Antonio Skarmeta

University of Murcia | UM · Department of Information and Communication Engineering

Buildings have now adopted a new dimension: the dimension of smartness. The rapid arrival of connected devices, together with the smart features that they provide, has allowed for the transition of existing buildings towards smart buildings. The assessment of the smartness of the large number of existing buildings could exhaust resources, but some...

The current cost that energy represents is crucial in a field like climate control which has high energy demands, therefore its reduction must be prioritized. The expansion of ICT and IoT come with an extensive deployment of sensors and computation infrastructure creating an opportunity to analyze and optimize energy management. Data on building in...

Ahead of the energy crisis, several countermeasures to reduce the energy demand require an active change in the end users’ energy patterns. There are strategies known as demand response (DR) programs that have been tested in recent years, and they have showed us that users’ behaviours can considerably reduce their effectiveness. This is due to a la...

The coordinated integration of heterogeneous TinyML-enabled elements in highly distributed Internet of Things (IoT) environments paves the way for the development of truly intelligent and context-aware applications. In this work, we propose a hierarchical ensemble TinyML scheme that permits system-wide decisions by considering the individual decisi...

While attack detection is key to realize trustworthy smart cities, the use of large amounts of network traffic data by machine learning techniques can lead to privacy issues for citizens. To face this issue, we propose a federated learning approach in the context of Internet of Things-enabled smart cities integrating the Threat and Manufacturer Usa...

The building sector is responsible for a significant amount of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Thus, the monitoring, control and optimization of energy consumption in buildings will play a critical role in the coming years in improving energy efficiency in the building sector and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However,...

5G networks are encountering virtualization technologies as the foundations of the softwarization of the infrastructure. The usage of these techniques in the Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM) vertical is the key to address mobility and computing issues. The next generation of CAM services are demanding continuous sensor-data gathering and proc...

5G mobile communications are bringing a plethora of applications that are challenging existing network infrastructures. These services demand a dynamic, flexible and adaptive infrastructure capable of fulfilling the rigorous requirements they need to operate correctly. Another key point is the need of real-time reactions in the architecture configu...

Due to the fact that the current variability of services is brought by the current networks and the new possibilities that will appear thanks to the near-future networks, Network Slicing has become one of the key elements to allow the co-existence of multiple computing and transportservices with different requirements (i.e., performance, security,...

The 5G system promises to deliver an environment for applications and markets that can easily capitalize on the new services and advanced interfaces that the 5G developments introduce. Recently, in the context of European research and innovation actions, the term NetApp was introduced. A NetApp, in the context of the 5G System, is defined as a set...

As prices on renewable energy electricity generation and storage technologies decrease, previous standard home energy end-users are also becoming producers (prosumers). Together with the increase of Smart Home automation and the need to manage the energy-related interaction between home energy consumers and Smart Grid through different Demand Respo...

The electric grid is undertaking a change of paradigm. New requirements such as the high power loads of Electric Vehicles’ charging are putting pressure on grids, and the popularisation of the figure of the prosumers, are creating new needs on the management of the system. Although the investment on infrastructure is one of the ways of alleviating...

The temperature of indoor spaces is at the core of highly relevant topics such as comfort, productivity and health. In conditioned spaces, this temperature is determined by thermostat preferences, but there is a lack of understanding of this phenomenon as a time-dependent magnitude. In addition to this, there is scientific evidence that the mental...

Demand Response (DR) strategies represent an innovative option to optimise energy management. In particular, smart thermostats have captured the attention of the scientific community for their effectiveness in achieving energy-saving and peak-shaving by lowering HVAC consumption during critical hours of the year. One way of achieving this aim, is t...

Smart-campuses are an emerging ecosystem that permit to enhance the performance and efficiency of academic facilities. Besides, they are also adopted as research, development, and testing platforms for the integration of novel management and governance mechanisms in complex ICT infrastructures. In this line, they are considered as small smart-city-...

The increase in the interconnection of physical devices and the emergence of the 5 G paradigm foster the generation and distribution of massive amounts of data. The complexity associated with the management of these data requires a suitable access control approach that empowers citizens to control how their data are shared, so potential privacy iss...

The pervasiveness of Internet of Things (IoT) has made the management of computer networks more troublesome. The softwarized control provided by Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is not sufficient to overcome the problems raising in this context. An increasing number of attacks can, in fact, occur in SDN-aware IoT networks if the security configura...

THe energy-efficient operation of microgrids—a localized grouping of consuming loads (domestic appliances, EVs, etc.) with distributed energy sources such as solar photovoltaic panels—suggests the deployment of Energy Management Systems (EMSs) that enable the actuation of controllable microgrid loads coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools....

This paper summarizes the contents and presentations held at a workshop at the IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management 2021, focusing on privacy-preserving identity management. In this document, we first introduce the necessary background on privacy-preserving identity management, including core cryptographic concepts. We then present...

The digital transformation in agriculture introduces new challenges in terms of data, knowledge and technology adoption due to critical interoperability issues, and also challenges regarding the identification of the most suitable data sources to be exploited and the information models that must be used. DEMETER (Building an Interoperable, Data-Dri...

Digitalization across the healthcare industry is improving the quality and personalization of the services provided to patients. Currently, we are observing great advances in aspects such as doctor-patient coordination, real-time health monitoring, communication between different specialist, or administrative tasks automation, among others. However...

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Distributed Networking (SDN) technologies play a crucial role in enabling 5G system and beyond. A synergy between these both technologies has been identified for enabling a new concept dubbed service function chains (SFC) that aims to reduce both the capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expen...

Abstract Deep learning (DL) techniques have been extensively studied to improve their precision and scalability in a vast range of applications. Recently, a new milestone has been reached driven by the emergence of the TinyDL paradigm, which enables adaptation of complex DL models generated by well‐known libraries to the restrictions of constrained...

A new wave of electric vehicles for personal mobility is currently crowding public spaces. They offer a sustainable and efficient way of getting around in urban environments, however, these devices bring additional safety issues, including serious accidents for riders. Thereby, taking advantage of a connected personal mobility vehicle, we present a...

The application of Machine Learning (ML) techniques to the well-known intrusion detection systems (IDS) is key to cope with increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity attacks through an effective and efficient detection process. In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), most ML-enabled IDS approaches use centralized approaches where IoT devices...

Despite the latest efforts to foster the adoption of privacy-enhancing Attribute-Based Credential (p-ABC) systems in electronic services, those systems are not yet broadly adopted. The main reasons behind this are performance efficiency issues, lack of interoperability with standards, and the centralized architectural scheme that relies on a unique...

With the strong development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the definition of IoT devices’ intended behavior is key for an effective detection of potential cybersecurity attacks and threats in an increasingly connected environment. In 2019, the Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) was standardized within the IETF as a data model and architecture f...

Lack of standardization and the subsequent difficulty of integration has been one of the main reasons for the scarce adoption of privacy-preserving Attribute-Based Credentials (p-ABC). Integration with the W3C's Verifiable Credentials (VC) specification would help by encouraging homogenization between different p-ABC schemes and bringing them all c...

The application of Machine Learning (ML) techniques to the well-known intrusion detection systems (IDS) is key to cope with increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity attacks through an effective and efficient detection process. In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), most ML-enabled IDS approaches use centralized approaches where IoT devices...

Identity Management (IdM) systems have traditionally relied on a centralized model prone to privacy, trust, and security problems, like potential massive data breaches or identity spoofing. Identity providers accumulate excessive power that might allow them to become a big brother, analyzing and storing as much data as possible. Users should be abl...

This white paper on AI and ML as enablers of beyond 5G (B5G) networks is based on contributions from 5G PPP projects that research, implement and validate 5G and B5G network systems. The white paper introduces the main relevant mechanisms in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), currently investigated and exploited for 5G and B5G...

The availability of multiple (mobile) electronic payment systems ((M)EPS) has led to the development of web browser payment interfaces that support various payment systems, facilitate the transaction, the choice of the payment system, and perform the payment. However, so far, no in-depth study on user satisfaction determinants with these interfaces...

SlowDoS attacks exploit slow transmissions on application-level protocols like HTTP to carry out denial of service against web-servers. These attacks are difficult to be detected with traditional signature-based intrusion detection approaches, even more when the HTTP traffic is encrypted. To cope with this challenge, this paper describes and AI-bas...

In 2019, the new European Union (EU) cybersecurity regulation "Cybersecurity Act" ("CSA")¹ entered into force to create a common framework for the certification of any information and communication technology (ICT) system, including products, services, and processes. The main purpose of this framework is to reduce the current fragmentati...

Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) exploits Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to efficiently and dynamically orchestrate different Service Function Chaining (SFC), whereby reducing capital expenditure and operation expenses. The SFC is an optimization problem that shall consider different const...

Vehicular communications are bringing a new wave of applications under the umbrella of the Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS). To this end, on-board units are expected to send messages periodically or upon the appearance of a relevant event, to feed an awareness ecosystem that enables safety or traffic efficiency services. This...

In recent years, cybersecurity certification is gaining momentum as the baseline to build a structured approach to mitigate cybersecurity risks in the Internet of Things (IoT). This initiative is driven by industry, governmental institutions, and research communities, which have the goal to make IoT more secure for the end-users. In this survey, we...

Security aspects must be considered in the next generation of IoT and 5G networks. From the different aspects that can be considered that belong to the area of security, we focus in this work as core aspects, the processes of authentication and key management operations that are essential to establish security associations between end-devices and d...

This paper describes the cybersecurity and data privacy aspects related to the common Cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM) infrastructure designed for 5G-MOBIX. This architecture comprises three important components: i) the cloud, ii) the networks and iii) the vehicles infrastructures each addressing specific challenges among which...

The digitization of manufacturing industry has led to leaner and more efficient production, under the Industry 4.0 concept. Nowadays, datasets collected from shop floor assets and information technology (IT) systems are used in data-driven analytics efforts to support more informed business intelligence decisions. However, these results are current...

More and more people are concerned about data privacy and this is applicable to vehicular scenarios in which on-board units (OBU) and user devices are exposed to traceability across different access networks and service domains. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in European countries indicates the way to proceed to guarantee privacy and acc...

The promise of disparate features envisioned by the 3GPP for 5G, such as offering enhanced Mobile Broadband connectivity while providing massive Machine Type Communications likely with very low data rates and maintaining Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications requirements, create a very challenging environment for protecting the 5G networks them...

The digitalization of current urban spaces is realizing the vision of so-called smart cities, where security and privacy concerns could affect citizens’ safety. This work discusses potential solutions derived from European Union research efforts to be considered in the coming years.

Computer security incident response teams typically rely on threat intelligence platforms for information about sightings of cyber threat events and indicators of compromise. Other security building blocks, such as Network Intrusion Detection Systems, can leverage the information to prevent malicious adversaries from spreading malware across critic...

The distribution of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in remote areas and the need for network resilience in such deployments is increasingly important in smart spaces covering scenarios, such as agriculture, forest, coast preservation, and connectivity survival against disasters. Although Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, like LoRa,...

Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are bringing many advantages to optimize and automatize security management at the network edge, enabling the deployment of virtual network security functions (VSFs) in MEC nodes, to strengthen the end-to-end security in IoT environments. The benefits could exploit in mobile M...

Cybersecurity certification is a core notion to support the mitigation of cybersecurity risks of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). At EU level, the Cybersecurity Act establishes a common cybersecurity certification framework supporting the coexistence of different certification schemes across Member States. However, its realization...

Despite the latest research efforts to foster mobility and roaming in heterogeneous Low Power Wide Area Networks (LP-WANs) networks, handover roaming of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is not a success mainly due to fragmentation and difficulties to establish trust across different network domains as well as the lack of interoperability of differe...

Internet of Things security is attracting a growing attention from both academic and industry communities. Indeed, IoT devices are prone to various security attacks varying from Denial of Service (DoS) to network intrusion and data leakage. This paper presents a novel machine learning (ML) based security framework that automatically copes with the...

The importance of HTTP in today\'s networks isundisputed. As a solution to enhance QoS and enhance scalability CDN networks have been designed and deployed. Recently, anew paradigm known as ICN has been envisioned focusing thenetwork routing on the content itself instead of the geographical attachment of addresses. Software Defined Networkings (SDN...

As the IoT adoption is growing in several fields, cybersecurity attacks involving low-cost end-user devices are increasing accordingly, undermining the expected deployment of IoT solutions in a broad range of scenarios. To address this challenge, emerging Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies can i...