[Colloq] Monday 10/27: PhD Thesis Proposal - Robust Wireless Communication for Multi-Antenna, Multi-Rate, Multi-Carrier Systems

[Fong, Andy]

Triet Vo-Huu

Date: 10/27

Time: 9:00 AM

Location: WVH 366



Title: Robust Wireless Communication for Multi-Antenna, Multi-Rate, Multi-Carrier Systems



Abstract:



Today's trend of migrating radio devices from hardware to software provides potential to create flexible applications for both commercial and military use. However, this raises security concerns, as malicious attackers can also be generated easily to break legitimate communications. In this research work, we particularly investigate three different aspects of jamming threats: high-power jammers, link attacks on rate adaptation, and jamming in multicarrier systems.



First, the threats of high-power jamming to wireless communications today are realistic due to the ease of access to powerful jamming sources. To counter high-power jamming attacks, we develop SAIM which is a hybrid system capable of resisting jammers of up to 100,000 times higher power than legitimate communication nodes. The system robustness relies on our own antenna structure specially designed for anti-jamming purpose. We develop an efficient algorithm for auto-configuring the antenna adaptively to dynamic environments and a software-based jamming cancellation technique for appropriately extracting original signals, which is more robust than traditional MIMO approaches, as training sequences are not required in SAIM.



Second, attacks on link rate adaptation have been demonstrated to be very efficient due to the exposure of rate information in today's wireless standards. To mitigate rate-based attacks, we develop CBM, a system capable of hiding rate and -- at the same time -- increasing resiliency against jammers up to seven times higher than regular systems, where rate is exposed. We achieve the resiliency boost by generalizing Trellis Coded Modulation to allow non-uniform codeword mapping. We develop an efficient algorithm for finding good non-uniform codes for all modulations in {BPSK, QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM}. To conceal rate information, we devise an efficient method for generating cryptographic interleaving functions.



Third, in recently deployed communication networks such as WiFi and LTE systems, MIMO and OFDM are the two main techniques for increasing bandwidth efficiency, where synchronization is the key for high-throughput performance. In this work, we study impacts of jamming attacks specifically targeting to control channels in WiFi and LTE networks. Our study focuses on efficient techniques for both jamming and anti-jamming in multicarrier systems.





Committee:

Prof. Guevara Noubir (advisor)

Prof. Erik-Oliver Blass (Airbus Group Innovations / Northeastern University) Prof. Rajmohan Rajaraman (Northeastern University) Prof. Srdjan Capkun (ETH Zurich, external member) Prof. David Starobinski (Boston University, external member)



Website: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/vohuudtr/proposal.html




Andrew W. Fong
Program Assistant

Northeastern University
College of Computer and Information Science
360 Huntington Avenue
202 West Village H
Boston, MA 02115
617-373-8493
a.fong at neu.edu

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