Istituto Superiore Mario Boella

The chapter presents an overview of the eight that are part of the European IoT Security and Privacy Projects initiative (IoT-ESP) addressing advanced concepts for end-to-end security in highly distributed, heterogeneous and dynamic IoT environments. The approaches presented are holistic and include identification and authentication, data protection and prevention against cyber-attacks at the device and system levels. The projects present architectures, concepts, methods and tools for open IoT platforms integrating evolving sensing, actuating, energy harvesting, networking and interface technologies. Platforms should provide connectivity and intelligence, actuation and control features, linkage to modular and ad-hoc cloud services, The IoT platforms used are compatible with existing international developments addressing object identity management, discovery services, virtualisation of objects, devices and infrastructures and trusted IoT approaches.

Internet of Things (IoT) is considered one of the next industrial revolution enablers, which is fuelled by the advancement of digital technologies. IoT is dramatically changing how companies engage in business activities, and how people will interact with their environment. Its disruptive nature requires the assessment of the requirements for the future deployment across the digital value chain in various industries and in many application areas. The use of platforms is being driven by transformative technologies such as cloud, things, and mobile. The IoT and services makes it possible to create networks incorporating the entire manufacturing process that convert factories into a smart environment. The members of Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation jointly work on the creation of a dynamic European IoT ecosystem. This ecosystem is building on the work of the IoT Research Cluster and spill over innovation across industries and business sectors of IoT transforming ideas to IoT solutions.

In the field of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), jamming signals are more than ever a real threat, demanding for an increasing need of countermeasures. Among several proposed detection and mitigation methods developed for specific types of interference, the Adaptive Notch Filter (ANF) is still an attractive solution to mitigate very narrowband interference signals, for its ease of implementation, low computational cost and reduced activation time. ANFs have been widely exploited in literature, with many variations: albeit well known to be particularly effective for Continuous Wave (CW) interferes, an early proof of their suitability also against certain types of GNSS jammers has been shown. In this paper, two recently proposed Frequency Lock Loop (FLL) models to implement the adaptive capability of the ANF are considered: the standard FLL and the FLL with exponential filtering. While both have already been analyzed in the presence of CW interfering signals, with constant carrier frequency, here an evaluation in case of fast sweeping central frequency is conducted, targeting the features of some of the most common jammers detected in the GPS LI/Galileo E1 band. A comparison in terms of tracking capability and noise performance is presented. While the standard FLL shows to be able to successfully track and mitigates jamming signals, the exponential filtering FLL proves it is not up to, suffering particularly from frequency discontinuities, which commonly characterize such kind of interferers.

The fleet of Electric Vehicles is part of the Smart Grid ecosystem. The EV recharge process and its mathematical modeling is an important component that impacts on the stability and the security of energy supply. Global Sensitivity Analysis support tools are used to measure the relative importance of the inputs contributing to produce the model’s outputs. Recently, the energy flows being exchanged between Smart Grid and an EV fleet are part of the Transactive Energy Control scenario in which an economic incentive becomes an impacting parameter to investigate further because it can produce a substantial behavioral change. In this article the authors discuss about the experimental workflows used to support the impact assessment studies and about the role of Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis tools helping to optimize the EV fleet recharge processes.

The transition to generation-led Smart Grid has determined a need to materialize the Demand-side Flexibility. In a changed market scenario, small-scale users will be enabled to sell the ancillary balancing services as a particular good that complements amounts of the energy-containing commodity. In Transactive Energy Control scenario, the market operations should be accompanied by the tools for analytical accounting of both parts of the Control as a Service, the energy amounts (a) and the flexible ramps (b). It asks for new measurement and control instruments, especially because of security implications. This work describes a prototype built in the context of an EU-funded project SUCCESS.

In this paper, we discuss the state-of-the-art of components and technology to enable multi-band transmission over single mode fibers (SMFs). A full overview on the most relevant challenges is provided.

The transition to generation-led approach in Smart Grids assigns new roles to networked Demand-oriented Real-time Smart Meters that operate in decentralized system. In new operational scenario, to achieve network-wide interoperability, smart meters are exposed to cyber threats. One of the mostly known risks is so-called Cyber Kill Chain. This research article discusses about a work performed in the context of SUCCESS (Energy) Horizon-2020 project on early detection of stages of the Cyber Kill Chain in Advanced Metering Infrastructures of modern Smart Grids. The authors discuss about patterns allowing early detection of Reconnaissance activities and the use of Artificial Intelligence pattern matching methods.

<p>Event detection from social media is a challenging task due to the volume, the velocity and the variety of<br> user-generated data requiring real-time processing. Despite recent works on this subject, a generalized and scalable<br> approach that could be applied across languages and topics has not been consolidated, yet. In this paper, we propose<br> a methodology for real-time event detection from Twitter data that allows users to select a topic of interest by<br> defining a simple set of keywords and a matching rule. We implement the proposed methodology and evaluate it<br> with real data to detect different types of events.</p>

This chapter mainly focuses on the signal processing algorithms used in the physical layer of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver. It provides a general introduction of all the subsystems of a GNSS receiver. The chapter describes the first operation that a receiver performs when it is switched on: the acquisition of the satellites in view and a first estimate of certain signal in space (SIS) parameters. These estimates derive from the approximation of some results from maximum likelihood (ML) theory. Such estimates are solid, but coarse, and need to be refined by other blocks, known as tracking systems or null seekers, based on different signal processing techniques. The chapter provides a description of the gradient theory and its application in the null seekers. It shows that the estimation of the pseudoranges can be obtained after the tracking outputs are converted into navigation data, that is, when each satellite channel is in navigation mode.

PurposeThis paper looks at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from the angle of the market for corporate control and analyzes in detail the reported rationales of a sample of 355 mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002-2012. The purpose of this paper, after having created a taxonomy of deal motivations, is to empirically test two alternative hypotheses: deviation vs convergence of M&A deal rationales between state-owned and private enterprises.Design/methodology/approachThe data set is obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). A recursive algorithm is developed to infer the ownership nature of the enterprises at the time the deal took place and then the authors double-checked the identity of the global ultimate owner by visual inspection of all the available information. Motivations are analyzed through a case-by-case analysis and classified into several categories, thereby providing a taxonomy of rationales behind SOE M&As and discussing their differences and similarities relative to private firms.FindingsMore than 60 percent of the deals performed by SOEs as acquirers are driven by “shareholder value maximization” motives, similarly to private enterprise acquirers. The other 40 percent of deals are almost equally spread among three rationales that specifically relate to the role of modern state capitalism in the economy. “Financial distress” motivation, which is the only one clearly deviating from the objectives of profit maximization typical of private ownership, is far less important than the others.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper does not analyze the case studies in detail. Neither does it correlate the evidence with the quality of corporate governance or the quality of institutions in the country. This would be interesting in order to discover whether the alignment of objectives between public and private enterprises is enhanced by certain features of public sector management, as suggested by the OECD (2015) Guidelines.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests some policy implications in terms of reforms of the corporate governance of the SOEs and accountability of their management against clearly stated public missions. It also calls for the need for citizens to be informed in a transparent way about the rationales of major M&A deals when a SOE is on the acquirer side, and the consistency of such rationales with the mission assigned by governments to the enterprises they own. Finally, it underlines that regulatory concerns raised in many countries by the rise of cross-border SOE M&As are in most of the cases unfounded.Originality/valueExisting literature has mainly focused on private corporate M&A deals or has just disregarded the ownership status of the acquiring firm. This paper focuses on the motivations for SOE deals in order to elaborate a taxonomy of SOE deal rationales and to identify the differences and similarities between private corporate firms.