Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Small: Scalable, Flexible, and Dependable Architecture Design for Heterogeneous Internet of Things

广泛部署的物联网(IoT)的激增改变了人们获取信息的方式，改变了他们日常生活的方方面面。根据不同的数据传输和服务需求，各种不同的无线协议被开发并应用于物联网。设备异构性问题已成为工业物联网、智能制造和互联医疗等真实物联网系统的可扩展性、灵活性和可靠性的主要绊脚石。该项目正在为当前的物联网系统开发一种分层架构中的新型网络层设计，其中将引入一个中间层来帮助从异构物联网设备收集数据。特别是，第一个研究重点将集中在利用移动多协议网关(M-MG)作为中间层来支持动态数据流量模式的大规模数据收集的网络稳定性。面对共存无线协议上有限的频谱资源，第二个研究重点将设计自适应和分级的资源管理方案，以更好地利用可用的M-MG进行数据收集。各种不协调的协议共存于同一个无线环境中，这不可避免地引起了人们对每条通信链路的安全性的严重关注。第三个研究重点将研究提高保密能力的方法，以防止无线攻击损害系统可靠性。研究活动正在通过模拟、实验、原型和在实际物联网系统中的实施相结合的方式进行深入评估。该项目的成功将为未来异构物联网系统的网络级设计提供关键支持。该架构能更好地处理大规模物联网系统中的共存问题，为网络性能提供了较强的稳定性。通过利用廉价的M-MG甚至智能手机，现有的物联网基础设施不需要进行完整的改造，这大大降低了改造成本，扩大了其应用场景。开发的物联网保密能力理论分析将增强现有知识，在现有加密方法之外提供高安全标准。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。

The proliferation of widely deployed Internet of Things (IoT) has changed the way people access information, transforming every aspect of their daily life. Given different data transmission and service requirements, various different wireless protocols have been developed and applied to IoT. This device heterogeneity issue has become the major stumbling block to the scalability, flexibility, and dependability of real IoT systems, such as industrial IoT, smart manufacturing, and connected healthcare. This project is developing a novel network-layer design in a hierarchical architecture for current IoT systems, where an intermediate layer will be introduced to help collect data from heterogeneous IoT devices. In particular, the first research thrust will focus on network stability for large-scale data collection by leveraging mobile multi-protocol gateways (M-MGs) as the intermediate layer to support dynamic data traffic patterns. In face of the limited spectrum resource on coexisting wireless protocols, the second research thrust will design adaptive and hierarchical resource management schemes to better utilize available M-MGs for data collection. Various types of uncoordinated protocols coexist in the same wireless environment, which inevitably raises serious concerns on the security of each communication link. The third research thrust will investigate secrecy capacity enhancement approaches to prevent wireless attacks from compromising the system dependability. The research activities are being thoroughly evaluated via a combination of simulation, experiments, prototyping, and implementation in practical IoT systems.The success of this project will serve as a key enabler to the network-level design of future heterogeneous IoT systems. The proposed novel architecture can better handle the coexistence issue in large-scale IoT systems, providing strong stability to the network performance. By leveraging the inexpensive M-MGs or even smartphones, existing IoT infrastructures do not need to have a complete retrofitting, which greatly reduces the renovation costs and extends their application scenarios. The developed theoretical analysis on the secrecy capacity of IoT will enhance the existing knowledge to provide high-security standards in addition to existing cryptographic approaches.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.