogata, Eiji Oki | Multipartite Entanglement Routing Design in Quantum Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Joining processes Trees (botanical) Vegetation Modeling Probability Memory Routing Timing Quantum networks Costing Quantum networks quantum key distribution entanglement routing mixed-integer linear programming multipartite entanglement | Quantum networks enable secure communication and distributed quantum computation using entanglement, quantum teleportation, and the no-cloning theorem. Future quantum networks will support multiparty applications such as multiparty quantum key distribution and quantum secret sharing, which require simultaneous entanglement distribution among multiple users. Therefore, efficient routing that accounts for quantum network constraints is crucial for practical multiparty quantum communications. Although bipartite entanglement routing has been studied extensively, multipartite entanglement routing with probabilistic quantum link generation and fusion operations remains inadequately addressed. This paper proposes a routing model for multipartite entanglement distribution that explicitly incorporates the probabilistic nature of quantum operations and maximizes the probability of successfully distributing a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state to all requesting users under practical quantum network constraints. We formulate this model as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. We prove that finding the optimal Steiner entanglement tree under the proposed model is NP-hard. For large-scale scenarios where MILP becomes computationally intractable, we develop a heuristic approach. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a higher entanglement tree success probability and greater robustness than baseline methods across diverse network conditions, including scenarios with stringent quantum memory constraints and large terminal sets. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3751204 |
| Gustavo Z. Bruno, Gabriel M. Almeida, Aloízio Da Silva, Luiz A. DaSilva, Joao F. Santos, Alexandre Huff, Kleber V. Cardoso, Cristiano B. Both | Towards Energy- and QoS-aware Load Balancing for 5G Advanced: Leveraging O-RAN to Achieve Sustainability and Energy Efficiency | 2026 | Early Access | Open RAN Modeling Timing Energy Energy efficiency Optimization Handover Cells (biology) Energy conservation Quality of service O-RAN RIC 5G Advanced Energy Efficiency Dynamic Demand Resource Management | The increasing energy consumption of next-generation mobile networks necessitates the adoption of autonomous and energy-aware management strategies. This article proposes a novel adaptive solution leveraging the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture to optimize energy efficiency while maintaining Quality of Service (QoS). The proposed approach introduces a hierarchical O-RAN-aligned control framework in which a Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (Non-RT RIC) periodically computes energy-aware policies from long-term historical data, while a Near-Real-Time RIC enforces those policies through per-User Equipment (UE) handover actions on a sub-second timescale. We formulate a joint energy- and QoS-aware load balancing problem as a Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) model. This model optimizes UE association across E2 Nodes to minimize transmission power and autonomously deactivate underutilized cells, while satisfying strict QoS constraints. To validate the proposed solution, we deploy it in an experimental environment that simulates massive sports events. Experimental results demonstrate 72% energy savings over a 24-hour trace and sub-second handover delays (0.123–0.204 s/UE), confirming the solution’s feasibility for autonomous and sustainable 5G Advanced networks. This work provides guidelines for deploying energy-efficient strategies in O-RAN environments and underscores the potential of adaptive solutions for sustainable mobile communications. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3751565 |
| Jiawei Dong, Mohsen Ghafouri, Chadi Assi | Cybersecurity Risks in Electric Vehicle Charging Management Systems | 2026 | Early Access | IP networks Security Internet of Things Malware Electric vehicle charging Management Dark Web Portals Internet Large language models Darknet Electric Vehicle Charging LLMs Malware Vulnerability Analysis Honeypot | Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCSs) have become the heart of electrified transportation infrastructure. Their increasing Internet exposure makes them high-value targets for cyberattacks with potential implications for grid stability. This study presents a comprehensive, data-driven security analysis of globally exposed EV Charging Management Systems (EVCMS), bridging theoretical vulnerability concerns with quantified real-world threats. We discover and assess Internet-exposed EVCMS infrastructure, then deploy multi-component honeypot systems to capture live attack intelligence. Our novel EVCS discovery technique identifies 59,359 EVCMS IPs from 798 vendors, with notable improvements in non-English-speaking regions, overcoming traditional scanning limitations. Security assessment of 17 vulnerability types reveals most critical vulnerabilities remain unaddressed three years after coordinated disclosure. Darknet intelligence analysis reveals 10,647 unique IPs that also appeared in our EVCMS dataset participating in unsolicited scanning throughout 2024 with periodic surges. We deploy a comprehensive honeypot system with proactive engagement that actively induces compromised EVCMS devices to attack our infrastructure, spanning two monitoring phases: a ten-day period with proactive engagement and an eight-month period of long-term passive monitoring. We observed generic IoT threats and found no EVCMS-specific malware in the samples examined. A small portion of human exploration activities is found in the web portal honeypot. We observed liveness probes on both the Linux server honeypots and the OCPP backend, serving as a critical warning of imminent threats demanding immediate vendor attention before escalation to destructive campaigns. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3751489 |
| 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 Modeling Optimization Schedules Scheduling Low earth orbit satellites Algorithms Bridges LEO satellite communications deep reinforcement learning digital twin resource allocation adversarial attack | 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 |
| Messaoud Ait-Yahia, Wael Jaafar, Rami Langar | Joint Design of Blockchain-Enabled Service Placement and Task Assignment in Vehicular Fog Computing Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Delays Timing Optimization Autonomous aerial vehicles Modeling Gallium Central Processing Unit Joints Bandwidth Elementary particles Resource allocation Blockchain VNF placement task assignment vehicular fog computing PSO GA IoV | Driven by the evolution of blockchain and fog computing, vehicular networks are increasingly capable of supporting latency-sensitive applications with enhanced security and trust guarantees. However, the joint resource allocation for task offloading and blockchain services has been insufficiently investigated in existing works. To address this gap, this paper proposes a framework for jointly allocating resources of blockchain, users’ virtualized services, and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) task assignment in Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) networks. Specifically, we formulate the optimization problem as an integer nonlinear programming model aiming to maximize the satisfaction rate of users’ service requests while minimizing the corresponding blockchain operation time under mobility, queuing, instantiation, and resource constraints. To solve it in a timely manner, we design two-stage hierarchical low-complexity solutions, namely a Particle Swarm Optimization-based Joint Blockchain-enabled Service placement and Task Assignment algorithm (PSO-JBSTA), and a Genetic Algorithm-based approach (GA-JBSTA). Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of PSO-JBSTA (resp. GA-JBSTA) and their adaptability to network conditions, achieving an average 35% (resp. 24%) improvement in users’ service satisfaction rate and 9.5% (resp. 10.2%) reduction in average blockchain validation delay compared with the baselines. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3737068 |
| Huiying Jin, Jianyong Zhang, Jiajia Li, Hai Dong, Pengcheng Zhang, Jian Zhou | Dynamic Resource Allocation for Multi-Type Tasks in Mobile Edge Computing | 2026 | Early Access | Resource management Optimization Algorithms Timing Internet of Things Modeling Service level agreements Collaboration Elementary particles Bismuth Multi-type tasks Accurate matching scheme Multi-Node collaboration Dynamic resource allocation | We propose MD-SFLAPSO (/ˌemdi ˈsflæpsəʊ/), a Multi-type task-oriented Dynamic resource allocation method based on Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization for the mobile edge computing environment. MD-SFLAPSO offers an optimized resource allocation strategy. It incorporates a precise matching scheme that accounts for task requirements, collaborative node capabilities, spatial location correlation, latency constraint satisfaction, and resource supply-demand matching degree, to achieve effective collaboration. Additionally, we introduce a multi-node collaborative dynamic resource allocation strategy by leveraging user mobility patterns. Our approach is validated through a series of experiments using public data sets. The results show that MD-SFLAPSO reduces the average SLA violation rate by 8.8 percentage points from the pre-optimization level, improves average resource utilization by 9.3 percentage points over SFLA-RA, and adapts well to different resource configuration scenarios. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3751416 |