NSF: Incentive Compatible Wireless Security

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 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 researchers will develop mechanisms to incentivize non-altruistic cognitive nodes to participate in information theoretic security protocols. They also will create incentive mechanisms for scenarios where all nodes have equal access to spectrum and need confidentiality, even from each other; techniques for providing security to groups of cooperative nodes and the associated trust issues; incentive mechanisms for combating active attacks; strategies for combating colluding adversaries; and mechanisms to ensure that nodes have the incentive to adopt a given security protocol.