8,368 research outputs found
Experimental validation of clock synchronization algorithms
The objective of this work is to validate mathematically derived clock synchronization theories and their associated algorithms through experiment. Two theories are considered, the Interactive Convergence Clock Synchronization Algorithm and the Midpoint Algorithm. Special clock circuitry was designed and built so that several operating conditions and failure modes (including malicious failures) could be tested. Both theories are shown to predict conservative upper bounds (i.e., measured values of clock skew were always less than the theory prediction). Insight gained during experimentation led to alternative derivations of the theories. These new theories accurately predict the behavior of the clock system. It is found that a 100 percent penalty is paid to tolerate worst-case failures. It is also shown that under optimal conditions (with minimum error and no failures) the clock skew can be as much as three clock ticks. Clock skew grows to six clock ticks when failures are present. Finally, it is concluded that one cannot rely solely on test procedures or theoretical analysis to predict worst-case conditions
Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey
This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh
network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user
privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various
possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for
WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the
security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application
layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols,
user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation
protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the
chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms
and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible
attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with
regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed,
use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved
etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management
approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly
becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open
problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed
before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the
author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are
some text overlaps with the previous submissio
Synchronization and fault-masking in redundant real-time systems
A real time computer may fail because of massive component failures or not responding quickly enough to satisfy real time requirements. An increase in redundancy - a conventional means of improving reliability - can improve the former but can - in some cases - degrade the latter considerably due to the overhead associated with redundancy management, namely the time delay resulting from synchronization and voting/interactive consistency techniques. The implications of synchronization and voting/interactive consistency algorithms in N-modular clusters on reliability are considered. All these studies were carried out in the context of real time applications. As a demonstrative example, we have analyzed results from experiments conducted at the NASA Airlab on the Software Implemented Fault Tolerance (SIFT) computer. This analysis has indeed indicated that in most real time applications, it is better to employ hardware synchronization instead of software synchronization and not allow reconfiguration
Droplet: A New Denial-of-Service Attack on Low Power Wireless Sensor Networks
In this paper we present a new kind of Denial-of-Service attack against the PHY layer of low power wireless sensor networks. Overcoming the very limited range of jamming-based attacks, this attack can penetrate deep into a target network with high power efficiency. We term this the Droplet attack, as it attains enormous disruption by dropping small, payload-less frame headers to its victim's radio receiver, depriving the latter of bandwidth and sleep time. We demonstrate the Droplet attack's high damage rate to full duty-cycle receivers, and further show that a high frequency version of Droplet can even force nodes running on very low duty-cycle MAC protocols to drop most of their packets
Consensus Computation in Unreliable Networks: A System Theoretic Approach
This work addresses the problem of ensuring trustworthy computation in a
linear consensus network. A solution to this problem is relevant for several
tasks in multi-agent systems including motion coordination, clock
synchronization, and cooperative estimation. In a linear consensus network, we
allow for the presence of misbehaving agents, whose behavior deviate from the
nominal consensus evolution. We model misbehaviors as unknown and unmeasurable
inputs affecting the network, and we cast the misbehavior detection and
identification problem into an unknown-input system theoretic framework. We
consider two extreme cases of misbehaving agents, namely faulty (non-colluding)
and malicious (Byzantine) agents. First, we characterize the set of inputs that
allow misbehaving agents to affect the consensus network while remaining
undetected and/or unidentified from certain observing agents. Second, we
provide worst-case bounds for the number of concurrent faulty or malicious
agents that can be detected and identified. Precisely, the consensus network
needs to be 2k+1 (resp. k+1) connected for k malicious (resp. faulty) agents to
be generically detectable and identifiable by every well behaving agent. Third,
we quantify the effect of undetectable inputs on the final consensus value.
Fourth, we design three algorithms to detect and identify misbehaving agents.
The first and the second algorithm apply fault detection techniques, and
affords complete detection and identification if global knowledge of the
network is available to each agent, at a high computational cost. The third
algorithm is designed to exploit the presence in the network of weakly
interconnected subparts, and provides local detection and identification of
misbehaving agents whose behavior deviates more than a threshold, which is
quantified in terms of the interconnection structure
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