Int J Performability Eng ›› 2012, Vol. 8 ›› Issue (2): 113-114.doi: 10.23940/ijpe.12.2.p113.mag

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Guest Editorial

LIUDONG XING and SURESH RAI   

Abstract:

Wireless communication technologies are dramatically changing the way in which the world conducts its day to day business. People's daily life is also becoming more and more dependent on wireless and mobile services. On the other hand, critical dependability risks and challenges arise for wireless systems and networks because data that is sent over wireless environments could easily get corrupted and/or compromised due to factors such as channel and user interferences, noises, and malicious attacks. This special issue presents current research and application focusing on reliability, performability, fault-tolerance, and security aspects of wireless systems and networks.

This issue starts with an invited paper, On the Reliability of Safety Applications in VANETs, by Ma, Yin, and Trivedi, which presents an overview of reliability issues in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) for safety-related applications and recent development of analytic models for the evaluation of reliability metrics for safety applications in VANETs.

The second paper, Computing Performability for Wireless Sensor Networks, by Herrmann, Soh, Rai, and ?korjanc, proposes a method based on Augmented Ordered Multivariate Decision Diagram (OMDD-A) to evaluate the performability metrics including reliability, expected hop count, and expected message delay for wireless sensor networks with both device and link failures.

The third paper, Infrastructure Communication Reliability of Wireless Sensor Networks Considering Common-Cause Failures, by Shrestha, Xing, Sun, and Vokkarane, illustrates a combinatorial approach for evaluating the infrastructure communication reliability of wireless sensor networks (WSN) subject to non-fatal common-cause failures under three different data delivery models: sink unicast, sink multicast, and sink broadcast. The evaluation approach is demonstrated though the analyses of two WSN examples with mesh and hierarchical clustered topologies, respectively.

The fourth paper, Mobile Sensor Deployment and Coverage Using Multi-Agent-based Collective Formation Schemes, by Cheng, Bai, Choudhury, Biswas, and Wu, proposes a mobile wireless sensor deployment and network coverage technique using multi-agent-based collective formation control approaches to achieve system robustness, fault-tolerance, and flexibility.

The fifth paper, Scalable Video Transmission over Cognitive Radio Networks Using LDPC Code, by Huang, H. Wang, Bai, W. Wang, and Liu, studies a joint design of low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding and scalable source coding for optimized error-resistant video transmission over cognitive radio networks. Such joint design scheme allows more efficient use of limited spectrum resources by primary and secondary users.

The sixth paper, Long PN Code Based Traceback in Wireless Networks, by Pan, Huang, Ling, Lu, and Fu, proposes a long Pseudo-Noise (PN) code based Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) watermarking technique to trace suspect communication over encrypted and open wireless networks and anonymous communication networks on the Internet. This proposed traceback technique has good invisibility and broad usage in the cyber crime scene investigations.

The seventh paper, Assessing the Effect of WiMAX System Parameter Settings on MAC-level Local DoS Vulnerability, by Deng, Brooks, and Martin, analyzes how WiMAX system parameter settings increase or decrease the Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities of WiMAX networks. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) techniques are used to identify combinations of bandwidth contention resolution parameter specified in IEEE 802.16 standards that are crucial for configuring WiMAX to be less vulnerable to DoS security attacks.

The eighth paper, A Key Distribution Scheme for Distributed Group with Authentication Capability, by Adusumilli, Sui, Zou, Ramamurthy, and Li, proposes a new distributed group key distribution (DGKD) protocol for group key management in secure group communication. Based on DGKD, a new distributed dynamic conferencing scheme is also proposed to enforce group/conference membership management. The proposed schemes are well suited for wireless networks such as Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs).

We would like to thank all the authors for contributing to this special issue. We are grateful to the authors for their patience and cooperation in helping to achieve the high quality of the papers. We are immensely grateful to referees who spent their valuable time reviewing the papers in a prompt manner. Lastly, we would like to thank Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Krishna B. Misra, for providing us the opportunity to organize this special issue and his continuous support and help in this endeavor.


Liudong Xing is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), Dartmouth, USA. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA. She is Assistant Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Performability Engineering and Associate Editor for the International Journal of Systems Science. Dr. Xing is the recipient of the 2010 Scholar of the Year Award and 2011 Outstanding Women Award of UMass Dartmouth, and the 2007 IEEE Region 1 Technological Innovation (Academic) Award. She is also co-recipient of the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Networking, Architecture, and Storage in 2009. Her current research focuses on combinatorial reliability analysis of complex systems and networks. Her research has been supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). She is a senior member of IEEE, and a member of Eta Kappa Nu. (Email: lxing@umassd.edu)

Suresh Rai obtained his B.S. from Institute of Technology, BHU; M.S. from IIT, Roorkee, and Ph.D. from Kurukshetra University in 1972, 1974, and 1980, respectively. After a brief sojourn at NIT, Kurukshetra, IIT Roorkee, and North Carolina State University, Raleigh he joined Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge where he is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Rai has taught and researched in the area of network traffic engineering, ATM, reliability engineering, fault diagnosis, neural net-based logic testing, network security, and steganography. He is a co-author of the book Wave Shaping and Digital Circuits, and tutorial texts Distributed Computing Network Reliability and Advances in Distributed System Reliability; last two published from IEEE Computer Society Press. Dr. Rai has delivered invited lectures on Internet routing at different universities in Australia and India. He has guest-edited a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Reliability on the topic Reliability of Parallel and Distributed Computing Networks. He was an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Reliability from 1990 to 2004. Currently, he is on the editorial board of International Journal of Performability Engineering. Dr. Rai has worked as program committee member for several international conferences and as referee for papers from various international journals. Dr. Rai has published about 120 technical papers in the refereed journals and conference proceedings. He received the best paper award at the 1998 IEEE International Performance, Computing, & Communication Conference (Feb. 16-18, Tempe, Arizona; paper title: S. Rai and Y. C. Oh, Analyzing packetized voice and video traffic in an ATM multiplexer). Dr. Rai’s research has been funded by AFOSR, NSF, and ARO. Dr. Rai is a Senior Member of the IEEE. (Email: suresh@ece.lsu.edu)