Last updated: 2026-10-31 05:01 UTC
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Number of pages: 177
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Publication | Keywords | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Ramazan Enisoglu, Burak Alp Inan, Muhammed Ali Erbir | MSCANet: A Multi-Scale Channel Attention Network for Encrypted Traffic Classification | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Transformers Convolutional neural networks Fluid flow Windows Accuracy Seeds (agriculture) Joints Labeling Training Encrypted traffic classification deep learning multi-scale convolution channel attention Transformer network security network service management | Encrypted communication has rendered traditional traffic classification ineffective, creating challenges for QoS provisioning, network management, and security monitoring. Existing deep learning approaches exploit either spatial or sequence-level features in isolation, without jointly modeling multi-scale byte patterns and inter-packet ordering. We propose MSCANet, a hybrid architecture integrating a multi-scale 1D convolutional module, a sequentially applied Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) module, and a Transformer encoder, combining the two feature streams through a learnable weighted concatenation. With approximately 1.18M parameters, MSCANet attains 95.14% mean accuracy on the 20-class USTC-TFC2016 dataset and 92.61–98.01% across three 10-class sub-tasks over five random seeds, at a median per-sample inference latency of 1.29 ms on an NVIDIA RTX 5090 Laptop GPU. Against five baselines re-trained under an identical pipeline and schedule, spanning classical machine learning, CNN-only, attention-BiLSTM, and hybrid CNN–Transformer families, MSCANet is the most accurate on all four sub-tasks, improving over the strongest classical baseline by 6.16 pp and over the closest neural baseline by 2.38 pp while using 17.5% of its parameters and running 3.1× faster. These gains are demonstrated against the five re-trained baselines. Pretrained Transformers such as ET-BERT and YaTC report higher accuracy in their original publications, under their own preprocessing and with a pretraining stage that MSCANet does not use; the advantages we expect relative to them (no pretraining stage and, against ET-BERT, a model two orders of magnitude smaller) were not measured under our protocol, and we position MSCANet within the train-from-scratch regime. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3748386 |
| Tianle Lin, Lei Feng, Fanqin Zhou, Xudong Wang, Zhixiang Yang, Wenjing Li | Joint AP Selection and Power Allocation in Satellite–Terrestrial Cell-Free Network with Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Learning | 2026 | Early Access | Satellites Resource management Low earth orbit satellites Quality of service Interference Optimization Modeling Algorithms Cells (biology) Joints LEO satellite networks Cell-Free Massive MIMO Statistical CSI Multi-agent reinforcement learning Heterogeneous agents | While Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are vital for 6G non-terrestrial networks (NTN), applying Cell-Free Massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO) to high-mobility constellations remains challenging despite its capability to resolve conventional handover and interference issues. The traditional centralized processing model becomes impractical due to prohibitive latency, signaling overhead, and outdated Channel State Information (CSI), which degrades system performance. To overcome this challenge, we design a LEO Satellite Cell-Free Massive MIMO (LCF-mMIMO) system. In this system, each satellite independently determines its transmit power within the serving cluster, while statistical CSI is utilized to counter the fast-varying instantaneous CSI resulting from the rapid movement of LEO satellites. Additionally, to solve the minimum UE quality of service(QoS) maximization problem with reduced latency and signaling overhead, we develop a Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization (H-MAPPO) algorithm for joint Access Point (AP) selection and power allocation. In this algorithm, User Equipments (UEs) and satellites operate as heterogeneous agents: UEs perform AP selection based on local service demands, while satellites allocate power according to local power and interference states. Their decisions are coupled through the AP selection matrix, which converts UE-side access results into satellite-side associated UE sets and limits information exchange to selected UE-satellite associations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively adapts to dynamic LEO environments and achieves superior User QoS over learning-based benchmarks. Compared with the centralized SR-JCPA method, H-MAPPO maintains a comparable minimum QoS of 0.52 versus 0.53 under 16 UEs, while reducing the per-episode execution time from 17646.81 s to 96.81 s. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3747765 |
| Stefano Servillo, Pietro Spadaccino, Marta Burocchi, Stavros Konstantaras, Flavio Luciani, Francesca Cuomo | AS-SETs Are Not Enough: From IRR Filtering Failures to Stateful Validation in IXP Route Servers | 2026 | Early Access | Filtering Filters Border Gateway Protocol Routing Pipelines Authorization Modeling Maintenance Timing Conferences BGP Security Routing IXP AS-SET IRR | Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) provide critical infrastructure for Autonomous Systems (ASes) to interconnect and exchange traffic efficiently. To support scalable peering, IXPs use Route Servers (RSes), which allow ASes to exchange routes with multiple peers through a single Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) session. However, BGP’s implicit trust model exposes inter-domain routing to misconfigurations and threats. IXPs mitigate this through filtering techniques leveraging Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) and Internet Routing Registries (IRRs), which rely on AS-SET objects. However, improper AS-SET validation may lead to incorrect filtering of both invalid and valid announcements. In this paper, we characterize such vulnerabilities and show that they enable prefix hijacking through IXPs as well as the rejection of RPKI-valid announcements. Based on public internet data, we analyze AS-SET content quality, which could exacerbate both vulnerabilities. Moreover, we quantify them using one month of real-world routing data from the RSes of two European IXPs, NAMEX and AMS-IX, identifying 17,721 unauthorized announcements accepted and 294,112 RPKI-valid announcements rejected, and assess their presence across IXPs worldwide. Guided by these findings, we design a mitigation strategy consisting of a stateful validation pipeline that conditions IRR validation on RPKI and ASPA outcomes. We show how to implement it in practice through OpenBGPD, and we validate it in an emulated IXP topology. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3745205 |
| Qaisar Ali, Ihsan Ullah, Youn-Hee Han | Topology-Preserving Virtual Network Embedding Using Persistent Homology and Graph Attention Reinforcement Learning | 2026 | Early Access | Substrates Topology Joining processes Optimization Manganese Training Bandwidth Central Processing Unit Costing Costs Virtual Network Embedding Topology Preservation Pattern-Aware Embedding Persistent Homology Topological Data Analysis Graph Attention Networks Deep Reinforcement Learning Proximal Policy Optimization Network Virtualization 6G Networks Resource Allocation | Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) maps virtual network requests (VNRs) onto shared substrate networks while satisfying node, link, and service constraints. Existing VNE methods mainly optimize resource-centric objectives such as CPU utilization, bandwidth consumption, acceptance ratio, and revenue, but often treat structural service patterns as implicit connectivity requirements. However, patterns such as redundancy loops, hierarchical aggregation, centralized control, and fault-tolerant structures may encode critical service logic, and their degradation can reduce reliability and violate service-level guarantees. This paper proposes TP-VNE, a topology-preserving and pattern-aware VNE framework that integrates persistent-homology-assisted structural characterization, graph attention-based representation learning, and proximal policy optimization. Persistent homology extracts multi-scale topological signatures from VNRs and substrate candidate regions, while complementary graph features distinguish acyclic structures such as stars and trees. A graph attention network learns topology-aware node embeddings by combining resource and structural features, and a PPO agent performs sequential node and link mapping under feasibility-aware action masking. Finally, a topology verification module validates the path-induced embedded subgraph before resource commitment. Simulation results show that TP-VNE improves the acceptance ratio from 48.5% to 83.5% at λarr = 0.20 and increases long-term average revenue from 2,780 to 4,980 compared with Baseline PPO, while achieving 89.3% pattern preservation accuracy with acceptable embedding overhead. Scalability experiments on GT-ITM substrates with up to 1000 nodes further demonstrate the robustness of TP-VNE under increasing network size. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3744368 |
| Aymen Daoud, Md. Zoheb Hassan, Georges Kaddoum | SpectraTwin: Generative Intelligence-Powered Digital Twin for Dynamic Spectrum Awareness | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Radio frequency Labeling Training Accuracy Interference Learning (artificial intelligence) Convolutional neural networks Long short term memory Memory Continual Learning Digital Twin Generative Intelligence Spectrum Awareness Signal Classification | Spectrum monitoring and classification under evolving RF spectrum landscapes are key enablers of spectrum awareness for dynamic spectrum management and interference detection in 6G networks. Although artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques have shown promising performance in spectrum classification, most existing models are static, non-generative, and optimized for specific training environments. As a result, channel distribution shifts, model brittleness, and the scarcity of labeled RF data for fine-tuning AI/ML models lead to significant performance degradation in evolving RF spectrum landscapes. In this context, digital twin (DT) provides a promising approach by maintaining a virtual representation of the RF spectrum environment that supports what-if analysis, data generation, and iterative model updates. In this paper, we propose SpectraTwin, a multi-AI-enabled, adaptive, and self-evolving DT framework for multi-timescale spectrum classification under evolving RF spectrum states and incrementally increasing task complexity. SpectraTwin integrates three tightly coupled modules: (i) a Dynamic Mask Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) that serves as the virtual replica of the RF spectrum environment, synthesizing realistic, classand channel-conditioned spectrograms on demand to mitigate RF data scarcity; (ii) a continual learning-based spectrum classification model that incrementally adapts to evolving RF environments while preserving prior knowledge; and (iii) an active-learning-inspired orchestration module that decides when to adapt, which classes to synthesize, and which exemplars to retain, so that model updates are performed in response to detected change rather than on a fixed retraining schedule. By jointly combining generative, continual, and active learning, SpectraTwin enables robust spectrum awareness through (a) faithful emulation of RF spectrum evolution, (b) detection of domain distribution shifts, and (c) efficient incremental adaptation under non-stationary conditions while maintaining a favorable balance between accuracy and forgetting. Simulation results on both custom dynamic RF datasets and multiple benchmark datasets (consisting of simulated and real-world signal captures) show that SpectraTwin achieves superior adaptability and classification performance compared with existing approaches. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3743810 |
| 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 |
| Huiqi Zhao, Zhiying Sun, Gang Liu, Fang Fan | PMDC: A Prior Knowledge Constrained Multimodal Method for Encrypted Malicious Traffic Detection Integrating Difficulty Awareness and Confusion Rectification | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Payloads Fluid flow Signal detection Training Labeling Protocols Malware Sequences Sequential analysis Encrypted malicious traffic Prior knowledge Feature fusion Difficulty-Aware Fusion Confusion Rectification | Encrypted network traffic is increasingly exploited for covert malicious activities, complicating detection. Current approaches often rely on black-box models that make limited use of domain knowledge and struggle to distinguish similar malware families, leading to performance degradation under evolving traffic distributions. We propose PMDC, a dual-branch multimodal model for encrypted malicious traffic detection at the bidirectional-flow level. PMDC uses an improved MobileViT branch to capture spatial patterns from the spatialized payload representation with header-derived priors and flow-level statistical knowledge, while a Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) branch captures fine-grained packet-level temporal patterns and long-range behavioral dependencies. A difficulty-aware global fusion mechanism selects a single pair of branch weights on the validation set by considering classification confidence, uncertainty, and historical stability, and applies the selected weights to all test samples. Additionally, a directed low-rank residual rectification module (CARM) helps separate easily confused malware families while largely preserving the decisions for other classes. Experiments on four benchmark datasets show that PMDC achieves consistently strong accuracy, F1-score, TPR, and FPR compared with representative baselines, and shows non-catastrophic degradation under packet-loss perturbations. On a small self-built power-grid dataset collected from a single attack incident, PMDC correctly identifies all 64 malicious flows with a false positive rate of 0.73%, providing preliminary evidence of binary cross-scenario detection capability under this limited setting. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3742766 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Qu Wang, Hao Wu, Xin Luo | A Highly Accurate Approach to Dynamic Network Representation Learning Based on Biased Nonnegative Tensor Ring Factorization | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Tensors Ranking (statistics) Accuracy Learning (artificial intelligence) Timing Representation learning Optimization Costing Elementary particles Network representation learning tensor network high-dimensional and incomplete tensor tensor ring decomposition linear bias | A large-scale dynamic network can be represented as a high-dimensional and incomplete (HDI) tensor, whose numerous entries are missing because it is impossible to acquire all interactions among massive numbers of nodes. Tensor network-based models have emerged as powerful tools for HDI tensor representation learning. Tensor ring (TR) decomposition represents a high-order tensor as a cyclic interconnection of third-order tensors, providing a compact tensor network structure for latent representation learning. However, conventional TR decomposition is designed for complete tensors and thus does not account for the substantial missing data in HDI dynamic networks, while existing TR-based representation learning models also have limited ability to model multidimensional link fluctuations. To address these issues, this work proposes a biased nonnegative tensor ring factorization (BNTRF) model with three main components: a) adopting a data-density-oriented modeling strategy that focuses computation on observed entries, thereby reducing the modeling cost of HDI tensors; b) designing a linear bias mechanism to capture multidimensional link fluctuations, thereby improving model stability and representation accuracy; and c) developing a self-adaptive parameter learning scheme to improve computational efficiency. Experimental studies on six real dynamic networks demonstrate that BNTRF outperforms several state-of-the-art models in learning accuracy while incurring lower computational costs. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3748838 |
| Yule Han, Kezhi Wang, Yizhe Zhao, Kun Yang | Smart-TCP: An Agentic AI-based Autonomous and Adaptive TCP Protocol | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Protocols TCP Large language models Arithmetic Context Labeling Sequential analysis History Sequences Agentic AI Large Language Models Small Language Models Network Service Management Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) | The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) relies on deterministic state machines and sequence-number arithmetic to ensure reliable communication. However, hard-coded protocol logic is difficult to adapt to increasingly complex and dynamic network conditions. This paper proposes Smart-TCP, an agentic AI-based transport protocol framework that organizes TCP control logic as a fast/slow model-assisted decision process. Specifically, a feature-aware classifier routes routine segments to a lightweight Small Language Model (SLM) fast path and anomalous or boundary cases to a Large Language Model (LLM) slow path, while an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) handles deterministic computation of sequence and acknowledgment numbers. A state module maintains connection state, packet history, and key control variables, enabling protocol decisions over the full session context. A scoped Protocol Guard checks candidate decisions against RFC-derived rules before execution. We evaluate Smart-TCP through path classification, atomic packet processing, slow-path anomaly response, and end-to-end session interaction. Experimental results show that Smart-TCP achieves 99.14% action accuracy on 700 slow-path anomaly and fallback samples, and a 100% full-lifecycle success rate over 300 ideal fast-path end-to-end session windows. The ordinary 32-KiB transfer tests achieve a 96.5% completion rate at 20% segment loss. These results suggest that separating model-based protocol decisions from deterministic arithmetic improves the reliability of TCP control for network service operation. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3747846 |
| 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 Information rates Throughput Planing 5G mobile communication Linux Filtering Filters 5 th Generation Mobile Networks (5G) User Plane Function (UPF) QoS Enforcement Rule (QER) Quality of Service (QoS) extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) eXpress Data Path (XDP) Traffic Control (tc) Queuing Discipline (qdisc) | 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 |
| Qing Qian, Longwen Ran, Ruixue Tang, Huan Wang, Hongfa Ding, Yunhe Cui | SATEEN: A Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network for Saturation Attack Detection in SDN | 2026 | Early Access | Fluid flow Switches Modeling Signal detection Software defined networking Topology Training Timing Testing Graph neural networks SDN saturation attack detection heterogeneous graph HeteroGraphConv | SDN decouples the control plane from the data plane, enabling flexible network management. However, it is increasingly threatened by saturation attacks that target both switch flow tables and controller resources. Existing attack detection methods often focus on individual flows or network topology alone, neglecting the inherent interdependencies among flows and devices. This limitation can result in incomplete information aggregation and suboptimal detection performance. To address these challenges, we propose SATEEN, a GNN-based saturation attack detection method that leverages a heterogeneous Device-Flow Graph and a novel heterogeneous convolution model, HEGNN. The DevFlow-Graph explicitly models interactions among hosts, flows, and switches, incorporating multiple types of edges to capture structural and semantic relationships. HEGNN partitions the DevFlow-Graph into edge-type-specific subgraphs, computes attention-weighted aggregations within each subgraph, and integrates multi-layer information to generate expressive node embeddings for accurate attack classification. Experiments conducted on both FatTree and Agis topologies, using real-world background traffic, demonstrate that SATEEN significantly outperforms existing methods in detection accuracy and stability across different topologies and traffic patterns. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3745553 |
| Taylor Henderson, Eric Osterweil, Pavan Dinesh, Robert Simon | Scalable and Robust User Deobfuscation using Pattern of Life | 2026 | Early Access | Modeling Timing Privacy Internet IP networks Virtual private networks US Department of Transportation Weighted sum model Monitoring Accuracy privacy network management pattern of life analysis | Online message boards have become increasing popular with cyber criminals and those wishing to conduct illegal acts. They are used in coordinating drug/human trafficking, terrorist activity, and distributing information from data breaches to name a few. We provide a novel method for deobfuscating message board users: Deobfuscating Using Patterns of Life (DUPOL). DUPOL uses a novel technique to take advantage of system artifacts arising from the proliferation of Public DNS. DUPOL is validated on a test bed which accurately maps the Internet to different information scopes. This provides an understanding of how DUPOL would perform if it was performed by different entities on the Internet. DUPOL is shown to be able to correctly identify message board users even when users employ privacy preserving technologies using only observable network traffic and without the need to decrypt any information. Additionally, DUPOL is shown to be robust to missing data and scalable using a novel decomposition of the NCC which removes the need for pairwise comparison. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3744089 |
| 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 |
| Chengsheng Pan, Yingzhi Wang, Huaifeng Shi, Lishang Qin, Xiaosong Cui | DBSDD-AQM: Dynamic Buffer Sizing-Based Deep Deterministic Active Queue Management for Edge IoT Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Delays Satellite broadcasting Internet of Things Modeling Management Learning (artificial intelligence) Information rates Throughput TCP Jitter Edge IoT networks network congestion active queue management dynamic buffer sizing deep deterministic policy gradient | Bursty heterogeneous traffic can build persistent queues at edge IoT gateways when the offered load converges on a lower-rate bottleneck. Conventional active queue management (AQM) regulates packet dropping under a fixed buffer capacity, whereas adaptive buffer sizing alone does not coordinate capacity adjustment with queue-removal control. We propose Dynamic Buffer Sizing-Based Deep Deterministic Active Queue Management (DBSDD-AQM), which combines a bounded buffersizing loop with a faster continuous queue-removal controller. DBS adjusts the admissible capacity according to sustained queue evolution, while the DDPG Actor selects packet-granular removal actions for the resident backlog. A class-aware extension maps three concurrent service classes to logical FIFO queues sharing the same dynamic physical buffer. DBSDD-AQM is implemented using an NS3-PyTorch framework. Aggregate experiments compare it with RED, ARED, PIE, CoDel, and DQN-AQM, while the class-aware evaluation additionally includes FQ-CoDel and FQ-PIE. Matched-DBS comparisons show similar throughput but different delay–loss operating points among the aggregate controllers, and component ablation distinguishes the effects of capacity adaptation and learned queue removal. Relative to a fixed 50 KB buffer, DBS reduces average queueing delay by 16.23% for UDP and 17.70% for TCP Westwood in controlled transport experiments. In the evaluated three-class overload scenarios, all classes retain nonzero throughput. Class-aware DBSDD-AQM provides stronger D- and T-class differentiation, whereas FQ-CoDel and FQ-PIE produce more uniform class-level outcomes and stronger R-class performance. The measured 95th-percentile batch-one Actor inference latency is 0.109 ms on the reported x86-64 platform. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3741334 |
| 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 |
| 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 Security MISO Array signal processing Vectors Satellites Reflection Interference Beamforming cascaded channels cognitive radio networks deep reinforcement learning dynamic hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surfaces energy harvesting poisoning attacks | 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 |
| Jian Liu, Jinhong Chen, Eldar Sabanovic, Jinliang Liu, Engang Tian, Oh-Min Kwon | Predictor-Enhanced Constrained Reinforcement Learning for Networked CAV Platoons: A Dual-Redundancy Scheme | 2026 | Early Access | Connected and automated vehicles dynamic event-triggered mechanism false data injection attacks model-free reinforcement learning prescribed performance control | This paper investigates resilient tracking control for connected and automated vehicle (CAV) platoons under false data injection (FDI) attacks and prescribed spacing constraints. A kinematics-based state predictor is combined with a dynamic event-triggered mechanism (ETM) to provide smooth trajectories from sparse, FDI-corrupted measurements while reducing communication use. Prescribed performance control (PPC) maps the predicted spacing error into an unconstrained state for continuous-time actor-critic reinforcement learning (RL). The actor-critic controller learns an approximate tracking policy without identifying the unknown nonlinear drift. A locally sensed, saturated proportional-derivative fallback controller can override the learned command when the measured spacing error approaches the prescribed boundary. These two control paths form the dual-redundancy scheme. The analysis excludes finite-time accumulation of triggering instants, establishes input-to-state stability of the prediction-error subsystem, and gives conditional ultimate bounds for the prediction error and sampled adaptive weights under the stated input and approximation-domain conditions. Matched ablations and multi-seed tests evaluate communication use, fallback activation, and the responses to scalar and vector attacks. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3748969 |