Roberto Minerva

Hrishikesh Dutta, Roberto Minerva, Noel Crespi

Emerging networked systems such as industrial IoT and real-time cyber-physical infrastructures demand intelligent scheduling strategies capable of adapting to dynamic traffic, deadlines, and interference constraints. In this work, we present a novel Digital Twin-enabled scheduling framework inspired by Dual Mind World Model (DMWM) architecture, for learning-informed and imagination-driven network control. Unlike conventional rule-based or purely data-driven policies, the proposed DMWM combines short-horizon predictive planning with symbolic model-based rollout, enabling the scheduler to anticipate future network states and adjust transmission decisions accordingly. We implement the framework in a configurable simulation testbed and benchmark its performance against traditional heuristics and reinforcement learning baselines under varied traffic conditions. Our results show that DMWM achieves superior performance in bursty, interference-limited, and deadline-sensitive environments, while maintaining interpretability and sample efficiency. The proposed design bridges the gap between network-level reasoning and low-overhead learning, marking a step toward scalable and adaptive NDT-based network optimization.

Hrishikesh Dutta, Roberto Minerva, Reza Farahbakhsh et al.

Modern IoT and sensor networks generate vast amounts of data, posing significant challenges for storage, transmission, and real-time processing. Traditional approaches, such as compressive sensing and machine learning-based compression, often suffer from computational inefficiencies and irreversible data loss. This paper introduces Information Density as a quantitative metric to support sensor deployment and enable AI-driven virtual sensing. We propose a framework that leverages spatial, temporal and inter-modal correlations among sensor signals to perform sensing tasks even in the absence of physical sensors. Two complementary measures: (i) Phase in Eigen Space and (ii) Mutual Information, are developed to quantify and assess information density, enabling the selection of optimal sensor configurations across both intra-modality and cross-modality scenarios. Validated using real-world data from Madrid's smart city infrastructure, this framework demonstrates the feasibility of replacing physical sensors with virtual ones under bounded error conditions (e.g., achieving $<3.21\%$ mean error with a single sensor). The results highlight the potential for scalable and energy-efficient sensing systems in smart environments.

Hrishikesh Dutta, Roberto Minerva, Maira Alvi et al.

The development and operation of smart cities relyheavily on large-scale Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks and sensor infrastructures that continuously monitor various aspects of urban environments. These networks generate vast amounts of data, posing challenges related to bandwidth usage, energy consumption, and system scalability. This paper introduces a novel sensing paradigm called Data-driven Modality Fusion (DMF), designed to enhance the efficiency of smart city IoT network management. By leveraging correlations between timeseries data from different sensing modalities, the proposed DMF approach reduces the number of physical sensors required for monitoring, thereby minimizing energy expenditure, communication bandwidth, and overall deployment costs. The framework relocates computational complexity from the edge devices to the core, ensuring that resource-constrained IoT devices are not burdened with intensive processing tasks. DMF is validated using data from a real-world IoT deployment in Madrid, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed system in accurately estimating traffic, environmental, and pollution metrics from a reduced set of sensors. The proposed solution offers a scalable, efficient mechanism for managing urban IoT networks, while addressing issues of sensor failure and privacy concerns.

Dun Li, Dezhi Han, Noel Crespi et al.

Supply chain finance(SCF) is committed to providing credit for small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) with low credit lines and small financing scales. The resulting financial credit data and related business transaction data are highly confidential and private. However, traditional SCF management schemes mostly use third-party platforms and centralized designs, which cannot achieve highly reliable secure storage and fine-grained access control. To fill this gap, this paper designs and implements Fabric-SCF, a secure storage and access control system based on blockchain and attribute-based access control (\textbf{ABAC}) model. This scheme uses distributed consensus to realize data security, traceability, and immutability. We also use smart contracts to define system processes and access policies to ensure the efficient operation of the system. To verify the performance of Fabric-SCF, we designed two sets of simulation experiments. The results show that Fabric-SCF achieves dynamic and fine-grained access control while maintaining high throughput in a simulated real-world operating scenario.