CT-ISG Collaborative Research: Trusted Cooperative Transmission: Turning a Security Weakness into a Security Enhancement

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Cooperative transmission is an emerging wireless communication paradigm that improves wireless channel capacity by creating multi-user cooperation in the physical layer. In cooperative transmission, when the source node transmits a message to the destination node, the nearby nodes that overheard this transmission will "help" the source and destination by relaying the replicas of the message, and the destination will combine the multiple received waveforms so as to improve the link quality. This technology departs from the traditional point-to-point link abstraction of wireless connections, and is expected to have a profound impact on network performance and design. The current algorithm design, protocol development and performance evaluation for cooperative transmission assume that all wireless nodes are trustworthy. Investigation of the security issues is lagging behind. This research addresses the major security issues related to cooperative transmission. In particular, does cooperative transmission provide new opportunities for attackers to undermine network performance? Conversely, are there new ways to defend wireless networks through physical layer cooperation? Any project in an open area in security benefits the larger society which now has urgent need of true innovations in security. In addition, this project will have broader impacts through its education plan, which focuses on an outreach program integrating campus summer camps for high school-age women/minority students and an online mentoring group, in addition to graduate and undergraduate student participation. In summary, the PIs are equally dedicated to improving wireless network performance through security-assured cooperative transmission and to enhancing female and minority participation in engineering.