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、公共安全以及许多其他领域产生深远影响。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进行交互。这项研究如果成功，将成为开发和部署智慧城市应用的催化剂，从而促进与基于物联网的智慧城市相关的就业增长，从而对美国经济产生潜在的巨大影响。所提出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、数据集和开源代码的形式在网上公开。这项研究的更广泛影响将通过以下途径进一步扩大：(i)通过加强课程项目来改善课程发展；（ii）通过高知名度的教程和开源网站传播研究成果；（三）通过开放日提高K-12学生和少数族裔对科技的兴趣。此外，研究者还希望通过高级设计项目和本科生研究经验（REU）补充来提高本科生的研究经验。在这个项目中，将进行两个密切相关的研究重点：(i)频谱效率通信；以及（ii）安全且保密的通信。在第一个研究重点中，该项目将利用异构无线通信技术中独特的物理层特性进行并发通信，以显着提高未授权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，供物联网网关在解调和解码信号之前检测和验证。所提出的技术适用于上行和下行传输，可以显着提高物联网系统对非法流量的弹性。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。

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.