SaTC: CORE: Small: Collaborative: Covert/Secret and Efficient Message Transfer in (Mobile) Multi-Agent Environments

该项目通过在新兴的物联网(IoT)环境中利用智能日常设备带来的资源，探索秘密而高效的(最好是隐蔽的)通信。可靠性、高效性和保密性是通信网络的基本要求。隐藏正在进行的通信在敌对环境中往往是至关重要的，并自动实现日益重要的隐私和匿名性社会目标。今天网络的这些不可或缺的特征通常是通过分配越来越多的网络资源来获得的，否则这些资源就可以用于通信。在过去的十年里，出现了各种各样的新型联网系统。例如，未来的5G系统应该比目前的4G网络承载的设备多数百倍。该项目不是简单地研究如何在有限的通信资源(能量、频谱)下容纳更多的通信对象并询问现有网络能为它们做些什么，而是调查这些新的通信对象能为网络做些什么。通过专注于物联网场景，在这些场景中，机会性和增量的资源添加可以带来巨大的收益，该项目将开发出理论基础和易于采用的实用算法，从而在有限的能源和频谱资源下大幅提高隐蔽性、安全性和可靠性。研究计划分为两个重点：第一个重点研究移动节点之间的一种新的隐蔽、安全和高效的通信方案，该方案的主要特点是任何数据传输都只在短距离内进行，从而减少了对敌对行为的暴露以及能量和带宽需求。第二个推力建立在第一个推力的基础上，并为窃听者发现消息正在交换和/或获得一些有帮助的物联网设备的情况设计了安全编码方案。我们的目标不是研究现有编码方案在这种具有挑战性的环境中的性能，而是寻找和研究适合这些基于物联网的重要通信场景的新编码策略。该项目将提供以前(主要是高层系统)机会网络研究中没有的技术解决方案，例如1)在不同的网络几何结构和不同的移动模式下利用窃听机会，2)通过移动环境中的数据存储和检索建立隐蔽通信，3)使用递增冗余(在现有物联网网络场景中可以以很低的成本引入)用于对抗性和非对抗性传输环境中的通信，以及4)设计低复杂性编码方案来利用这种冗余。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project explores secret and efficient (preferably covert) communications by harnessing the resources brought in by smart everyday devices in emerging Internet of Things (IoT) environments. Reliability, efficiency, and secrecy are essential requirements in communication networks. Hiding that communication is even taking place is often crucial in adversarial environments and automatically achieves the increasingly important societal goals of privacy and anonymity. These indispensable features of today's networks are commonly obtained by allocating a growing fraction of network resources which could otherwise be used for communications. The last decade has seen a wide variety of novel networked systems. For example, future 5G systems are supposed to host hundred times more devices than current 4G networks. Rather than simply looking into how to accommodate more communicating objects with limited communication resources (energy, spectrum) and ask what the existing networks can do for them, this project investigates what these new communicating objects can do for the network. By focusing on IoT scenarios in which opportunistic and incremental addition of resources can result in large gains, this project will develop both theoretical foundations and easily adoptable practical algorithms that lead to substantial increases in covertness, security, and reliability under limited energy and spectrum resources. The research plan is organized in two central thrusts: The first thrust investigates a novel covert, secure and efficient communication scheme between mobile nodes, which has the main feature that any data transfer is only performed over short distances, thus reducing exposure to adversarial actions as well as energy and bandwidth requirements. The second thrust builds on the first one and devises secure coding schemes for the case where an eavesdropper discovers that messages are being exchanged and/or gets in possession of some helping IoT devices. Rather than studying the performance of existing coding schemes in this challenging environment, the goal is to find and study new coding strategies that are tailored to these important IoT-based communication scenarios. This project will offer technical solutions which are not present in previous (predominantly high level systems) studies of opportunistic networking, such as 1) exploiting overhearing opportunities in diverse network geometries and under various mobility patterns, 2) establishing covert communication via data storage and retrieval in mobile environments, 3) using incremental redundancy (which can be introduced at little cost in existing IoT network scenarios) for communications in adversarial and non-adversarial transmission environments, and 4) designing low-complexity coding schemes to exploit this redundancy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.