Low Latency and Highly Secure Protocols for Critical Communications

随着越来越多的设备被开发和互连，通信基础设施对于许多应用变得至关重要和时间敏感，例如无人机控制，远程手术和车辆到车辆通信。这些关键通信必须能够抵御干扰、堵塞和入侵，并且通常需要以极低的延迟提供服务。本提案的目的是探讨与这一关键通信基础设施有关的问题的各种解决办法。该提案包括跨越数字通信领域的几个主题。它围绕两个主要主题：低延迟通信和流量分析，但涉及通信堆栈的几个层，从物理层到应用层。该项目位于通信网络延迟优化和安全两个关键领域的交叉点，旨在实现显著降低安全通信网络延迟的宏伟目标。该目标还考虑到两种不同消息类型的传输：短关键消息和长非关键消息。本文中所述消息类型的“关键”方面是指它们的延迟要求。关键消息需要比非关键消息更低的延迟（更快的端到端传输）。典型的关键消息涉及用于实时或近实时系统（即，远程无人机控制、公用事业基础设施监控、远程医疗等）的信令和控制信息。为了实现这一全局目标，提出了一种基于网络状态监测的系统方法。工作计划中还规定了涉及此类网络状况指标的定义、实时提取和分析的研究活动。利用网络范围的度量与本地，即网络段级别，性能数据将支持新的安全路由和规划方案的部署，这将对延迟产生显著的积极影响。

As more devices are developed and interconnected, the communication infrastructure becomes critical and time-sensitive for many applications such as drone control, remote surgery and vehicle to vehicle communication. These critical communications must be resilient to interference, jamming, intrusions, and are often required to provide services with extremely low latency. The goal of this proposal is to explore various solutions to issues related to this critical communication infrastructure. The proposal encompasses several topics spanning the field of digital communications. It centers around two main topics: low-latency communications and traffic analysis, but involves several layers of the communication stack, ranging from the physical layer to the application layer. Standing at the crossroad between two key domains: latency optimization and security in communication networks, the proposed project aims at the ambitious objective of significantly reducing latency in secure communication networks.This objective is furthermore circumscribed by taking into account the transmission of two different message types: short critical messages, and long non-critical messages. The 'critical' aspect of said message types herein refers to their latency requirement. A critical message requires lower latency (faster end-to-end transmission) than a non-critical message. A typical critical message relates to signaling and control information for real-time, or near real-time, systems (i.e. remote drone control, utility infrastructure monitoring, telemedicine, etc.). In order to achieve this global objective, a systemic approach based on the monitoring of network conditions is proposed. Research activities involving the definition, the real-time extraction and the analysis of such network condition metrics are also provisioned in the work-plan. Leveraging network-wide metrics with local, i.e. network segment level, performance data will support the deployment of novel secure routing and planning schemes which shall have a significant positive impact on latency.