SpecEES: Collaborative Research: A Spectrum-Efficient and Secure Communication Architecture for Smart Cities

基于物联网(IoT)的智慧城市可以对交通、医疗、能源、教育、社会生活、公共安全等许多领域产生深远影响。智慧城市的未来取决于频谱高效和安全的通信技术，以与无处不在的物联网设备交互。拟议的研究如果成功，可以成为开发和部署智能城市应用的催化剂，从而通过促进与基于物联网的智能城市相关的就业增长，对美国经济产生潜在的巨大影响。拟议的研究还将丰富与网络和分布式系统安全、无线网络和移动计算相关的科学知识。大部分项目成果将以讲座、出版物、数据集和开放源代码的形式在网上公开提供。这项研究的更广泛影响将通过以下方式进一步扩大：(I)通过改进课程项目改进课程开发；(Ii)通过高知名度的教程和开放源码网站传播研究成果；以及(Iii)通过开放参观提高K-12学生和代表性不足的少数群体对技术的兴趣。此外，研究人员的目标是通过高级设计项目和本科生研究经验补充(REU)来提高本科生的研究经验。在这个项目中，将追求两个密切相关的研究主题：(I)频谱效率高的通信；(Ii)安全和保护隐私的通信。在第一个研究推力中，该项目将利用各种不同无线通信技术中独特的物理层特性进行并发通信，以显著提高未经许可的ISM频段的频谱效率。在第二个研究重点中，该项目将开发物理层认证技术，其中每个物联网设备将一些加密的、不可伪造的信息叠加到物理层信号上，以便物联网网关在解调和解码信号之前进行检测和验证。建议的技术既适用于上行链路传输，也适用于下行链路传输，可以显著提高物联网系统对非法流量的弹性。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。

Internet-of-things (IoT)-based smart cities can have a profound impact on transportation, healthcare, energy, education, social life, public safety, and many other sectors. The future of smart cities depends on spectrum efficient and secure communication techniques to interact with ubiquitous IoT devices. The proposed research, if successful, can be a catalyst for developing and deploying smart city applications, thus having potentially enormous impact on the U.S. economy by fostering job growth related to IoT-based smart cities. The proposed research will also enrich the scientific knowledge related to network and distributed system security, wireless networking, and mobile computing. A substantial portion of project deliverables will be made available publicly online in the form of talks, publications, datasets, and open-source code. The broader impact of this research will be further amplified by (i) improving curriculum development with enhanced course projects; (ii) disseminating research results through high-profile tutorials and open-source sites; and (iii) raising interest in technology among K-12 students and under-represented minority groups through open houses. In addition, the investigators aim to enhance undergraduate research experience through senior design projects and Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) supplements.In this project, two closely related research thrusts will be pursued: (i) spectrum-efficient communications; and (ii) secure and privacy-preserving communications. In the first research thrust, the project will leverage the unique physical-layer features among heterogeneous wireless communication technologies for concurrent communication to significantly improve spectrum efficiency in the unlicensed ISM band. In the second research thrust, the project will develop physical-layer authentication techniques, in which each IoT device superimposes some cryptographic, unforgeable information onto physical-layer signals for the IoT gateway to detect and verify before demodulating and decoding the signals. Working for both uplink and downlink transmissions, the proposed techniques can dramatically improve the resilience of the IoT system to illegitimate traffic.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.