ChirpOTLE: A Framework for Practical LoRaWAN Security Evaluation

Low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are becoming an integral part of the Internet of Things. As a consequence, businesses, administration, and, subsequently, society itself depend on the reliability and availability of these communication networks. Released in 2015, LoRaWAN gained popularity and attracted the focus of security research, revealing a number of vulnerabilities. This lead to the revised LoRaWAN 1.1 specification in late 2017. Most of previous work focused on simulation and theoretical approaches. Interoperability and the variety of implementations complicate the risk assessment for a specific LoRaWAN network. In this paper, we address these issues by introducing ChirpOTLE, a LoRa and LoRaWAN security evaluation framework suitable for rapid iteration and testing of attacks in testbeds and assessing the security of real-world networks.We demonstrate the potential of our framework by verifying the applicability of a novel denial-of-service attack targeting the adaptive data rate mechanism in a testbed using common off-the-shelf hardware. Furthermore, we show the feasibility of the Class B beacon spoofing attack, which has not been demonstrated in practice before.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures, accepted at ACM WiSec 2020 (13th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks

Design and analysis of adaptive hierarchical low-power long-range networks

A new phase of evolution of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication has started where vertical Internet of Things (IoT) deployments dedicated to a single application domain gradually change to multi-purpose IoT infrastructures that service different applications across multiple industries. New networking technologies are being deployed operating over sub-GHz frequency bands that enable multi-tenant connectivity over long distances and increase network capacity by enforcing low transmission rates to increase network capacity. Such networking technologies allow cloud-based platforms to be connected with large numbers of IoT devices deployed several kilometres from the edges of the network. Despite the rapid uptake of Long-power Wide-area Networks (LPWANs), it remains unclear how to organize the wireless sensor network in a scaleable and adaptive way. This paper introduces a hierarchical communication scheme that utilizes the new capabilities of Long-Range Wireless Sensor Networking technologies by combining them with broadly used 802.11.4-based low-range low-power technologies. The design of the hierarchical scheme is presented in detail along with the technical details on the implementation in real-world hardware platforms. A platform-agnostic software firmware is produced that is evaluated in real-world large-scale testbeds. The performance of the networking scheme is evaluated through a series of experimental scenarios that generate environments with varying channel quality, failing nodes, and mobile nodes. The performance is evaluated in terms of the overall time required to organize the network and setup a hierarchy, the energy consumption and the overall lifetime of the network, as well as the ability to adapt to channel failures. The experimental analysis indicate that the combination of long-range and short-range networking technologies can lead to scalable solutions that can service concurrently multiple applications

Distributed synchronization algorithms for wireless sensor networks

The ability to distribute time and frequency among a large population of interacting agents is of interest for diverse disciplines, inasmuch as it enables to carry out complex cooperative tasks. In a wireless sensor network (WSN), time/frequency synchronization allows the implementation of distributed signal processing and coding techniques, and the realization of coordinated access to the shared wireless medium. Large multi-hop WSN\u27s constitute a new regime for network synchronization, as they call for the development of scalable, fully distributed synchronization algorithms. While most of previous research focused on synchronization at the application layer, this thesis considers synchronization at the lowest layers of the communication protocol stack of a WSN, namely the physical and the medium access control (MAC) layer. At the physical layer, the focus is on the compensation of carrier frequency offsets (CFO), while time synchronization is studied for application at the MAC layer. In both cases, the problem of realizing network-wide synchronization is approached by employing distributed clock control algorithms based on the classical concept of coupled phase and frequency locked loops (PLL and FLL). The analysis takes into account communication, signaling and energy consumption constraints arising in the novel context of multi-hop WSN\u27s. In particular, the robustness of the algorithms is checked against packet collision events, infrequent sync updates, and errors introduced by different noise sources, such as transmission delays and clock frequency instabilities. By observing that WSN\u27s allow for greater flexibility in the design of the synchronization network architecture, this work examines also the relative merits of both peer-to-peer (mutually coupled - MC) and hierarchical (master-slave - MS) architectures. With both MC and MS architectures, synchronization accuracy degrades smoothly with the network size, provided that loop parameters are conveniently chosen. In particular, MS topologies guarantee faster synchronization, but they are hindered by higher noise accumulation, while MC topologies allow for an almost uniform error distribution at the price of much slower convergence. For all the considered cases, synchronization algorithms based on adaptive PLL and FLL designs are shown to provide robust and scalable network-wide time and frequency distribution in a WSN

Wearable Wireless Devices

No abstract available

Wearable Wireless Devices

No abstract available

Analysis of an IEEE 802.11-based protocol for real-time applications in agriculture

La tesi descrive un sistema originale basato sullo standard IEEE 802.11 per il monitoraggio ed il controllo remoto in tempo reale di una macchina agricola attraverso dispositivi commerciali quali smartphones e tablet. Le prestazioni del sistema sono state attentamente caratterizzate, sia dal punto di vista teorico che da quello pratico, tramite numerose sessioni di misure sperimentali. Opportune soluzioni alle problematiche riscontrate sono proposte, evidenziando sostanziali miglioramentiopenEmbargo temporaneo per motivi di segretezza e/o di proprietà dei risultati e informazioni di enti esterni o aziende private che hanno partecipato alla realizzazione del lavoro di ricerca relativo alla tes

Analysis and performance improvement of consumer-grade millimeter wave wireless networks

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) networks are one of the main key components in next cellular and WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks). mmWave networks are capable of providing multi gigabit-per-second rates with very directional low-interference and high spatial reuse links. In 2013, the first 60 GHz wireless solution for WLAN appeared in the market. These were wireless docking stations under theWiGig protocol. Today, in 2019, 60 GHz communications have gained importance with the IEEE 802.11ad amendment with different products on the market, including routers, laptops and wireless Ethernet solutions. More importantly, mmWave networks are going to be used in next generation cellular networks, where smartphones will be using the 28 GHz band. For backbone links, 60 GHz communications have been proposed due to its higher directionality and unlicensed use. This thesis fits in this frame of constant development of themmWave bands to meet the needs of latency and throughput that will be necessary to support future communications. In this thesis, we first characterize the cost-effective design of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) 60 GHz devices and later we improve their two main weaknesses, which are their low link distance and their non-ideal spatial reuse. It is critical to take into consideration the cost-effective design of COTS devices when designing networking mechanisms. This is why in this thesis we do the first-of-its-kind COTS analysis of 60 GHz devices, studying the D5000 WiGig Docking station and the TP-Link Talon IEEE 802.11ad router. We include static measurements such as the synthesized beam patterns of these devices or an analysis of the area-wide coverage that these devices can fulfill. We perform a spatial reuse analysis and study the performance of these devices under user mobility, showing how robust the link can be under user movement. We also study the feasibility of having flying mmWave links. We mount a 60 GHz COTS device into a drone and perform different measurement campaigns. In this first analysis, we see that these 60 GHz devices have a large performance gap for the achieved communication range as well as a very low spatial reuse. However, they are still suitable for low density WLANs and for next generation aerial micro cell stations. Seeing that these COTS devices are not as directional as literature suggests, we analyze how channels are not as frequency stable as expected due to the large amount of reflected signals. Ideally, frequency selective techniques could be used in these frequency selective channels in order to enlarge the range of these 60 GHz devices. To validate this, we measure real-world 60 GHz indoor channels with a bandwidth of 2 GHz and study their behavior with respect to techniques such as bitloading, subcarrier switch-off, and waterfilling. To this end, we consider a Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) channel as defined in the IEEE 802.11ad standard and show that in point of fact, these techniques are highly beneficial in mmWave networks allowing for a range extension of up to 50%, equivalent to power savings of up to 7 dB. In order to increase the very limited spatial reuse of these wireless networks, we propose a centralized system that allows the network to carry out the beam training process not only to maximize power but also taking into account other stations in order to minimize interference. This system is designed to work with unmodified clients. We implement and validate our system on commercial off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11ad hardware, achieving an average throughput gain of 24.67% for TCP traffic, and up to a twofold throughput gain in specific cases.Programa de Doctorado en Multimedia y Comunicaciones por la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid y la Universidad Rey Juan CarlosPresidente: Andrés García Saavedra.- Secretario: Matilde Pilar Sánchez Fernández.- Vocal: Ljiljana Simi