Physical Layer Security in RF Communication Systems for the Internet of Things
The Internet of Things connects a variety of new embedded systems to the Internet offering greater opportunities to access information in applications such as wearables smart cities and health care but also presenting a unique set of security challenges. Our research will focus on a novel approach to securing these devices and the data they transmit: guarding the physical network layer. We will develop and analyze new techniques including within-packet frequency hopping RF fingerprint concealment and compressed sensing. These methods can provide both quantifiable security benefits and potential transmission optimizations. After developing and optimizing our frequency hopping protocol we will demonstrate it in an end-to-end wireless transceiver platform with off-the-shelf components.

Designing and implementing security into the physical layer of wireless communications will be a new approach for embedded devices and I’m pleased to work on it in depth for a whole year. My previous studies include modern cryptography and computer systems and I’ve contributed to a range of embedded software projects. Embedded design too often treats security as an afterthought so I’m excited about systematizing it.