Professor Yingying Chen has won a new National Science Foundation (NSF) award for the project titled " Security Assurance in Short Range Communication with Wireless Channel Obfuscation." This is a one year project of $170,000 in collaboration with Indiana University. The Rutgers share is $85,000.
As the prevalence of mobile computing technologies and applications, short-range communication over emerging aerial acoustic and visible light channel is undergoing a fast rate of expansion with many promising benefits including low power and peer-to-peer communication, without incurring complex network infrastructure. Unlike traditional cryptographic methods that rely on central security management infrastructure to secure wireless links, Yingying and her team propose to obfuscate the transmitting wireless signals by incorporating random channel dynamics to defend against eavesdroppers. Specifically, based on specific wireless channel characteristics, different channel obfuscation schemes are to be developed to achieve information-theoretic secrecy with respect to aerial acoustic and visible light channels. For acoustic channels, this project will develop the channel obfuscation scheme relying on self-jamming signals emitted by the legitimate receiver to secure short-range communication. Moreover, a novel communication protocol based on time-difference-of-arrival modulation is introduced to achieve accurate and robust data transmission. For visible light communication, a channel obfuscation scheme will be developed for screen-to-camera channels to realize a secure secret key distribution leveraging the color shift property of Liquid Crystal Display and Light-Emitting Diode screens.
You can find more details on the project at the NSF page here.
Congratulations Yingying!