{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,16]],"date-time":"2026-03-16T20:26:44Z","timestamp":1773692804805,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":14,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,2,17]],"date-time":"2023-02-17T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1676592000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004607","name":"Guangxi Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2018GXNSFDA281013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018GXNSFDA281013"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004607","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004607","name":"Guangxi Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["U22A2054"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["U22A2054"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004607","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004607","name":"Guangxi Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2022KY0192"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022KY0192"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004607","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2018GXNSFDA281013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018GXNSFDA281013"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["U22A2054"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["U22A2054"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2022KY0192"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022KY0192"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Middle-Aged Teachers in Guangxi Universities Basic Scientific Research Ability Improvement Project","award":["2018GXNSFDA281013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2018GXNSFDA281013"]}]},{"name":"Middle-Aged Teachers in Guangxi Universities Basic Scientific Research Ability Improvement Project","award":["U22A2054"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["U22A2054"]}]},{"name":"Middle-Aged Teachers in Guangxi Universities Basic Scientific Research Ability Improvement Project","award":["2022KY0192"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022KY0192"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In a harsh environment, function aggregation of air\u2013ground integrated network service function chaining (SFC) deployment can easily cause network load imbalance, which affects the network security and reliability. In this study, a task-similarity-based virtual network function (VNF) aggregation scheme was proposed. It considered air\u2013ground network resource consumption and load balance before SFC mapping. A model for selecting VNFs to be aggregated based on task similarity was built. The tasks were classified based on their similarity. Furthermore, the VNFs to be aggregated were selected within the class under the constraints of the underlying physical resources. Load balancing was achieved by adjusting the similarity threshold. Moreover, an SFC mapping selection scheme based on network resource awareness was used to obtain the most suitable physical nodes for single-chain and multi-chain mapping according to various attributes of physical network nodes. The simulation results indicated that the proposed scheme with a better load balance design outperformed existing works on VNF aggregation. We also demonstrated that the task-similarity-based scheme was resource-consumption efficient and effective.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s23042259","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,2,17]],"date-time":"2023-02-17T02:57:22Z","timestamp":1676602642000},"page":"2259","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Task-Similarity-Based VNF Aggregation for Air\u2013Ground Integrated Networks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Mingfeng","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Artificial Intelligence, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Qiyong","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhaoyu","family":"Su","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Artificial Intelligence, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Shaohua","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Artificial Intelligence, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Chunhai","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,2,17]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2714","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2018.2841996","article-title":"Space-air-ground integrated network: A survey","volume":"20","author":"Liu","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, J., Shi, W., Ye, Q., Zhuang, W., Shen, X., and Li, X. (2018, January 9\u201313). Online joint VNF chain composition and embedding for 5G networks. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.","DOI":"10.1109\/GLOCOM.2018.8647700"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"323","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics10030323","article-title":"Efficient placement of service function chains in cloud computing environments","volume":"10","author":"Abdelaal","year":"2021","journal-title":"Electronics"},{"key":"ref_4","first-page":"69","article-title":"Network service orchestration: A survey","volume":"142","author":"Perez","year":"2019","journal-title":"Comput. Commun."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Feng, B., Li, G., Li, G., Zhou, H., Zhang, H., and Yu, S. (2018, January 9\u201313). Efficient mappings of service function chains at terrestrial-satellite hybrid cloud networks. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.","DOI":"10.1109\/GLOCOM.2018.8647330"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1478","DOI":"10.1109\/JSAC.2020.2986851","article-title":"SFC-based service provisioning for reconfigurable space-air-ground integrated networks","volume":"38","author":"Wang","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wen, T., Yu, H., Sun, G., and Liu, L. (2016, January 22\u201327). Network function consolidation in service function chaining orchestration. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICC.2016.7510679"},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"Buyakar, T.V.K., Agarwal, H., Tamma, B.R., and Franklin, A.A. (2019, January 24\u201328). 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