Last updated: 2026-03-27 05:01 UTC
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Number of pages: 160
| Author(s) | Title | Year | Publication | Keywords | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Archana Ojha, Om Jee Pandey, Prasenjit Chanak | Energy-Efficient Network Cut Detection and Recovery Mechanism for Cluster-Based IoT Networks | 2026 | Early Access | Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has found widespread applications in diverse fields, including environmental monitoring, Industry 4.0, smart cities, and smart agriculture. In these applications, sensor nodes form Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and collect data from the monitoring environment. Sensor nodes are vulnerable to various faults, including battery depletion and hardware malfunctions. These faulty nodes cut/partition the network into several isolated segments. Therefore, several non-faulty nodes become disconnected from the Base Station (BS)/Sink and are unable to transmit their data to the BS. It is subject to the early demise of the network. Network cuts also significantly degrade overall network performance. Once the network is divided into isolated segments, it is very difficult to detect and collect data from them. Therefore, this paper proposes a Mobile Data Collector (MDC)-based data-gathering approach for WSNs to collect data from isolated segments. This paper proposes a novel MDC-based network cut detection algorithm that identifies the formation of network cuts in WSNs. A network recovery algorithm is also proposed to enable data collection from the isolated segment. Furthermore, this paper proposes a Reinforcement learning Brain Storm Optimization (RLBSO) algorithm for optimal selection of Rendezvous Points (RPs) and optimal MDC path design. It significantly reduces data-gathering time across isolated network segments. The simulation and testbed results show that the proposed approach outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches in terms of network lifetime, data collection ratio, energy consumption, and latency. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3677868 | |
| Jianwei Zhang, Bowen Cui | Bandwidth-Delay Optimal Segment Routing: Upper-Bound and Lower-Bound Algorithms | 2026 | Early Access | Segment routing (SR) is a novel source routing paradigm that enables network programmability. However, existing research rarely considers multicriteria optimization problems in SR networks. Given the critical role of bandwidth and delay in quality-of-service (QoS) routing, we formally define the bandwidth-delay optimal SR (BDoSR) problem for the first time and prove its NP-hardness. By leveraging the label correcting algorithm schema, we design a suite of polynomial-time algorithms, including an upper-bound algorithm (BDoSR-UB) and a lower-bound algorithm (BDoSR-LB). BDoSR-UB enables rapid estimation of the optimal solution while BDoSR-LB is accuracy-adjustable and delivers (near-)optimal feasible solutions. We rigorously analyze their performance gap through carefully constructed network examples, providing deep insights into the adjustable parameters of BDoSR-LB. Finally, we validate our algorithms on realistic network topologies, demonstrating that both BDoSR-UB and BDoSR-LB frequently converge to the optimal solution in practice while offering superior computational efficiency compared to existing approaches. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3678190 | |
| Beibei Li | B-TWGA: A Trusted Gateway Architecture Based on Blockchain for Internet of Things | 2026 | Early Access | Internet of Things Blockchains Security Hardware Logic gates Computer architecture Sensors Radiofrequency identification Trust management Middleware Internet of Things communication links Blockchain-based Trustworthy Gateway Architecture | Internet of Things (IoT) terminals are commonly used for data sensing and edge control. The communication links between these hardware devices are critical points that are vulnerable to security attacks. Moreover, these links are usually composed of resource-constrained nodes that cannot implement strong security protections. To address these security threats, we introduce a Blockchain-based Trustworthy Gateway Architecture (B-TWGA), which does not rely on additional thirdparty management institutions or hardware facilities, nor does it require central control. Our proposal further considers the possibility of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks in blockchain transactions, ensuring secure storage and seamless interaction within the network. The proposed scheme offers advantages such as tamper-proofing, protection against malicious attacks, and reliability while maintaining operational simplicity. Experimental results demonstrate that B-TWGA maintains stable trust levels even when 40% of the network nodes are malicious, effectively mitigates trust degradation caused by vote-stuffing and switch attacks, and ensures high transaction processing performance, achieving an average throughput of 97.55% for storage transactions with practical response times below 0.7s for typical trust file sizes. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3671208 |
| Ebrima Jaw, Moritz Müller, Cristian Hesselman, Lambert Nieuwenhuis | Reproducibility Study and Assessment of the Evolution of Serial BGP Hijacking Events | 2026 | Early Access | Internet Routing Border Gateway Protocol Routing protocols Security IP networks Cloud computing Autonomous systems Authorization Scalability Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Prefix hijacks RPKI Regional Internet Registries (RIR) Serial hijackers | The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the Internet’s most crucial protocol for efficient global connectivity and traffic routing. However, BGP is well known to be susceptible to route hijacks and leaks. Route hijacks are the intentional or unintentional illegitimate announcements of network resources that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of communication systems. In the past, the so-called “serial hijackers” have hijacked Internet resources multiple times, some lasting for several months or years. So far, only the paper “Profiling BGP Serial Hijackers” has explicitly focused on these repeat offenders, and it dates back to 2019. Back then, they had to process large amounts of BGP announcements to find a few potential serial hijackers. In this paper, we revisit the profiling of serial hijackers. We reproduced the 2019 study and showed that we can identify potential offenders with less data while achieving similar accuracy. Our study confirms that there has been no significant increase in the evolution of serial hijacking activities in the last five years. We then extend their research, further analyze the characteristics of the serial hijackers, and show that most of the alleged serial hijackers are still active on the Internet. We also find that 22.9% of the hijacks violated RPKI objects but were still widely propagated, and that even MANRS participants were among the propagating networks. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3671613 |
| Junyan Guo, Shuang Yao, Yue Song, Le Zhang, Xu Han, Liyuan Chang | EF-CPPA: Escrow-Free Conditional Privacy-Preserving Authentication Scheme for Real-Time Emergency Messages in Smart Grids | 2026 | Early Access | Authentication Smart grids Security Privacy Smart meters Logic gates Real-time systems Vehicle dynamics Time factors Power system reliability Smart grid emergency message authentication conditional privacy preservation escrow-free key generation unlinkability dynamic joining and revocation | Timely and secure emergency message delivery is critical to resilient smart-grid operation and rapid disturbance response. However, existing schemes remain inadequate, leaving smart grids vulnerable to security and privacy threats and causing verification bottlenecks, particularly when nonlinear emergency measurements cannot be homomorphically aggregated, which prevents bandwidth-efficient in-network aggregation and scalable batch verification. We propose EF-CPPA, an escrow-free, conditional privacy-preserving authentication scheme for real-time emergency messaging in smart grids. EF-CPPA enables smart meters to deliver authenticated emergency messages to the CC via power gateways verifiable as legitimate relays, while ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and unlinkability of embedded nonlinear measurements. EF-CPPA further provides conditional anonymity with accountable tracing, as well as origin authentication, intra-domain verification, and scalable batch verification under bursty multi-meter messaging. An ECDLP-based escrow-free key-generation mechanism reduces reliance on the CC and enables efficient node joining and revocation. Security analysis shows that EF-CPPA achieves existential unforgeability under chosen-message attacks (EUF-CMA) and satisfies the stated security and privacy requirements. Performance evaluation demonstrates low computational, communication, energy, and node-management overhead, making EF-CPPA suitable for security-critical, time-sensitive smart-grid emergency messaging. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3672754 |
| Amin Mohajer, Abbas Mirzaei, Mostafa Darabi, Xavier Fernando | Joint SLA-Aware Task Offloading and Adaptive Service Orchestration with Graph-Attentive Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning | 2026 | Early Access | Quality of service Resource management Observability Training Delays Job shop scheduling Dynamic scheduling Bandwidth Vehicle dynamics Thermal stability Edge intelligence network slicing QoS-aware scheduling graph attention networks adaptive resource allocation | Coordinated service offloading is essential to meet Quality-of-Service (QoS) targets under non-stationary edge traffic. Yet conventional schedulers lack dynamic prioritization, causing deadline violations for delay-sensitive, lower-priority flows. We present PRONTO, a multi-agent framework with centralized training and decentralized execution (CTDE) that jointly optimizes SLA-aware offloading and adaptive service orchestration. PRONTO builds on Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) and incorporates spatiotemporal, topology-aware graph attention with top-K masking and temperature scaling to encode neighborhood influence at linear coordination cost. Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs) filter temporal features, while a hybrid reward couples task urgency, SLA satisfaction, and utilization costs. A priority-aware slicing policy divides bandwidth and compute between latency-critical and throughput-oriented flows. To improve robustness, we employ stability regularizers (temporal smoothing and confidence-weighted neighbor alignment), mitigating action jitter under bursts. Extensive evaluations show superior QoS and channel utilization, with up to 27.4% lower service delay and over 18% higher SLA Satisfaction Rate (SSR) compared with strong baselines. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3673188 |
| Raffaele Carillo, Francesco Cerasuolo, Giampaolo Bovenzi, Domenico Ciuonzo, Antonio Pescapé | A Federated and Incremental Network Intrusion Detection System for IoT Emerging Threats | 2026 | Early Access | Training Incremental learning Adaptation models Internet of Things Convolutional neural networks Reviews Payloads Network intrusion detection Long short term memory Federated learning Network Intrusion Detection Systems Internet of Things Federated Learning Class Incremental Learning 0-day attacks | Ensuring network security is increasingly challenging, especially in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain, where threats are diverse, rapidly evolving, and often device-specific. Hence, Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) require (i) being trained on network traffic gathered in different collection points to cover the attack traffic heterogeneity, (ii) continuously learning emerging threats (viz., 0-day attacks), and (iii) be able to take attack countermeasures as soon as possible. In this work, we aim to improve Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based NIDS design & maintenance by integrating Federated Learning (FL) and Class Incremental Learning (CIL). Specifically, we devise a Federated Class Incremental Learning (FCIL) framework–suited for early-detection settings—that supports decentralized and continual model updates, investigating the non-trivial intersection of FL algorithms with state-of-the-art CIL techniques to enable scalable, privacy-preserving training in highly non-IID environments. We evaluate FCIL on three IoT datasets across different client scenarios to assess its ability to learn new threats and retain prior knowledge. The experiments assess potential key challenges in generalization and few-sample training, and compare NIDS performance to monolithic and centralized baselines. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3675031 |
| Basharat Ali, Guihai Chen | MIRAGE-DoH: Metamorphic Intelligence and Resilient AI Grid for Autonomous Governance of Encrypted DNS | 2026 | Early Access | Cryptography Domain Name System Fingerprint recognition Accuracy Metadata Artificial intelligence Software Perturbation methods Network security Monitoring Network Security Network Protocol Enhancing Encrypted Network Security Cyber Threats Detection Anomaly Detection Attack Detection Traffic Classification Quantum ML in Encryted DNS | Existing DNS over HTTPS defenses have demonstrated limited resilience against polymorphic traffic shaping, staged tunneling, and adaptive mimicry, largely because they rely on static learning pipelines and rigid cryptographic configurations. MIRAGE-DoH was designed to examine whether adaptive inference, persistent structural encoding, and calibrated cryptographic agility could be integrated into a deployable and measurable encrypted DNS control architecture. The framework combined flow-level Cognitive MetaAgents capable of internal reconfiguration, Topological Memory Networks that preserved stable geometric irregularities across temporal windows, and Metamorphic Cryptographic Shards that adjusted key encapsulation policies according to empirically calibrated threat severity. A Causal Counterfactual Environment modeled constrained attacker decision pathways, while Spectral Game Intelligence analyzed flow interaction graphs to anticipate structural attack transitions.Evaluation on extended CIC-DoH2023 and Gen-C-DDD-2022 datasets was conducted under fixed flow-level decision intervals with explicit accounting for synchronization overhead, spectral graph construction cost, and cryptographic rotation latency. Cross-dataset experiments yielded a mean detection accuracy of 97.8% with a 0.41% false positive rate, sustaining median inference latency of 62μs and cryptographic morph latency of 3.7 ms under load. Quantum-assisted inference was assessed through bounded simulations, indicating constrained information gain within the adopted lattice-based configuration, without asserting unconditional post-quantum immunity. These results demonstrated that adaptive encrypted DNS governance can be empirically grounded, operationally bounded, and stress-evaluated without reliance on unqualified claims of perfect security. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3677474 |
| Henghua Zhang, Jue Chen, Haidong Peng, Junru Chen | MAT4PM: Machine Learning-Guided Adaptive Threshold Control for P4-based Monitoring in SDNs | 2026 | Early Access | Monitoring Switches Accuracy Control systems Real-time systems Scalability Data collection Adaptation models Telemetry Process control Software-Defined Networking Programmable Data Plane Machine Learning Network Monitoring P4 | This paper presents MAT4PM, a P4-based proactive monitoring framework designed for Software-Defined Networking (SDN). This is the first monitoring framework that combines Programmable Data Plane (PDP) capabilities for event-driven data collection with control plane intelligence for real-time threshold optimization. The architecture consists of a lightweight P4-based monitoring module deployed at the switch, a Machine Learning (ML) inference engine running at the controller, and a P4Runtime feedback channel for real-time threshold updates. Traffic features are leveraged to predict optimal monitoring thresholds, which are then synchronized with the data plane. A composite cost function is introduced to jointly consider monitoring error and communication overhead, guiding the model toward a balanced trade-off between accuracy and efficiency. Experimental evaluation on BMv2 software switches demonstrates that, compared to static threshold strategies, MAT4PM reduces monitoring error to 7.0% and achieves a 5.6% reduction in overall cost, while maintaining sub-millisecond inference latency and minimal resource consumption. These results demonstrate the practical viability and scalability of MAT4PM in SDN environments. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3677416 |
| Yanli Liu, Yue Pang, Yidi Wang, Shengnan Li, Jin Li, Min Zhang, Danshi Wang | Developing A Domain-Specific LLM for Optical Networks: A Reinforcement Learning-Based Fine-Tuning Framework | 2026 | Early Access | Optical fiber networks Cognition Accuracy Location awareness Reinforcement learning Adaptation models Semantics Optimization Maintenance Training Large language model reinforcement learning from human feedback reinforced fine-tuning optical networks | Optical networks serve as the backbone of modern communication infrastructure, where efficient operation and maintenance (O&M) are essential for ensuring reliable and high-speed data services. However, traditional network O&M face persistent challenges, including high labor costs, delayed response time, and difficulties in processing massive and complex network data. Although large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in text understanding, generation, and reasoning, their direct application in optical network O&M is limited by domain-specific knowledge barriers, inherent reasoning biases, and insufficient performance in complex multi-step tasks. To address this issue, this study develops a domain-adaptation and system-implementation framework that applies two established reinforcement learning-based fine-tuning methods (RLHF and ReFT) to construct domain-specialized LLMs for optical network O&M tasks. In the context of log analysis, RLHF achieves improvements of 1.64 points in accuracy, 1.02 points in content richness, and a notable 10-point increase in interactivity over supervised fine-tuning. In alarm localization, ReFT achieves accuracy improvements of 2%–13% across four reasoning tasks. The extensive tests not only demonstrate the practical value of RL-based fine-tuning in enhancing alignment and reasoning for domain-specific applications, but also provides a practical methodology and implementation reference for applying reinforcement learning-based LLM adaptation in optical network O&M environments. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3676522 |
| Jing Gao, Lei Feng, Fanqin Zhou, Mianxiong Dong, Peng Yu, Kaoru Ota, Xuesong Qiu | Deterministic Delay-Aware Task Scheduling over In-Network Computing: A Graph Embedding-Based DRL Approach | 2026 | Early Access | Delays Processor scheduling Resource management Dynamic scheduling Optimal scheduling Calculus Graph neural networks Computational modeling Reinforcement learning Scheduling algorithms Task scheduling Network calculus Deterministic latency DRL | As the in-network computing (INC) paradigm evolves, efficient scheduling of dependent tasks within complex network systems becomes increasingly crucial. The network needs to handle high-level resource demands while adhering to strict latency requirements. Deterministic delay constraints are particularly critical in applications that rely on directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). To address this challenge, we first propose a deterministic delay-aware task scheduling optimization problem over INC to maximize resource utilization and ensure task acceptance. We accurately establish the complex deterministic delay constraint through traffic arrival and service curves and utilize network calculus for conversion to facilitate solving. Then, we further transform the task optimization problem into MDP and develop a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm that combines graph neural network (GNN) and delay-aware proximal policy optimization (DPPO) to solve it, called the Deterministic Delay-aware Task Scheduling (DDTS) scheme. It utilizes multilayer GNN to handle task dependencies and applies the DPPO algorithm to introduce deterministic delay penalty factors to evaluate policy operations, achieving optimal task scheduling. The simulation results demonstrate the significant advantages of the DDTS scheme over existing algorithms and task scheduling schemes in terms of task acceptance rate and resource utilization. | 10.1109/TNSM.2026.3676106 |
| Yang Liu, Wenjun Zhu, Harry Chang, Yang Hong, Geoff Langdale, Kun Qiu, Jin Zhao | Hyperflex: A SIMD-Based DFA Model for Deep Packet Inspection | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Single instruction multiple data Vectors Engines Automata Inspection Payloads Throughput Memory management Compression algorithms Software algorithms Deep packet inspection regular expression deterministic finite automata | Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) has been extensively employed for network security. It examines traffic payloads by searching for regular expressions (regex) with the Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) model. However, as the network bandwidth and ruleset size are increasing rapidly, the conventional DFA model has emerged as a significant performance bottleneck of DPI. Leveraging the Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data (SIMD) instruction to perform state transitions can substantially boost the efficiency of the DFA model. In this paper, we propose Hyperflex, a novel SIMD-based DFA model designed for high-performance regex matching. Hyperflex incorporates a region detection algorithm to identify regions suitable for acceleration by SIMD instructions across the whole DFA graph. Also, we design a hybrid state transition algorithm that enables state transition in both SIMD-accelerated and normal regions, and ensures seamless state transition across the two types of regions. We have implemented Hyperflex on the commodity CPU and evaluated it with real network traffic and DPI regexes. Our evaluation results indicate that Hyperflex reaches a throughput of 8.89Gbit/s, representing an improvement of up to 2.27 times over Mcclellan, the default DFA model of the prominent multi-pattern regex matching engine Hyperscan. As a result, Hyperflex has been successfully deployed in Hyperscan, significantly enhancing its performance. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3636946 |
| Qiang Zou, Yuhui Deng, Yifeng Zhu, Yi Zhou, Jianghe Cai, Shuibing He, Lina Ge | Analyzing Request Volatility in Cloud-Based Machine Learning: Insights From Alibaba’s Machine Learning as a Service Platform | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Machine learning Training Correlation Computational modeling Cloud computing Graphics processing units Visualization Heavily-tailed distribution Computer science Servers Machine learning cloud platform workload analysis burst heavy-tailed self-similarity synthetic model | With advancements in machine learning (ML) technology and the deployment of large ML-as-a-Service (MLaaS) clouds, accurately understanding request behaviors in an MLaaS cloud platform is paramount for resource scheduling and optimization. This paper sheds light on the correlation of request arrivals in a representative and dynamic MLaaS workload – Alibaba PAI (an ML platform for artificial intelligence). For requests in the PAI workloads at the job, task, instance, and machine levels, our burstiness diagnosis reveals that the request arrival processes at all levels are significantly bursty. Additionally, our Gaussianity test indicates that the bursty activities in PAI consistently appear to be non-Gaussian. Our findings show that there exists a certain degree of correlation between request arrivals at each level over long-term time scales. Moreover, we reveal the self-similar nature of request activities in the various-level wild MLaaS workloads on Alibaba PAI through visual evidence, the auto-correlation structure of the aggregated process of request sequences, and Hurst parameter estimates. Furthermore, we implement a versatile workload synthetic model to synthesize request series based on the inputs measured from the PAI trace. Experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms typical self-similar workload models, and can improve accuracy by up to 99% compared to them. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3640771 |
| Xi Xu, Yang Yang, Wei Huang, Songtao Guo, Guiyan Liu | VNF-FG Placement and Admission Control in SDN and NFV-Enabled IoT Networks: A Hierarchical Deep Reinforcement Learning Method | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Admission control Feature extraction Virtual links Internet of Things Recurrent neural networks Heuristic algorithms Bandwidth Resource management Computational modeling Approximation algorithms Internet of Things network function virtualization deep reinforcement learning VNF-FG placement | Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are expected to provide greater flexibility and manageability for next-generation IoT networks. In this context, network services should be modeled as Virtual Network Function Forwarding Graphs (VNF-FGs). A key challenge is efficient allocation of resources for sequentially arriving network service requests, a process known as VNF-FG placement. Most existing algorithms either manually or partially extract features from the physical network and VNF-FG or adopt a greedy approach, allocating resources as long as a feasible solution exists, which may over-allocate resources to VNF-FG requests, ultimately harming infrastructure providers’ long-term revenue. In this paper, we propose a VNF-FG placement and admission control algorithm based on hierarchical reinforcement learning, called EAC. It consists two levels of agents: a coarse-level agent that generates placement strategies and rejects requests with no feasible placement strategies, and a refine-level agent that implements admission control and rejects requests that are detrimental to long-term revenue. To fully capture the topological features of both the physical network and the VNF-FG, we employ a customized Graph Attention Network (GAT) that incorporates link feature awareness and enables deeper exploration. To fully explore historical temporal information for admission control, we construct state triples and feed them into a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). Using Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) as the foundational training algorithm, the corresponding agents are trained hierarchically. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed EAC algorithm outperforms existing state-of-the-art solutions in terms of acceptance rate, revenue-to-cost ratio, and long-term average revenue. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3640927 |
| Eduardo Castilho Rosa, Daniel Nunes Corujo, Flávio de Oliveira Silva | CoFIB: A Memory-Efficient NDN FIB Design for Programmable Edge Switches | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Data structures Random access memory Pipelines Memory management Throughput Hardware Routing Filters Ribs Optimization FIB SDN P4 name lookup | Designing high-performance and memory-efficient data structures for the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) in Named-Data Networking (NDN) is a challenging task. Since the FIB size is orders of magnitude larger than IP routing tables, scaling it to store millions of prefixes in SRAM/TCAM memory in programmable switches is an open problem. To address this issue, we propose a Compressed FIB data structure called CoFIB, designed to run on edge programmable switches in an SDN-based environment. The CoFIB is a collection of exact-match tables placed in an optimized manner in both ingress and egress pipelines. We propose a LNPM algorithm that carefully recirculates packets in the pipeline. We also introduce the concept of canonical name prefixes to reduce memory footprint and propose an algorithm to extract canonical prefixes from the Routing Information Base (RIB). Experimental results show that CoFIB can compress memory up to $16.58{\times }$ compared to the state-of-the-art, with no significant impact on throughput compared to hardware-based solutions. Additionally, our proposed table placement optimization for LNPM increases the number of packets processed at a line rate by 23.17% compared to the linear table placement approach using a large NDN name dataset. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3641145 |
| Dongyi Han, Qiang Zhi | DGDPFL: Dynamic Grouping and Privacy Budget Adjustment for Federated Learning in Networked Service Management | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Privacy Data privacy Adaptation models Data models Computational modeling Protection Servers Training Federated learning Costs Federated learning client management adaptive privacy control dynamic client selection | In federated learning (FL), effective client and privacy management are crucial for maintaining system efficiency and model performance. However, existing FL frameworks face challenges such as imbalanced client contributions, inefficient resource allocation, and static privacy mechanisms, making scalable client management and adaptive privacy control essential. To address these issues, this paper proposes DGDPFL, a novel FL framework that enhances client selection, resource management, and privacy control through dynamic client grouping and adaptive privacy budgeting. The framework optimizes client management by clustering participants based on device capabilities, bandwidth, and data quality, enabling efficient resource allocation. A contribution-aware selection mechanism ensures fair participation, while a privacy-aware control strategy dynamically adjusts privacy budgets based on model similarity, improving both privacy guarantees and learning performance. We evaluate DGDPFL in real-world and simulated environments. On CIFAR-10 and Fashion-MNIST, DGDPFL achieves 77.83% and 88.35% test accuracy respectively with only 10–20 clients and 40 training rounds, outperforming state-of-the-art baselines by up to 12.36%. On audio datasets FSDD and SAD, the accuracy reaches up to 97%, validating the method’s robustness across modalities. Experimental results demonstrate that DGDPFL outperforms existing approaches by achieving higher model accuracy, improved system efficiency, and better privacy-utility balance. These findings highlight DGDPFL’s effectiveness in managing clients and privacy in FL environments. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3640713 |
| Long Chen, Yukang Jiang, Zishang Qiu, Donglin Zhu, Zhiquan Liu, Zhenzhou Tang | Toward Energy-Saving Deployment in Large-Scale Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks for Q-Coverage and C-Connectivity: An Efficient Parallel Framework | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Wireless sensor networks Metaheuristics Sensors Costs Three-dimensional displays Mathematical analysis Energy consumption Artificial neural networks Monitoring Data communication Q-coverage C-connectivity energy-saving large-scale heterogeneous WSNs parallel framework | Efficient deployment of thousands of energy-constrained sensor nodes (SNs) in large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is critical for reliable data transmission and target sensing. This study addresses the Minimum Energy Q-Coverage and C-Connectivity (MinEQC) problem for heterogeneous SNs in three-dimensional environments. MnPF (Metaheuristic–Neural Network Parallel Framework), a two-phase method that can embed most metaheuristic algorithms (MAs) and neural networks (NNs), is proposed to address the above problem. Phase-I partitions the monitoring region via divide-and-conquer and applies NN-based dimensionality reduction to accelerate parallel optimization of local Q-coverage and C-connectivity. Phase-II employs an MA-based adaptive restoration strategy to restore connectivity among subregions and systematically assess how different partitioning strategies affect the number of restoration steps. Experiments with four NNs and twelve MAs demonstrate efficiency, scalability, and adaptability of MnPF, while ablation studies confirm the necessity of both phases. MnPF bridges scalability and energy efficiency, providing a generalizable approach to SN deployment in large-scale WSNs. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3640070 |
| Junfeng Tian, Junyi Wang | D-Chain: A Load-Balancing Blockchain Sharding Protocol Based on Account State Partitioning | 2026 | Vol. 23, Issue | Sharding Blockchains Load modeling Delays Throughput Scalability Resource management Load management Bitcoin System performance Blockchain sharding account split load balance | Sharding has become one of the key technologies for improve the performance of blockchain systems. However, the imbalance of transaction load between shards caused by extremely hot accounts leads to an imbalance in the utilization of system resources as well as the increase of cross-shard transactions with the number of shards limits the expansion of sharding systems, and sharding systems do not achieve the desired performance improvement. We propose a new blockchain sharding system called D-Chain. D-Chain splits and distributes the state of extremely hot accounts into multiple shards, allowing transactions for an account can be processed in multiple shards, thus balancing the load between shards and reducing the number of cross-shard transactions. We have implemented a prototype of D-Chain, and evaluated its performance using real-world Ethereum transactions. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves a more balanced shard load and outperforms other baselines in terms of throughput, transaction latency, and cross-shard transaction ratio. | 10.1109/TNSM.2025.3640097 |