CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: Realizing the Vision of Information-Theoretic Security for Wireless Communications

A significant amount of sensitive data communicated over wireless media makes wireless communication security an issue of paramount importance. The standard implemented solution to security over wireless networks is based on a modular approach in which transmission and encryption are carried out separately. State-of-the-art encryption algorithms are thus agnostic to the characteristics of the underlying network, but this separation approach is increasingly hard to justify as fast and reliable communications over wireless networks require more effective security architectures.

Several theoretical insights have been obtained from information theory in the past few years that suggest that fundamentally secure transmission in wireless interference networks is possible by jointly designing for reliability and security at the outset. This project takes a distinctive approach to accelerate the deployment of information-theoretically secure design of wireless networks by analyzing models with realistic assumptions, developing practical coding schemes and validating with a wireless test-bed. The project investigates two intertwined research tasks: (i) overcoming modeling assumptions, by providing security guarantees irrespective of adversaries' channels, modeling and countering adversaries that can manipulate channel conditions to their advantage, and removing idealized assumptions in implementation; (ii) providing explicit channel code designs that ensure strong secrecy and developing secure codes for multi-terminal wireless networks.

Additional activities related to the project include : (i) outreach to the computational security community towards integration of information-theoretic and computational security principles; (ii) dissemination of research results in various forms; (iii) a research exchange program between Georgia Tech and Penn State; (iv) a jointly taught graduate level course by the PIs that incorporates the research results of this project; and (v) recruitment of and mentorship for women in engineering and science. The research conducted in this project will facilitate the implementation of information-theoretic security principles on wireless systems and lead to novel cost-effective security techniques at the physical-layer.