Preserving Source- and Sink-location Privacy in Sensor Networks

Protecting the location privacy of source and sink nodes in a sensor network is an important problem. Source-location privacy is to prevent event source tracking by adversaries and sink-location privacy is to protect sink nodes from adversaries who try to disrupt the sensor network. In this paper, we propose a constant-rate broadcast scheme for ensuring their location privacy. This scheme (1) equalizes traffic patterns of the sensor network to deal with eavesdropping and (2) minimizes the routing information of each sensor node to deal with node compromising. We further reduce the overhead of the proposed scheme by proposing a forwarder-driven broadcast (FdB) scheme that allows efficient multiple broadcasts with smaller buffer usage. Analysis and evaluation results show that FdB can support multiple broadcasts with small message delivery time and buffer usage.1111Ysciescopu

Cooperative communication in wireless networks: algorithms, protocols and systems

Current wireless network solutions are based on a link abstraction where a single co-channel transmitter transmits in any time duration. This model severely limits the performance that can be obtained from the network. Being inherently an extension of a wired network model, this model is also incapable of handling the unique challenges that arise in a wireless medium. The prevailing theme of this research is to explore wireless link abstractions that incorporate the broadcast and space-time varying nature of the wireless channel. Recently, a new paradigm for wireless networks which uses the idea of 'cooperative transmissions' (CT) has garnered significant attention. Unlike current approaches where a single transmitter transmits at a time in any channel, with CT, multiple transmitters transmit concurrently after appropriately encoding their transmissions. While the physical layer mechanisms for CT have been well studied, the higher layer applicability of CT has been relatively unexplored. In this work, we show that when wireless links use CT, several network performance metrics such as aggregate throughput, security and spatial reuse can be improved significantly compared to the current state of the art. In this context, our first contribution is Aegis, a framework for securing wireless networks against eavesdropping which uses CT with intelligent scheduling and coding in Wireless Local Area networks. The second contribution is Symbiotic Coding, an approach to encode information such that successful reception is possible even upon collisions. The third contribution is Proteus, a routing protocol that improves aggregate throughput in multi-hop networks by leveraging CT to adapt the rate and range of links in a flow. Finally, we also explore the practical aspects of realizing CT using real systems.PhDCommittee Chair: Sivakumar, Raghupathy; Committee Member: Ammar, Mostafa; Committee Member: Ingram, Mary Ann; Committee Member: Jayant, Nikil; Committee Member: Riley, Georg

Security for 5G Mobile Wireless Networks

The advanced features of 5G mobile wireless network systems yield new security requirements and challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on security of 5G wireless network systems compared to the traditional cellular networks. The paper starts with a review on 5G wireless networks particularities as well as on the new requirements and motivations of 5G wireless security. The potential attacks and security services with the consideration of new service requirements and new use cases in 5G wireless networks are then summarized. The recent development and the existing schemes for the 5G wireless security are presented based on the corresponding security services including authentication, availability, data confidentiality, key management and privacy. The paper further discusses the new security features involving different technologies applied to 5G such as heterogeneous networks, device-to-device communications, massive multiple-input multiple-output, software defined networks and Internet of Things. Motivated by these security research and development activities, we propose a new 5G wireless security architecture, based on which the analysis of identity management and flexible authentication is provided. As a case study, we explore a handover procedure as well as a signaling load scheme to show the advantage of the proposed security architecture. The challenges and future directions of 5G wireless security are finally summarized

Efficient time synchronized one-time password scheme to provide secure wake-up authentication on wireless sensor networks

In this paper we propose Time Synchronized One-Time-Password scheme to provide secure wake up authentication. The main constraint of wireless sensor networks is their limited power resource that prevents us from using radio transmission over the network to transfer the passwords. On the other hand computation power consumption is insignificant when compared to the costs associated with the power needed for transmitting the right set of keys. In addition to prevent adversaries from reading and following the timeline of the network, we propose to encrypt the tokens using symmetric encryption to prevent replay attacks.Comment: International Journal Of Advanced Smart Sensor Network Systems (IJASSN), Vol 3, No.1, January 2013 http://airccse.org/journal/ijassn/papers/3113ijassn01.pd

Experimental investigation into novel methods of reliable and secure on-body communications with low system overheads

Until recently the concept of wearable biosensors for purposes of medical monitoring was restricted to wired sensor applications. Recent advances in electronics and wireless communications have made the possibility of removing the wire from sensor applications a possibility. These advances have led to the development of small scale, wearable, sensing and communication platforms that can be placed on the human body creating the foundation for a Body Sensor Network (BSN). Body Sensor Networks aim to remove the restrictions that traditional wired sensors impose. The anticipation is that BSNs will permit the monitoring of physiological signals in any environment without limitation, giving Physicians the ability to monitor patients more closely and in environments that they cannot monitor today. Even with the recent advancements of electronics and wireless communications there are still many unanswered questions for practical solutions of BSNs that prevent BSNs from replacing traditional wired systems altogether. There is a great need for research into BSN architectures to set the standard for wireless sensor monitoring. In this work a development platform has been created for the investigation into the design and implementation of practical BSN solutions. The platform is used to compare BSN architectures and provide quantifiable results. From this work BSN architecture components that provide optimizations in system performance, energy, network lifetime and security are recommended. In Chapter 3 BSN network architectures employing the use of relaying of creeping waves is investigated. The investigation includes experimental analysis of various test environments. Experimentation demonstrates that the relaying of creeping waves offers considerable performance gains when compared to non-relay networks. For example, relaying is shown to increase network-lifetime by a factor of 13, decrease energy-per-bit requirements by 13 dB and provide the ability for the network to compensate for considerably wider fade margins. In Chapter 4 utilizing the randomness of the wireless channel for securing on-body communications with low overheads is considered. A low-complexity algorithm for establishing symmetric encryption keys is presented and validated. The algorithm relies on readily available RSSI measurements obtained from existing packets being sent and received in the network. The generated bit sequences from the algorithm are evaluated for matching between two communicating parties and mismatching with a malicious eavesdropper. It is shown that the algorithm produces long sequences of highly random bits that are perfectly matched between legitimate parties and highly mismatched with the eavesdropper

SMS-Based Medical Diagnostic Telemetry Data Transmission Protocol for Medical Sensors

People with special medical monitoring needs can, these days, be sent home and remotely monitored through the use of data logging medical sensors and a transmission base-station. While this can improve quality of life by allowing the patient to spend most of their time at home, most current technologies rely on hardwired landline technology or expensive mobile data transmissions to transmit data to a medical facility. The aim of this paper is to investigate and develop an approach to increase the freedom of a monitored patient and decrease costs by utilising mobile technologies and SMS messaging to transmit data from patient to medico. To this end, we evaluated the capabilities of SMS and propose a generic communications protocol which can work within the constraints of the SMS format, but provide the necessary redundancy and robustness to be used for the transmission of non-critical medical telemetry from data logging medical sensors