TNSM Searchable Index

Author(s)	Title	Year	Publication	Keywords
Didik Sudyana, Wong Yu Xuan, Laurens D’hooge, Ren-Hung Hwang, Narn-Yih Lee, Pei-Yin Chen, Tim Wauters, Bruno Volckaert, Filip De Turck	Bridging Training–Deployment Gap in Intrusion Detection with Source-Free Domain Adaptation	2026	Early Access	Modeling Internet of Things Fluid flow	Machine learning (ML)–based intrusion detection systems (IDS) frequently degrade when deployed across heterogeneous networks due to domain shifts in traffic composition and monitoring configurations. Conventional domain adaptation (DA) methods mitigate this issue by aligning source and target distributions, but they often rely on retaining source-domain data at deployment—an impractical requirement that undermines operational scalability and reusability. To address this gap, we propose TRANSFA-IDS (Transformer Source-Free Adaptation for IDS), a lightweight source-free adaptation framework that recalibrates a source-trained IDS using only target traffic data. TRANSFA-IDS converts tabular flow records into structured RGB image embeddings and employs a compact Vision Transformer with a Deep Support Vector Data Description (Deep-SVDD) head to learn transferable normal representations. At deployment, adaptation is performed by fine-tuning only the last transformer block on a small target buffer, realigning target representations without retraining or access to source data. Experiments on cross-dataset transfer between CIC-IDS-2018 and UNSW-NB15 show that TRANSFA-IDS achieves AUROC of 0.9177 and 0.9071 in the two transfer directions, reduces target-domain benign false positives by over 60% relative to the same source-pretrained model deployed without source-free adaptation, and adapts substantially faster than supervised and unsupervised DA baselines while using at most 20% of the target-domain data. These results indicate that source-free adaptation can achieve both strong detection performance and a practical deployment-oriented design, with cross-benchmark evidence of scalable adaptation across heterogeneous network environments.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3723866
Qiru Chen, Xinping Guan, Lei Xu, Yanzhou Zhang, Qimin Xu, Cailian Chen	Knowledge-Aware Schedulability Analysis for Time-Sensitive Networking: A GNN-Based Method	2026	Early Access	Modeling Fluid flow Schedules	Industrial automation is rapidly evolving toward flexible production. This transition requires networks to ensure the deterministic transmission of varying traffic sets across different production stages. Consequently, the system must be capable of rapidly analyzing whether fixed network resources can accommodate all service requirements prior to actual scheduling. While Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) provides the deterministic transmission for such environments, existing schedulability assessments rely on exhaustive scheduling tests. However, the scheduling process is inherently an NP-hard constraint satisfaction problem, whose heavy computational overhead severely limits deployment agility. Therefore, it is critical to develop a method that can rapidly predict the constraint satisfiability of diverse traffic sets without repetitive and time-consuming scheduling. In this work, given the inherent graph-structured nature of network infrastructure and traffic patterns, we design a graph neural network model to explicitly capture complex spatial dependencies. As node attributes, sparse basic traffic features are distilled as expert knowledge and integrated, thereby enhancing prediction accuracy. When a traffic set is deemed unschedulable, we explore the traffic features and links with the greatest impact. Based on this, a feature-driven rerouting strategy is proposed to find a more schedulable traffic behavior. The evaluation results show that the model demonstrates the capability to process thousands of datasets within hundreds of microseconds, while guaranteeing a prediction accuracy of over 90% and an increase in the count in schedulable flows by about 25% compared to the standard Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm baseline.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3724835
Francisco Muro, Eduardo Baena, Tomaso De Cola, Sergio Fortes, Raquel Barco	AI-Driven Optimization of Virtual Network Function Allocation in 6G Non-Terrestrial Networks	2026	Early Access	Resource management Optimization Satellites	The integration of 6G technologies into Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) raises a fundamental orchestration problem: how to allocate Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) across satellite and terrestrial domains under tight onboard resource constraints and a continuously changing topology. The virtualized 6G Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) paradigm makes it possible to run 5G software stacks on Software-Defined Radios (SDRs) based on General Purpose Processors (GPPs), but it also turns VNF placement into a high-dimensional, multi-objective decision that static heuristics and model-based formulations struggle to capture. This paper addresses that gap by introducing an AI-driven VNF allocation framework for 6G-NTN environments built on an O-RAN-based distributed architecture and orchestrated on top of Kubernetes. The VNF allocation problem is formalized for a multi-domain 6G-NTN scenario with constrained satellite resources, and a measurement-based test campaign is designed to characterize the emulated platform in terms of virtual resource utilization and end-to-end performance. The framework couples tree-based machine learning predictors with a gradient-free optimizer to reach the optimal feasible allocation, outperforming two heuristic baselines drawn from the VNF placement literature by reducing the service RTT by up to 39% and delivering up to 3× higher YouTube DL throughput with respect to the best feasible heuristic. Beyond these gains, the proposed framework establishes a measurement-driven, reproducible methodology for VNF allocation in 6GNTN scenarios, demonstrating that AI-driven orchestration can systematically uncover non-obvious resource configurations that purely analytical or static approaches consistently miss.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3724474
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
Aida Meftah, Tri Nhu Do, Georges Kaddoum, Chamseddine Talhi	Federated Learning-Empowered Jamming Detection for Stochastic Uplink and Downlink Integrated Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Networks	2026	Early Access		In this paper, we present a novel approach that integrates the reliability and fast data transfer capabilities of terrestrial-based infrastructure with the extensive coverage of non-terrestrial networks, thereby creating a seamless and resilient communication network. The proposed integration addresses the issue of adaptive jamming in uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) transmissions, which threatens communication efficiency and reliability. To this end, we first introduce a 3D simulation design that accurately models UL and DL transmissions within stochastic integrated terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks (SI-TNTNs), incorporating adaptive jamming strategies and employing a stochastic node distribution based on the Homogeneous Poisson Point Process (HPPP). Next, in order to train encoder networks deployed on clients for both UL and DL transmissions, we propose a distributed learning framework called the federated partial model aggregation (FedPMA) algorithm that uses the spectral correlation function (SCF) for feature representation. The proposed approach combines encoder parameter aggregation with a multivariate normal (MVN)-based probabilistic reliability estimation derived locally from encoder outputs, which guides the aggregation process. Only encoder parameters and scalar reliability scores are exchanged between clients and the parameter server (PS), while raw data and latent representations remain local. Our experimental results reveal that our approach not only enhances data privacy, but also significantly improves model performance and convergence, thus paving the way for the development of robust, interference-sensitive communications strategies suitable for next-generation non-terrestrial network (NTN)-enabled wireless systems.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3727347
Liang Liu, Wenbin Zhai, Feng Wang, Youwei Ding, Wanying Lu, Weizhi Meng	Federated Semi-Supervised and Semi-Asynchronous Learning for Anomaly Detection in IoT Networks	2026	Early Access		The expansive attack surfaces and device heterogeneity of Internet of Things (IoT) networks pose significant challenges for anomaly detection. While Federated Learning (FL) enables privacy-preserving detection, existing FL methods typically assume fully labeled client data, which is unrealistic for practical IoT deployments. Resource constraints and network heterogeneity further complicate the trade-off among training efficiency, detection accuracy, and communication overhead. To address these challenges, we propose FedS3A, a Federated Semi-Supervised and Semi-Asynchronous learning framework for IoT anomaly detection. FedS3A operates in a practical disjoint semi-supervised setting where the server holds limited labeled data and clients possess extensive unlabeled data. We apply pseudo-labeling with a dynamically decaying weight to balance server-side supervised training and client-side unsupervised learning. To improve round efficiency, we introduce a semi-asynchronous model update and staleness-tolerant distribution scheme that scales client contributions to the global model based on local model staleness and participation frequency. We also adopt a group-based aggregation function to mitigate the impact of non-IID client data, and utilize sparse difference transmission to reduce communication overhead. We evaluate FedS3A on the CIC-IDS2017 and Edge-IIoTset datasets, and the results demonstrate that FedS3A consistently outperforms representative FL approaches in detection performance and round efficiency. FedS3A achieves over 98% accuracy even under non-IID settings while reducing communication costs by approximately 50%.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3727228
Nan Wei, Sizhe Huang, Lihua Yin, Ziying Zhu, Wenting Wang	Correction Forest: A Misclassification Correction model for Reducing the Total Error Rate of IIoT Network Intrusion Detection	2026	Early Access	Modeling Industrial Internet of Things Internet of Things	Deep learning-based network intrusion detection systems (NIDSs) in the Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) are inevitably prone to producing misclassified samples. Correction models can identify and correct these samples to reduce the total error rate (TER) of NIDSs. Existing correction models fail to account for the uneven distribution of misclassified samples in the prediction intervals of NIDSs due to IIoT data imbalance, re-sulting in over-correction and increased TERs. Given this, we propose a novel correction model called Correction Forest for correcting the misclassified samples of NIDSs targeting imbalanced IIoT network traffic dataset. Correction Forest adopts a generation-correction strategy. The generation process divides the output values of NIDSs with imbalanced dataset into fine-grained bins, and then generates novel misclassification features for each bin using a balanced hybrid Random Forest. The correction process calculates feature importance score for misclassification features and corrects misclassification samples by a K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) -based algorithm. Evaluated on 15 imbalanced IIoT datasets with varying malicious sample ratios, Correction Forest significantly outperforms 4 state-of-the-art models. Under the 1.25% setting of NSL-KDD, Correction Forest improves F1-Score from 0.3144 to 0.7345, an absolute gain of 0.4201. On the TON_IoT at 12.5%, it achieves a maximum R.TER of 0.3750 among the state-of-the-art models.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3724323
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
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
Lin Cong, Junru Cai, Ying Wang, Peng Yu, Xuesong Qiu, Shaoyong Guo, Ao Xiong	Dynamic E2E Channel Orchestration in Metro Transport Network	2026	Early Access	Algorithms Optimization Timing	In the era of 5G and beyond, the hard-isolated channels enabled by time slot cross-connects in metro transport network (MTN) effectively meet the demands of emerging network services for low latency, low jitter, flexible bandwidth, and secure isolation. However, the dynamic arrival and departure of tenant virtual network request (VNRs) lead to resource fragmentation within the MTN transport network, resulting in inefficient resource utilization. To mitigate network resource fragmentation, we formulate the MTN dynamic channel orchestration problem and propose a fragmentation-aware MTN dynamic channel orchestration method. This method comprises two key components: a greedy graph-reconstruction-based channel mapping algorithm and a fragmentation-aware channel reconfiguration algorithm. The former optimizes MTN channel resource allocation to achieve static channel orchestration, while the latter, leveraging a simulated annealing-based channel reconfiguration strategy, dynamically adjusts channel allocations based on the static orchestration results, thereby reducing fragmentation levels. Compared to existing approaches, under varying network load conditions, the proposed channel mapping algorithm reduces the consumption of network time slot resources by 16.3% -20.6%, while the channel reconfiguration algorithm significantly lowers the levels of network fragmentation by 48.7% -79.5%, and reduces the running time by 91.3%–94.2% compared with the baseline.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3723823
Ryota Nakamura, Kengo Urata, Shigeaki Harada	A Virtual Network Embedding Method Enhancing Self-consumption of Renewable Energy	2026	Early Access	Timing Joining processes Real-time systems	To achieve carbon neutrality in telecommunications networks, renewable energy (RE) must be utilized more efficiently despite its inherent fluctuations. These fluctuations often cause mismatches between power generation and demand, leading to surplus power in some sites and shortages in others. To address this issue, we formulate the problem of maximizing RE use in the allocation of virtualized ICT workloads, which can be realized through techniques such as VM live migration across sites and time periods. To efficiently solve the formulated problem, we propose a heuristic search method that leverages virtualization to enable VM workload migration across sites and time periods, thereby optimizing resource allocation according to RE availability. The proposed method is designed to increase RE consumption while managing trade-offs with communication quality and equipment efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach can improve RE utilization by up to 30% while maintaining acceptable performance, even under prediction errors. These findings highlight the potential of virtualization-based control frameworks for building more sustainable and environmentally conscious telecommunications networks.	10.1109/TNSM.2026.3726977
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	Satellites Information rates Throughput	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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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