Increasing Vehicular Visible Light Communications Range Based on LED Current Overdriving and Variable Pulse Position Modulation: Concept and Experimental Validation.

Due to its unique advantages, the integration of Visible Light Communications (VLC) in vehicle safety applications has become a major research topic. Nevertheless, as this is an emergent technology, several challenges must be addressed. One of the most important of these challenges is oriented toward increasing vehicular VLC systems' communication range. In this context, this article proposes a novel approach that provides a significant communication distance enhancement. Different from most existing works on this topic, which are based on refining the VLC receiver, this new article is focused on improving the VLC system based on the benefits that can be achieved through the VLC transmitter. The concept is based on Light-Emitting Diode (LED) current overdriving and a modified Variable Pulse Position Modulation (VPPM). Therefore, LED current overdriving provides the VLC receiver higher instantaneous received optical power and improved Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), whereas the use of the VPPM ensures that the VLC transmitter respects eye regulation norms and offers LED protection against overheating. The concept has been experimentally tested in laboratory conditions. The experimental results confirmed the viability of the concept, showing an increase of the communication range by up to 370%, while maintaining the same overall optical irradiance at the VLC transmitter level. Therefore, this new approach has the potential to enable vehicular VLC ranges that cover the requirements of communication-based vehicle safety applications. To the best of our knowledge, this concept has not been previously exploited in vehicular VLC applications.

Research on Security Weakness Using Penetration Testing in a Distributed Firewall.

The growing number of cyber-crimes is affecting all industries worldwide, as there is no business or industry that has maximum protection in this domain. This problem can produce minimal damage if an organization has information security audits periodically. The process of an audit includes several steps, such as penetration testing, vulnerability scans, and network assessments. After the audit is conducted, a report that contains the vulnerabilities is generated to help the organization to understand the current situation from this perspective. Risk exposure should be as low as possible because in cases of an attack, the entire business is damaged. In this article, we present the process of an in-depth security audit on a distributed firewall, with different approaches for the best results. The research of our distributed firewall involves the detection and remediation of system vulnerabilities by various means. In our research, we aim to solve the weaknesses that have not been solved to date. The feedback of our study is revealed with the help of a risk report in the scope of providing a top-level view of the security of a distributed firewall. To provide a high security level for the distributed firewall, we will address the security flaws uncovered in firewalls as part of our research.