Low-energy wireless communication is gaining currency as the preferred method to maintain connectivity between users in a network. Establishing the security and trust in the wireless communication link is vital to maintaining the security and privacy of users. Existing solutions to create a secure and trustworthy data communication link have primarily focused on complicated energy-intensive digital encoding performed in the backend. While effective, this approach is inherently inconsistent with the low-energy nature of the wireless link. This project aims to address this challenge by developing low-energy radio frequency (RF) and analog security features that can be implemented in the RF front-end. The new knowledge gained from this research will form the foundation for low-power low-latency trusted wireless communications. Besides consumer electronics, the successful development of low-energy secure radio transceivers will have profound impact on various applications and industries, where secure and trusted access to the electromagnetic spectrum is paramount. In addition to the technical impact, the project broadly benefits the society. By bringing much-needed low-cost security to low-energy devices connected through the internet of things (IoT), this research will have a far-reaching positive impact in enhancing the lives and privacy of people from disadvantageous social economic groups who increasingly use these devices in their daily life.
The objective of this project is to create a new framework for low-energy low-latency secure and trustworthy wireless communication transceivers by employing security features in the RF and analog domain that obviate the need for energy-hungry real-time digital backend encryption. The research takes advantage of the real-time nature of many low-energy wireless connectivity applications to trade off energy-heavy bit-by-bit digital encryption done in the digital backend with low-energy RF and analog security features implemented in the RF front-end. By obfuscating the modulated waveform in the analog domain, a secure wireless link is envisaged. Once a secure wireless link/channel is established, device authentication is applied in the analog domain using unique device attributes. The intellectual merits of this project involve two important areas of security and authentication. (i) The research offers a holistic system- and circuit-level approach that uses RF/analog techniques to create low-energy low-latency trusted wireless communication links with minimal dependence on the digital backend. (ii) It creates a two-step RF/analog obfuscation and encryption system that combines the channel security with device authentication to create an analog-inspired end-to-end secure wireless communication link.
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.
