Transfer Learning Strategies for Credit Card Fraud Detection.

in IEEE Access (2021)

Credit card fraud jeopardizes the trust of customers in e-commerce transactions. This led in recent years to major advances in the design of automatic Fraud Detection Systems (FDS) able to detect ... [more ▼]

Credit card fraud jeopardizes the trust of customers in e-commerce transactions. This led in recent years to major advances in the design of automatic Fraud Detection Systems (FDS) able to detect fraudulent transactions with short reaction time and high precision. Nevertheless, the heterogeneous nature of the fraud behavior makes it difficult to tailor existing systems to different contexts (e.g. new payment systems, different countries and/or population segments). Given the high cost (research, prototype development, and implementation in production) of designing data-driven FDSs, it is crucial for transactional companies to define procedures able to adapt existing pipelines to new challenges. From an AI/machine learning perspective, this is known as the problem of transfer learning. This paper discusses the design and implementation of transfer learning approaches for e-commerce credit card fraud detection and their assessment in a real setting. The case study, based on a six-month dataset (more than 200 million e-commerce transactions) provided by the industrial partner, relates to the transfer of detection models developed for a European country to another country. In particular, we present and discuss 15 transfer learning techniques (ranging from naive baselines to state-of-the-art and new approaches), making a critical and quantitative comparison in terms of precision for different transfer scenarios. Our contributions are twofold: (i) we show that the accuracy of many transfer methods is strongly dependent on the number of labeled samples in the target domain and (ii) we propose an ensemble solution to this problem based on self-supervised and semi-supervised domain adaptation classifiers. The thorough experimental assessment shows that this solution is both highly accurate and hardly sensitive to the number of labeled samples. [less ▲]

AST-MTL : An Attention-based Multi- Task Learning Strategy for Traffic Forecasting

in IEEE Access (2021)

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in Challenging Environments: Underwater, Underground, Industrial and Disaster

in IEEE Access (2021)

Multi-Channel Joint Forecasting-Scheduling for the Internet of Things

in IEEE Access (2020), 8

We develop a methodology for Multi-Channel Joint Forecasting-Scheduling (MC-JFS) targeted at solving the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer Massive Access Problem of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication ... [more ▼]

We develop a methodology for Multi-Channel Joint Forecasting-Scheduling (MC-JFS) targeted at solving the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer Massive Access Problem of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication in the presence of multiple channels, as found in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) systems. In contrast with the existing schemes that merely react to current traffic demand, Joint Forecasting-Scheduling (JFS) forecasts the traffic generation pattern of each Internet of Things (IoT) device in the coverage area of an IoT Gateway and schedules the uplink transmissions of the IoT devices over multiple channels in advance, thus obviating contention, collision and handshaking, which are found in reactive protocols. In this paper, we present the general form of a deterministic scheduling optimization program for MC-JFS that maximizes the total number of bits that are delivered over multiple channels by the delay deadlines of the IoT applications. In order to enable real-time operation of the MC-JFS system, first, we design a heuristic, called Multi-Channel Look Ahead Priority based on Average Load (MC-LAPAL), that solves the general form of the scheduling problem. Second, for the special case of identical channels, we develop a reduction technique by virtue of which an optimal solution of the scheduling problem is computed in real time. We compare the network performance of our MC-JFS scheme against Multi-Channel Reservation-based Access Barring (MC-RAB) and Multi-Channel Enhanced Reservation-based Access Barring (MC-ERAB), both of which serve as benchmark reactive protocols. Our results show that MC-JFS outperforms both MC-RAB and MC-ERAB with respect to uplink cross-layer throughput and transmit energy consumption, and that MC-LAPAL provides high performance as an MC-JFS heuristic. Furthermore, we show that the computation time of MC-LAPAL scales approximately linearly with the number of IoT devices. This work serves as a foundation for building scalable JFS schemes at IoT Gateways in the near future. [less ▲]

A Comprehensive Survey of Enabling and Emerging Technologies for Social Distancing—Part II: Emerging Technologies and Open Issues

in IEEE Access (2020)

This two-part paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on how emerging technologies, e.g., wireless and networking, artificial intelligence (AI) can enable, encourage, and even enforce social ... [more ▼]

This two-part paper aims to provide a comprehensive survey on how emerging technologies, e.g., wireless and networking, artificial intelligence (AI) can enable, encourage, and even enforce social distancing practice. In Part I, an extensive background of social distancing is provided, and enabling wireless technologies are thoroughly surveyed. In this Part II, emerging technologies such as machine learning, computer vision, thermal, ultrasound, etc., are introduced. These technologies open many new solutions and directions to deal with problems in social distancing, e.g., symptom prediction, detection and monitoring quarantined people, and contact tracing. Finally, we discuss open issues and challenges (e.g., privacy-preserving, scheduling, and incentive mechanisms) in implementing social distancing in practice. As an example, instead of reacting with ad-hoc responses to COVID-19-like pandemics in the future, smart infrastructures (e.g., next-generation wireless systems like 6G, smart home/building, smart city, intelligent transportation systems) should incorporate a pandemic mode in their standard architectures/designs. [less ▲]

Beam Illumination Pattern Design in Satellite Networks: Learning and Optimization for Efficient Beam Hopping

in IEEE Access (2020)

Beam hopping (BH) is considered to provide a high level of flexibility to manage irregular and time-varying traffic requests in future multi-beam satellite systems. In BH optimization, adopting ... [more ▼]

Beam hopping (BH) is considered to provide a high level of flexibility to manage irregular and time-varying traffic requests in future multi-beam satellite systems. In BH optimization, adopting conventional iterative heuristics may have their own limitations in providing timely solutions, and directly using data-driven technique to approximate optimization variables may lead to constraint violation and degraded performance. In this paper, we explore a combined learning-and-optimization (L&O) approach to provide an efficient, feasible, and near-optimal solution. The investigations are from the following aspects: 1) Integration ofBH optimization and learning techniques; 2) Features to be learned in BH design; 3) How to address the feasibility issue incurred by machine learning. We provide numerical results and analysis to show that the learning component in L&O significantly accelerates the procedure of identifying promising BH patterns, resulting in reduced computing time from seconds/minutes to milliseconds level. The identified learning feature enables high accuracy in predictions. In addition, the optimization component in L&O guarantees the solution’s feasibility and improves the overall performance with around 5% gap to the optimum. [less ▲]

A RAN Resource Slicing Mechanism for Multiplexing of eMBB and URLLC Services in OFDMA based 5G Wireless Networks

in IEEE Access (2020)

Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) are the two main expected services in the next generation of wireless networks. Accommodation of these two ... [more ▼]

Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) are the two main expected services in the next generation of wireless networks. Accommodation of these two services on the same wireless infrastructure leads to a challenging resource allocation problem due to their heterogeneous specifications. To address this problem, slicing has emerged as an architecture that enables a logical network with specific radio access functionality to each of the supported services on the same network infrastructure. The allocation of radio resources to each slice according to their requirements is a fundamental part of the network slicing that is usually executed at the radio access network (RAN). In this work, we formulate the RAN resource allocation problem as a sum-rate maximization problem subject to the orthogonality constraint (i.e., service isolation), latency-related constraint and minimum rate constraint while maintaining the reliability constraint with the incorporation of adaptive modulation and coding (AMC). However, the formulated problem is not mathematically tractable due to the presence of a step-wise function associated with the AMC and a binary assignment variable. Therefore, to solve the proposed optimization problem, first, we relax the mathematical intractability of AMC by using an approximation of the non-linear AMC achievable throughput, and next, the binary constraint is relaxed to a box constraint by using the penalized reformulation of the problem. The result of the above two-step procedure provides a close-to-optimal solution to the original optimization problem. Furthermore, to ease the complexity of the optimization-based scheduling algorithm, a low-complexity heuristic scheduling scheme is proposed for the efficient multiplexing of URLLC and eMBB services. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed optimization and heuristic schemes is illustrated through extensive numerical simulations. [less ▲]

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

in IEEE Access (2020)

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e ... [more ▼]

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions. [less ▲]

Data Redundancy Mitigation in V2X based Collective Perceptions

in IEEE Access (2020), 8

Collective perception is a new paradigm to extend the limited horizon of individual vehicles. Incorporating with the recent vehicle-2-x (V2X) technology, connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) can ... [more ▼]

Collective perception is a new paradigm to extend the limited horizon of individual vehicles. Incorporating with the recent vehicle-2-x (V2X) technology, connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) can periodically share their sensory information, given that traffic management authorities and other road participants can benefit from these information enormously. Apart from the benefits, employing collective perception could result in a certain level of transmission redundancy, because the same object might fall in the visible region of multiple CAVs, hence wasting the already scarce network resources. In this paper, we analytically study the data redundancy issue in highway scenarios, showing that the redundant transmissions could result in heavy loads on the network under medium to dense traffic. We then propose a probabilistic data selection scheme to suppress redundant transmissions. The scheme allows CAVs adaptively adjust the transmission probability of each tracked objects based on the position, vehicular density and road geometry information. Simulation results confirm that our approach can reduce at most 60% communication overhead in the meanwhile maintain the system reliability at desired levels. [less ▲]

The Potential Short- and Long-Term Disruptions and Transformative Impacts of 5G and Beyond Wireless Networks: Lessons Learnt from the Development of a 5G Testbed Environment

in IEEE Access (2020)

The capacity and coverage requirements for 5th generation (5G) and beyond wireless connectivity will be significantly different from the predecessor networks. To meet these requirements, the anticipated ... [more ▼]

The capacity and coverage requirements for 5th generation (5G) and beyond wireless connectivity will be significantly different from the predecessor networks. To meet these requirements, the anticipated deployment cost in the United Kingdom (UK) is predicted to be between £30bn and £50bn, whereas the current annual capital expenditure (CapEX) of the mobile network operators (MNOs) is £2.5bn. This prospect has vastly impacted and has become one of the major delaying factors for building the 5G physical infrastructure, whereas other areas of 5G are progressing at their speed. Due to the expensive and complicated nature of the network infrastructure and spectrum, the second-tier operators, widely known as mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), are entirely dependent on the MNOs. In this paper, an extensive study is conducted to explore the possibilities of reducing the 5G deployment cost and developing viable business models. In this regard, the potential of infrastructure, data, and spectrum sharing is thoroughly investigated. It is established that the use of existing public infrastructure (e.g., streetlights, telephone poles, etc.) has a potential to reduce the anticipated cost by about 40% to 60%. This paper also reviews the recent Ofcom initiatives to release location-based licenses of the 5G-compatible radio spectrum. Our study suggests that simplification of infrastructure and spectrum will encourage the exponential growth of scenario-specific cellular networks (e.g., private networks, community networks, micro-operators) and will potentially disrupt the current business models of telecommunication business stakeholders – specifically MNOs and TowerCos. Furthermore, the anticipated dense device connectivity in 5G will increase the resolution of traditional and non-traditional data availability significantly. This will encourage extensive data harvesting as a business opportunity and function within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as large social networks. Consequently, the rise of new infrastructures and spectrum stakeholders is anticipated. This will fuel the development of a 5G data exchange ecosystem where data transactions are deemed to be high-value business commodities. The privacy and security of such data, as well as definitions of the associated revenue models and ownership, are challenging areas – and these have yet to emerge and mature fully. In this direction, this paper proposes the development of a unified data hub with layered structured privacy and security along with blockchain and encrypted off-chain based ownership/royalty tracking. Also, a data economy-oriented business model is proposed. The study found that with the potential commodification of data and data transactions along with the low-cost physical infrastructure and spectrum, the 5G network will introduce significant disruption in the Telco business ecosystem. [less ▲]