CRII: CNS: Security Assessment of Spectrum Coexistence in Co-located Heterogeneous Wireless IoT Networks

今天在无线接入电信网络(例如互联网)方面的进步归功于马可尼百年无线电设计，其中无线电频谱被分成几个部分，并分配给不同的无线技术/实体。尽管这一战略在过去十年的大部分时间里都奏效了，但它已经成为一个瓶颈，无法适应未来无线通信的增长，特别是随着物联网(IoT)的引入。指数级增长的无线电频谱需求迫使我们打造新的路径来提高频谱利用率，例如网络致密化和同一信道上异构物联网网络之间的共存。尽管如此，网络增密化和频谱共享的协同作用将增加同频道干扰，并导致更复杂的技术间相互作用，这需要设计良好的频谱共享机制。然而，设计这样的机制并不是一件容易的事--不仅是因为技术方面的原因，也是因为增加了安全漏洞。密集场景中共享频谱接入的引入极大地改变了低层(即物理层和MAC层)之间的平衡，迫使安全协议设计发生了根本性的变化。该项目在共存的异构物联网设备(如LTE、Wi-Fi)之间引入了一种新的安全漏洞，旨在开发安全机制来对抗所提出的攻击。该项目旨在确保在频谱上公平和安全地共存，为未来无线技术在未来许多世纪的发展做出贡献。此外，该项目将为Towson大学的学生提供在本科生和研究生层面进行网络安全研究的资源。该项目专注于因密集使用位于同一位置的异构物联网网络之间的共享频谱而产生的独特安全漏洞。提出的研究将采取多管齐下的方法：(1)建立基于PHY和MAC层属性的形式化模型，以了解攻击者如何利用异构网络之间的共享频谱接入；(2)设计基于马尔可夫决策过程的新型安全策略来防御此类攻击；(3)开发软件定义的测试床来实现所提出的方法。这项研究将为即将到来的频谱共存系统研究奠定基础。这一奖项反映了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。

Today’s advancement in wireless access to telecommunication networks (e.g., Internet) is attributed to Marconi’s century-old radio design, where the radio spectrum is divided into pieces and given to different wireless technologies/entities. Though it worked for the most part of the last decade, this strategy has become a bottleneck and unable to accommodate future growth in wireless communications, especially with the introduction of Internet-of-Things (IoT). The exponentially increasing radio spectrum demand has forced us to forge new paths to improve spectrum utilization, such as network densification and coexistence among heterogeneous IoT networks on the same channel. Nonetheless, the synergy of network densification and spectrum sharing will increase the co-channel interference and lead to more complex inter-technology interactions, which require well-designed spectrum sharing mechanisms. However, designing such mechanisms is not trivial - not only due to technical aspects but also due to added security vulnerabilities. The introduction of shared spectrum access in a dense scenario drastically changes the balance among lower layers (i.e., PHY and MAC) and compels a radical change in the security protocol design. This project introduces a novel security vulnerability in coexistence among co-located heterogeneous IoT devices (e.g., LTE, Wi-Fi) and aims to develop security mechanisms to counteract the proposed attack. The project aims to ensure a fair and secure coexistence on the spectrum, contributing to the growth of future wireless technologies in many more centuries to come. In addition, this project will provide the students at Towson University with resources to pursue network security research at the undergraduate and graduate levels.This project concentrates on the unique security weaknesses created from the dense use of a shared spectrum between co-located heterogeneous IoT networks. The proposed research will take a multi-pronged approach by: (1) developing formal models based on PHY and MAC layer attributes to understand how attackers may exploit the shared spectrum access among heterogeneous networks, (2) designing a Markov decision process-based novel safeguard strategy to circumvent such attacks, and (3) developing a software-defined testbed to materialize the proposed approaches. This research will lay the groundwork for upcoming system research on spectrum coexistence.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.