Hybrid Metadata Fusion with Attention for Multiple IoT Device Classification using BiLSTM

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Author(s)

B. Arathi 1,* Ravindra Babu Kallam 1 Nagamani H. S. 2 Mathamsetti Kaivalya 3 K. Jamal 4 Boudhayan Bhattacharya 5

1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Kamala Institute of Technology and Science, Singapur, Huzurabad, Karimnagar, Telangana – 505468, India

2. Department of Computer Science, Smt. VHD Central Institute of Home Science, Maharani Cluster University, Bengaluru, Karnataka – 560001, India

3. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Aditya University, Surampalem, Andhra Pradesh – 533437, India

4. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad, Telangana – 500090, India

5. Department of Computer Application Dinabandhu Andrews Institute of Technology and Management, Kolkata - 700094, India

* Corresponding author.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijigsp.2026.05.05

Received: 3 Feb. 2026 / Revised: 22 Feb. 2026 / Accepted: 26 Mar. 2026 / Published: 8 Oct. 2026

Index Terms

IoT Device Classification, Metadata Fusion, BiLSTM, Attention Mechanism, Deep Learning, Network Traffic Analysis, Temporal Modelling.

Abstract

Accurate IoT device classification is essential for secure and efficient network management in heterogeneous environments. However, existing approaches struggle with overlapping traffic patterns and limited generalization across dynamic device behaviours. This paper proposes a Metadata Fusion with Attention-based BiLSTM (MFA-BiLSTM) framework that integrates time-domain and statistical features using an adaptive attention mechanism. The model captures both sequential dependencies and distributional characteristics of network traffic, enhancing feature representation and classification robustness. Experiments conducted on the CIC-IoT-Dataset2022 demonstrate improved performance with an accuracy of 99.40%, precision of 99.39%, recall of 99.36%, and F1-score of 99.38%. The results indicate that the proposed approach achieves reliable and scalable IoT device classification while maintaining interpretability.

Cite This Paper

B. Arathi, Ravindra Babu Kallam, Nagamani H. S., Mathamsetti Kaivalya, K. Jamal, Boudhayan Bhattacharya, "Hybrid Metadata Fusion with Attention for Multiple IoT Device Classification using BiLSTM", International Journal of Image, Graphics and Signal Processing(IJIGSP), Vol.18, No.5, pp. 76-92, 2026. DOI:10.5815/ijigsp.2026.05.05

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