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UCLA Engineering Joins International Team to Develop Advanced Networks for Defense
Faculty and students from the UCLA Henry Samueli
School of Engineering and Applied Science are part of a multimillion
dollar collaborative research team exploring wireless and sensor
networks for defense.
Computer science professors Deborah Estrin and Mario Gerla and electrical
engineering professor Mani Srivastava are part of a new International
Technology Alliance (ITA) in Network and Information Sciences. The
ITA brings together researchers from academia and industry in the
United States and the United Kingdom to address problems in network
theory, secure systems, sensor information processing and delivery,
and distributed coalition planning and decision making.
The alliance's research will support military operations, which
depend on the ability of forces to quickly gather, interpret, and
share battlefield information to coordinate actions.
"We're looking at issues of sensor data integrity," noted Srivastava.
"We want to be certain that the information received from the sensors
is meaningful and correct, since there are many ways it could be
compromised. The sensors, embedded in the physical world, are unattended
and vulnerable."
Srivastava and Estrin will be examining the various problems that
might affect sensor integrity - from benign causes to deliberate
attacks on the system, such as acoustic interference for a sound
sensor or spurious inputs to a chemical sensor.
Chemical sensors attached to wireless
devices in a rice paddy in Bangladesh were being used
to learn more about the groundwater chemistry and
the presence of arsenic in the drinking water. |
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"For this project, we're working primarily with acoustic, magnetic,
and chemical sensors and their vulnerabilities," explained Srivastava.
"For securing against spurious data input to the sensors, we can't
rely on encryption alone, so we're looking at notions of security
based on physical properties and statistical models."
The interdisciplinary team is looking at four key areas: the ability
to tell when sensor data has been compromised, a way to make the
best use of available data, the ability to determine what went wrong
and why, and ways to rectify the problem.
To detect when sensor information may not be accurate, the UCLA
researchers are using statistical analysis similar to that used
by banks to detect fraud. Estrin and Srivastava will also partner
on developing technologies that are fault tolerant so that even
if some data is corrupt, the rest can be used to generate accurate
and useful reports.
"We also want to be able to determine what caused the problem and
why it occurred," said Srivastava. "And we'll be looking at ways
to correct any problems, either by replacing a sensor or reconfiguring
it, or restructuring the network to work around a faulty sensor."
UCLA Engineering graduate students
Sarah Rothenberg and Nithya Ramanathan prepare to
deploy the chemical sensors. |
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At the NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, headquartered
in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science,
Estrin and her colleagues have been developing wireless sensor systems
and the application of revolutionary sensing technology to critical
scientific and societal applications. Their more recent work on
applications for urban sensing involves many of the same privacy
and security issues the researchers will be looking at through the
ITA.
"It's a set of technologies that will play a role in military situations,
as well as civilian," Srivastava explained. "We're likely to have
overlap in the types of sensors we'll be working with for sensing
of urban spaces, health monitoring, use in civilian security areas,
and localization of vehicles in tunnels and canyons where GPS doesn't
work."
"This is the first major collaboration between the U.S. and the
UK at this scale on a military project," said Gerla. "The funding
agencies are very interested in seeing where it will lead."
Gerla and his colleagues will be looking at mobile networks to support
communication between soldiers, tanks, airplanes, and other units,
which can be subject to disruption or jamming.
"We're designing protocols that are robust to support the broadcasting
of messages across the nodes," Gerla explained. "For instance, how
quickly and efficiently can an alert be sent to the troops. Is a
message stored and then passed along when two units come into contact?
Or should we use unmanned aerial vehicles to serve as communication
points?"
Mobile wireless networks must address efficiency issues as both
radio frequency spectrum and energy are extremely limited. One technique
the researchers are considering to better utilize available spectrum
is "spectrum scavenging" or searching for and employing spectrum
segments not currently used.
"By using new technologies - for instance, cognitive radios, which
automatically adjust to maintain communications - we can set up
the network to make better use of all available resources," said
Gerla. "Such a system would also provide stronger protection from
enemy jamming, since it can adjust on the fly without human intervention."
Overall, a new generation of network protocols are being designed
that must take into account both the unpredictable nature of radio
propagation and a variety of enemy threats, such as spectrum jamming
and radio or robot capture.
"A stimulating aspect in this project is that the new protocols
will be built on solid theoretic foundation before we move to implementation
and testing." Gerla added, "And eventually, the work we are doing
will be transitioned to commercial networks, such as vehicular networks
in urban environments."
The 24-member consortium will address both fundamental research
and technology transition. The program could last 10 years with
up to $135.8 million in research funding from the UK Ministry of
Defence, U.S. Department of Defense, and some consortium members.
The ITA includes IBM, BBNET Solutions, The Boeing Company, Honeywell,
Klein Associates, LogicaCMG, Roke Manor Research, Systems Engineering
and Assessment, and from industry, Carnegie Mellon University; City
University of New York; Columbia University; University of Maryland;
University of Massachusetts; Pennsylvania State University; Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute; University of California, Los Angeles; University
of Aberdeen; University of Cambridge; University of Cranfield; Imperial
College, London; Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (University
of London); University of Southampton; and University of York.
- Marlys Amundson
10.30.06
Photos: Nithya Ramanathan
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