With the continuing proliferation of wireless technology, a wide spectrum of emerging applications using this technology will be tightly interwoven into the fabric of our everyday lives: wireless sensor networks can monitor personal health or critical infrastructures. The viability and success of many of these applications critically hinges on the availability of the underlying wireless communication. As wireless networks become increasingly pervasive, the problem of radio interference and jamming will be inevitable, raising a serious threat to the availability of wireless services. To enable the continuous and highly-available data delivery services over the entire lifetime of wireless networks in support of wireless applications, it is crucial that the wireless networks have built-in strong defense mechanisms against interference and jamming.
This project aims to develop a suite of holistic solutions that monitor the radio environment and provide quick recovery to interrupted services in case of jamming or radio interference. In contrast to traditional techniques, such as spread spectrum which requires costly new hardware, the proposed techniques involve networks to manage their resources collaboratively across all layers to assure the availability of network services, leveraging existing commodity wireless platforms. Through the interaction with industry partners, the project results are expected to provide guidance for coping with jamming in future network architecture. The educational component of this project seeks to prepare students to face the challenges of rapidly evolving technologies in wireless networks. The experimental and design components of this project will enhance both the undergraduate and graduate students? education in related areas.
