Ulukus Receives $400K NSF Grant

Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) received a $400K wireless security grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award is a joint 4-year grant between Ulukus and her two colleagues, Aylin Yener from Pennsylvania State University and Randall Berry from Northwestern University, totaling $1.2 million.

The award, titled “Incentive Compatible Wireless Security,” will go toward the professors’ project that began in October 2013. Their research goal is to create a practical setup for wireless security by amalgamating information theory with the theory of incentives to provide secure wireless cyber access.

The abstract of the project lists specific research topics being addressed:

Specific research topics being addressed include the development of: (1) mechanisms to incentivize non-altruistic cognitive nodes to participate in information theoretic security protocols; (2) incentive mechanisms for scenarios where all nodes have equal access to spectrum and need confidentiality, even from each other; (3) techniques for providing security to groups of cooperative nodes and the associated trust issues; (4) incentive mechanisms for combating active attacks; (5) strategies for combating colluding adversaries; and (6) mechanisms to ensure that nodes have the incentive to adopt a given security protocol.

Ulukus’ research interests include wireless communication theory and networking, network information theory for wireless networks, signal processing for wireless communications, information-theoretic physical-layer security and energy harvesting communications.

For more information on NSF visit www.nsf.gov.

Published November 18, 2013