Collaborative Research: NSF-AoF: CNS Core: Small: Secure Wireless Powered Backscatter Communication for IoT

无线后向散射通信(WPBC)是一种支持长期、低成本、低复杂度的物联网设备通信和组网的很有前途的技术。确保WPBC的安全对于推动其广泛应用至关重要，例如智能城市、智能可穿戴设备、智能农业、智能皮肤、移动支付和供应链。然而，后向散射设备的资源限制和无线电传输的广播性质使得WPBC的安全具有挑战性。为了增强资源受限的WPBC网络的安全性，PIS提出了一种新的技术，该技术利用WPBC的物理层特性和机器学习技术来实现高效的密钥协商、抗干扰通信和健壮的设备认证，并综合考虑了能量效率、安全性和通信性能。所提出的研究有望极大地促进对WPBC网络中通信和安全性能目标之间的设计权衡的理解。代表不足的学生将通过高级设计项目、暑期实习生和外展计划积极参与拟议的研究活动。研究成果将被整合到教学中，并通过出版物、演示文稿和项目网站进行传播。大量的实验数据将被收集并分享给无线通信和网络社区。在这个项目中提出了三个主要的研究方向。推力1研究无线供电的后向散射设备之间的高效且可扩展的密钥生成方案。后向散射通信和资源限制方面的独特挑战将通过收发信机的设计和优化得到有效解决。所提出的方案的能量效率预计将超过传统的基于密码学的方案(例如，Diffie-Hellman密钥交换)一到两个数量级。研究了基于多臂盗贼(MAB)在线学习框架的抗干扰方案，以有效获取干扰能量，实现多通道网络中可靠、高效的WPBC。该方案将干扰转化为能量获取的机会，同时通过在线学习干扰和非干扰信道来实现可靠通信。该方案具有较低的计算和存储开销。在推力3中，所提出的设备认证方案有望通过在物理层利用新的因素(即入射信号随机化、到达角估计)来实现高认证性能。它们可以与更高层的基于密码学的身份验证方案集成，以实现具有检测和跟踪非法设备的能力的多因素身份验证。基于无线识别和传感平台(WSAP)和通用软件无线电外围设备(USRP)设备，将开发运行在6 GHz以下频段的多通道WPBC试验台。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。

Wireless powered backscatter communication (WPBC) has emerged as a promising technology to support long-term, low-cost, and low-complexity Internet-of-Things (IoT) device communications and networking. Ensuring WPBC security is crucially important to drive its wide applications, e.g., smart cities, smart wearables, smart agriculture, smart skins, mobile payment, and supply chain. However, resource constraints on backscatter devices and the broadcast nature of radio transmissions render the securing of WPBC challenging. Aiming to enhance the resource-constrained WPBC network security, the PIs propose novel techniques that exploit physical layer properties of WPBC and machine learning technologies to achieve efficient key agreement, anti-jamming communication, and robust device authentication with joint consideration of energy efficiency, security, and communication performance. The proposed research is expected to greatly advance the understanding of the design tradeoff between communication and security performance goals in WPBC networks. Under-represented students will be actively involved in the proposed research activities through senior design projects, summer interns, and outreach programs. Research results will be integrated in teaching and disseminated through publications, presentations, and a project website. A significant amount of experimental data will be collected and shared to the wireless communication and networking community.Three major research thrusts are proposed in this project. Thrust 1 investigates efficient and scalable key generation schemes between/among wireless powered backscatter devices. Unique challenges in backscatter communication and resource constraints will be efficiently addressed by transceiver designs and optimization. The energy efficiency of the proposed schemes is expected to outperform traditional cryptography-based schemes (e.g., Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange) by one to two orders of magnitude. Thrust 2 studies anti-jamming schemes based on multi-armed bandit (MAB) online learning frameworks to effectively harvest jamming energy to achieve reliable and efficient WPBC in a multi-channel network. The proposed scheme will turn jamming into an energy harvesting opportunity while achieving reliable communication through learning the jammed and jamming-free channels online. The proposed scheme will enjoy low computational and storage overhead. In Thrust 3, the proposed device authentication schemes are expected to achieve high authentication performance by exploiting new factors (i.e., incident signal randomization, angle of arrival estimation) at the physical layer. They can be integrated with higher layer cryptography-based authentication schemes to enable multi-factor authentication with capabilities of detecting and tracing illegal devices. A multi-channel WPBC testbed operating in sub-6GHz bands will be developed based on the wireless identification and sensing platform (WISP) and Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) devices.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.