A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Fast Power and Energy Efficiency Analysis of FPGA-based Wireless Base-band Processing

Nowadays, demands for high performance keep on increasing in the wireless communication domain. This leads to a consistent rise of the complexity and designing such systems has become a challenging task. In this context, energy efficiency is considered as a key topic, especially for embedded systems in which design space is often very constrained. In this paper, a fast and accurate power estimation approach for FPGA-based hardware systems is applied to a typical wireless communication system. It aims at providing power estimates of complete systems prior to their implementations. This is made possible by using a dedicated library of high-level models that are representative of hardware IPs. Based on high-level simulations, design space exploration is made a lot faster and easier. The definition of a scenario and the monitoring of IP's time-activities facilitate the comparison of several domain-specific systems. The proposed approach and its benefits are demonstrated through a typical use case in the wireless communication domain.Comment: Presented at HIP3ES, 201

Baseband analog front-end and digital back-end for reconfigurable multi-standard terminals

Multimedia applications are driving wireless network operators to add high-speed data services such as Edge (E-GPRS), WCDMA (UMTS) and WLAN (IEEE 802.11a,b,g) to the existing GSM network. This creates the need for multi-mode cellular handsets that support a wide range of communication standards, each with a different RF frequency, signal bandwidth, modulation scheme etc. This in turn generates several design challenges for the analog and digital building blocks of the physical layer. In addition to the above-mentioned protocols, mobile devices often include Bluetooth, GPS, FM-radio and TV services that can work concurrently with data and voice communication. Multi-mode, multi-band, and multi-standard mobile terminals must satisfy all these different requirements. Sharing and/or switching transceiver building blocks in these handsets is mandatory in order to extend battery life and/or reduce cost. Only adaptive circuits that are able to reconfigure themselves within the handover time can meet the design requirements of a single receiver or transmitter covering all the different standards while ensuring seamless inter-interoperability. This paper presents analog and digital base-band circuits that are able to support GSM (with Edge), WCDMA (UMTS), WLAN and Bluetooth using reconfigurable building blocks. The blocks can trade off power consumption for performance on the fly, depending on the standard to be supported and the required QoS (Quality of Service) leve

Optical switching for dynamic distribution of wireless-over-fiber signals in active optical networks

El continuo crecimiento de ancho de banda demandado por los usuarios finales está provocando una gran exigencia sobre las redes de acceso. Estas exigencias sobre las redes de acceso, que principalmente emplean tecnologías inalámbricas, están migrando hacia el dominio óptico con el fin de soportar estos altos requerimientos de ancho de banda. Dependiendo de los requerimientos y características de los usuarios finales, las redes de acceso óptico han evolucionado en diferentes direcciones. En entornos residenciales y urbanos los usuarios demandan conexiones fijas de alta capacidad y bajo coste. Las redes ópticas pasivas (PON) han cumplido estos requerimiento y son las tecnologías elegidas por los operadores. En los entornos empresariales, en los cuales la calidad y la seguridad son piezas clave, las redes ópticas activas han encontrado su hueco proveyendo flexibilidad, adaptabilidad, alto rendimiento y al mismo tiempo dando soporte a sistemas de control de redes. Los proveedores de equipos están ahora girando su vista hacia nuevos mercados, donde soluciones ópticas puede ser usado eficientemente. El transporte de datos de redes de móviles (o mobile backhaul en ingles) es un mercado que se ha convertido en objetivo principal, ya que el tráfico inalámbrico está creciendo exponencialmente. Nuevos dispositivos, junto a las aplicaciones de gran consumo de ancho de banda, son los principales motivos de este crecimiento. Las tecnologías de banda base puede soportar sobradamente mobile backhaul a las actuales velocidades de transmisión. Sin embargo, debido a la ubicación de nuevas licencias libres disponibles en la banda de frecuencias y el desarrollo de las tecnologías radio a través de fibra permitiendo generación, distribución y recepción óptica de señales, la migración hacia escenarios en los que se use señales inalámbricas a través de fibra son mas probables. Además, teniendo en cuenta aspectos como la seguridad y alta movilidad de los usuarios, todo parece indicar que soluciones activas son más atractivas, siempre y cuando que los consumos de energía se mantengan dentro de límites razonables. En esta tesis, se diseñó una red óptica de acceso basada en tecnologías de radio a través de fibra. El bloque principal de la red fue un conmutador óptico basado en componentes activos (amplificadores ópticos semiconductores); el resto de la red fue diseñada acorde a la distribución por canales del conmutador óptico. Utilizando este conmutador óptico, se realizó una validación experimental de la red. El experimento consistió en una implementación de un sistema de cuatro canales operando en la banda de frecuencia WiMax y empleando una modulación llamada multiplexado de división ortogonal en frecuencia (OFDM) a 625Mb/s por canal. La información fue enviada a través de 20 km de fibra óptica, y el redireccionamiento de la señal fue llevado a cabo por un conmutador de 1 entrada y 16 salidas. El resultado es una degradación imperceptible de la señal en cada canal en el mejor y en mejor escenario en términos de interferencia entre canales. Este sistema cumple con los requisitos de una red de acceso activa para señales de radio a través de una red de acceso óptica

Wireless security for secure facilities

This thesis presents methods for securing a facility that has wireless connectivity. The goal of this research is to develop a solution to securing a facility that utilizes wireless communications. The research will introduce methods to track and locate the position of attackers. This research also introduces the idea of using a Honeynet system for added security. This research uses what is called Defense-In-Depth. Defense-in-depth is when multiple layers of security are used. The first of the layers is the Zone of Interference. This Zone is an area where jammer transmitters and directive antennas are set up to take advantage of the near-far-effect. The idea is to use the near-far-effect to give a stronger signal on the perimeter of the secure area, to mask any signals escaping from the secure area. This Zone uses directive Yagi antenna arrays to direct the radiation. There are multiple jamming methods that are utilized within this Zone. The next layer of security is the Honeynet Zone. The idea is to make an attacker believe that they are seeing real network traffic. This is done at the Honeynet Zone once a device has been determined to be unfriendly. Decoy mobile devices are first placed within the Honeynet Zone. Spoofed traffic is then created between the Honeynet base stations and the decoy mobile devices zone; using adaptive antennas incorporated within the design to face the signals away from the inside secure area. The third defense is position location and tracking. The idea is to have constant tracking of all devices in the area. There are several methods available to locate and track a device that is giving off an RF signal. This thesis looks at combining all these methods into an integrated, and more robust, facility security system