As sixth-generation (6G) cellular networks emerge, promising unparalleled connectivity and capabilities, yet it amplifies concerns regarding security vulnerabilities. These networks include a broader array of devices and sensors compared to earlier generations, increasing the potential for attackers to exploit weaknesses. Existing security frameworks contribute to safeguarding enterprises against external threats that originate beyond the network perimeter. These frameworks operate under the assumption that all entities inside the defined perimeters are reliable, and their primary objective is to authorize access to resources based on assigned roles and permissions. However, this strategy could be more effective today since attacks might originate from any source, including within the network perimeter. To address this issue, a zero-trust architecture (ZTA) could be a potential solution that assumes neither users nor devices can be inherently trusted, and it consistently evaluates potential risks to decide whether to allow access to resources. This article will explore the zero-trust approach and its significance in contemporary network security. We describe the role of authentication and access control in ZTA and present an in-depth discussion of state-of-the-art authentication and access control techniques in different scenarios. This article examines the applicability of the zero-trust concept in 6G networks and analyzes the associated challenges and opportunities. This article also examines case studies demonstrating the practical application of the zero trust paradigm in 6G or comparable networks. It explores the research scope and tries to identify relevant research gaps in this area.

One of the main concerns regarding the facilitation of the elderly well-being monitoring system is to preserve the participants’ privacy, enable the older adults to live longer independently, and support caregivers. Human Activity Recognition (HAR) in smart homes allows us to foresee the residents’ needs by identifying changes in behaviour that might link to possible health conditions. We propose a Federated learning (FL) model within the health monitoring application to generalize for diverse participant populations and to achieve comparable performance without disclosing the raw data to the traditional centralized approach, which raises privacy issues. In this study, we evaluate an unsupervised variational autoencoder (VAE) in centralized, individualized, compared to federated learning settings to learn the features of normal patterns of daily activities and build an anomaly detector based on reconstructed error resulting as outcomes by the trained model. Further, we validated our proposed approach on real-world datasets collected over three years from six single-resident elderly households. The individual and centralized-based learning models were used as a baseline to compare with FL. Our results show that the personalized FedAvg models achieve RMSE of about 1%, while the Global FL models achieve RMSE of approximately. 4%. The centralized model achieves RMSE of about 0.5%, and the RMSE of individual models based on local training ranges between 1% to 6%. The FL models are relatively comparable to the centralized baseline model.

Sleep is an essential activity that affects an individual’s health and ability to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Inadequate sleep reduces cognitive capacity and leads to health-related issues such as cardiovascular diseases. Sleep disorders are more prevalent in older adults. Therefore, it is essential to recognize sleep patterns and support older adults and their caregivers. In our study, we collect data in real-world unconstrained and non-intrusive environments. This paper presents a novel sleep activity recognition method using motion sensors for recognizing nighttime and daytime sleep, which can further enable the development of insightful healthcare applications. The research objectives are to evaluate the application of using Multi-Armed Bandit methods to (i) learn normal sleep patterns, (ii) evaluate sleep quality, and (iii) detect anomalies in sleep activity for 11 elderly participants living in single-resident smart homes. We evaluate the performance of Thompson Sampling, Random Selection, and Upper Confidence Bound MAB methods. Thompson Sampling outperformed the other two methods. Our findings show most elderly participants slept between 6 and 8 hours with 85% sleep efficiency and up to 3 awakenings per night.

As the impact of global warming on climate change becomes noticeable, the importance of energy efficiency for reducing greenhouse gas emissions grows immense. To this end, a platform, solution, and mobile apps are developed as part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program to support energy optimization in residences. However, to ensure long-term energy optimization, it is crucial to keep users engaged with the apps. Since augmented reality (AR) and a virtual animal companion positively influenced user engagement, we designed an AR companion that represented the user’s residence states; thereby making the user aware of indoor information. We conducted user evaluations to determine the effect of the AR companion on user engagement and perceived usability in the context of energy management. We identified that the user interface (UI) with AR (ARUI) barely affected user engagement and perceived usability compared to the traditional UI without AR (TUI); however, we found that the ARUI positively affected one of the user engagement aspects. Our results show AR companion integration’s potential benefits and effects on energy management mobile apps. Furthermore, our findings provide insights into UI design elements for developers considering multiple interaction modalities with AR.

Background: The older population needs solutions for independent living and reducing the burden on caregivers while maintaining the quality and dignity of life.

Objective: The aim of this study was to design, develop, and evaluate an older adult health care app that supports trained caregivers (ie, formal caregivers) and relatives (ie, informal caregivers). We aimed to identify the factors that affect user acceptance of interfaces depending on the user’s role.

Methods: We designed and developed an app with 3 user interfaces that enable remote sensing of an older adult’s daily activities and behaviors. We conducted user evaluations (N=25) with older adults and their formal and informal caregivers to obtain an overall impression of the health care monitoring app in terms of user experience and usability. In our design study, the participants had firsthand experience with our app, followed by a questionnaire and individual interview to express their opinions on the app. Through the interview, we also identified their views on each user interface and interaction modality to identify the relationship between the user’s role and their acceptance of a particular interface. The questionnaire answers were statistically analyzed, and we coded the interview answers based on keywords related to a participant’s experience, for example, ease of use and usefulness.

Results: We obtained overall positive results in the user evaluation of our app regarding key aspects such as efficiency, perspicuity, dependability, stimulation, and novelty, with an average between 1.74 (SD 1.02) and 2.18 (SD 0.93) on a scale of −3.0 to 3.0. The overall impression of our app was favorable, and we identified that “simple” and “intuitive” were the main factors affecting older adults’ and caregivers’ preference for the user interface and interaction modality. We also identified a positive user acceptance of the use of augmented reality by 91% (10/11) of the older adults to share information with their formal and informal caregivers.

Conclusions: To address the need for a study to evaluate the user experience and user acceptance by older adults as well as both formal and informal caregivers regarding the user interfaces with multimodal interaction in the context of health monitoring, we designed, developed, and conducted user evaluations with the target user groups. Our results through this design study show important implications for designing future health monitoring apps with multiple interaction modalities and intuitive user interfaces in the older adult health care domain.