The future wireless devices will be highly-programmable with the exposure of the protocol stacks to the public. Adversaries can easily purchase low-cost wireless devices to launch a variety of attacks with little effort. These attacks will compromise the advantage of dynamic spectrum access for the greater good. Therefore, there is an urgent need to regulate and monitor future radio operations to ensure the spectrum is properly used. This work will explore new paradigms of securing future radio systems that take advantage of domain-specific information. Particularly, this work will utilize location information to assist in detecting anomalous behaviors when enforcing spectrum etiquettes because location has unique characteristics of describing the current physical status of a wireless device, hard to falsify, and not reliant on cryptography.
Intellectual Merit: The key contribution of this work is to design efficient mechanisms and develop effective frameworks that can both detect anomalous activities in spectrum usage as well as localize adversaries without requiring overhead on wireless devices. This work represents a significant contribution to future radio systems because it departs from traditional cryptographic-based security solutions, and utilizes properties that are unique to wireless communications to secure spectrum usage.
Broader Impact: This work can provide a foundation in exploring various properties related to wireless communications that can augment traditional security mechanisms. This work will involve the development of the new curriculum in emerging wireless systems. The project will continuously encourage the involvement of both undergraduate and graduate students in research, and especially encourage female students to participate.
