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（如互联网）方面的进步归功于马可尼的百年无线电设计，其中无线电频谱被分成几部分，并给予不同的无线技术/实体。尽管在过去十年的大部分时间里，这种策略都很有效，但它已经成为一个瓶颈，无法适应未来无线通信的增长，尤其是随着物联网（IoT）的引入。指数级增长的无线电频谱需求迫使我们开辟新的途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。然而，网络致密化和频谱共享的协同作用将增加同信道干扰，导致更复杂的技术间交互，这需要设计良好的频谱共享机制。然而，设计这样的机制并非易事——不仅是由于技术方面的原因，还由于附加的安全漏洞。在密集场景中引入共享频谱访问会极大地改变较低层（即PHY和MAC）之间的平衡，并迫使安全协议设计发生根本变化。该项目在共存的异构物联网设备（例如，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抵消提议的攻击。该项目旨在确保频谱上的公平和安全共存，为未来许多世纪的未来无线技术的发展做出贡献。此外，该项目将为陶森大学的学生提供资源，在本科和研究生阶段进行网络安全研究。该项目专注于在位于同一位置的异构物联网网络之间密集使用共享频谱所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)开发基于PHY和MAC层属性的正式模型，以了解攻击者如何利用异构网络之间的共享频谱访问；(2)设计基于马尔可夫决策过程的新型保护策略来规避此类攻击；(3)开发一个软件定义的测试平台来实现所提出的方法。本研究将为后续的频谱共存系统研究奠定基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.