Time-critical applications in embedded systems environments often have stringent quality of service (QoS) and timing requirements that need to be met to ensure proper operation and dependability, even in the presence of failures and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Achieving this goal, however, brings about a host of critical challenges which are unique or fundamentally different from those encountered in traditional wireless sensors and ad-hoc networks. While significant progress is being made in specific technologies associated with micro-sensing and actuation, formidable barriers remain to large-scale deployment of fault-tolerant and secure embedded wireless systems for time-critical applications. This collaborative research project is pursuing integrated research at three levels: (i) reward-based, trustworthy QoS models, (ii) secure, fault-tolerant routing and data forwarding, and (iii) fault-tolerant data access and management. The emphasis of the proposed methodologies will be on the inter-relationships between different components and layers of the system and the consequent research and design issues.
This project is developing comprehensive analytical framework to establish bounds on performance guarantees when failure occurs or when the system is under denial of service attacks. In pursuit of dependable,robust and secure embedded systems, this research also focuses on secure and fault-tolerant routing and data management. The project is developing scalable and energy-efficient routing protocols that can tolerate both device failures and transient network overload. The project also is developing dynamic and adaptive risk-based schemes for data aggregation and management. The effort spans several research areas: distributed and embedded real-time systems, sensor networks, security, and information processing. The project aims for impact through a wide range of time-critical applications such as: ubiquitous and pervasive health care, infrastructure protection and homeland security, and real-time environment monitoring. The project seeks to stimulate cross-area research and include a diverse group of students from Computer Science, Information Science, and Engineering. Results and software tools are freely disseminated through the project website.
