Research

Secure Camera-based Ambient Networks

Wireless Security

The security and anonymity issues for wireless networks are of crucial importance due to two reasons. The first reason is the exposure of packets traversed over wireless channels to the adversaries, and the second is the susceptibility raised by multi-hop routing in ad-hoc networks. Our goal is to design an efficient routing protocol which prevents the adversaries and the intermediate nodes from knowing who transmits packets to whom, meanwhile defending against a variety of active and passive attacks. In addition to designing the routing algorithm, we also plan to propose a way to analyze its performance and compare it with other information-privacy schemes. The ultimate goal is to determine the fundamental performance tradeoff, while considering information security and privacy.

Video Processing Techniques

Successful proliferation of multimedia-enabled devices and significant advances in VLSI technology has spawned new research efforts in migrating video processing applications onto ever smaller and cheaper devices. This project involves investigating different video application techniques for use in highly resource-constrained platforms. Such systems are made up of many "weak" components; that is, components characterized by processing speeds below 100MHz, memory space up to 100KB, and allowable power consumption rates below 100mW. First, we are investigating the video-processing techniques themselves. This includes techniques such as motion detection and estimation. Also, this project is concerned about distributed power management techniques when these video nodes operate in a wireless network environment. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide design methodologies using traditional video processing techniques tailored for these constrained platforms.

Prototyping

We are currently developing a prototype which will incorporate all our proposed video processing and security techniques. Our first version prototype contains on the order of ten wireless video processing nodes, and executes a distributed power management technique we have proposed as well as communicate using the anonymous, secure communication protocol also proposed. Future versions of our prototype will further reduce the size and complexity of the devices and extend the functionality to include code migration techniques among other techniques not yet implemented.

Electronic textiles (E-textiles)

This project addresses a newly emerging field of research that combines the strengths and capabilities of electronics and textiles into one:  electronic textiles, or e-textiles.  E-textiles, also called Smart Fabrics, have not only "wearable" capabilities, but also local monitoring and computation, as well as wireless communication capabilities.  Sensors and simple computational elements are embedded into e-textiles, as well as built into yarns, with the goal of gathering sensitive information, monitoring vital statistics and sending them remotely (possibly over a wireless channel) for further processing.  Possible applications include medical (infant or patient) monitoring, personal information processing systems, or remote monitoring of deployed personnel in military or space applications.

Overview Papers: