Raju Kumar

Efficient Hybrid Security Mechanisms for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Many applications that make use of sensor networks require secure communication. Because asymmetric-key solutions are difficult to implement in such a resource-constrained environment, symmetric-key methods coupled with a priori key distribution schemes have been proposed to achieve the goals of data secrecy and integrity. These approaches typically assume that all nodes are similar in terms of capabilities and, hence, deploy the same number of keys in all sensors in a network to provide the aforementioned protections. In this paper, we demonstrate that a probabilistic unbalanced distribution of keys throughout the network that leverages the existence of a small percentage of more capable sensor nodes can not only provide an equal level of security, but also reduce the consequences of node compromise. To fully characterize the effects of the unbalanced key management system, we design, implement, and measure the performance of a complementary suite of key establishment protocols known as LIGER. Using their predeployed keys, nodes operating in isolation from external networks can securely and efficiently establish keys with each other. Should resources such as a backhaul link to a key distribution center (KDC) become available, networks implementing LIGER automatically incorporate and benefit from such facilities. Detailed experiments demonstrate that the unbalanced distribution in combination with the multimodal LIGER suite offers a robust and practical solution to the security needs in sensor networks

Mitigating Performance Degradation in Congested Sensor Networks

Data generated in wireless sensor networks may not all be alike: some data may be more important than others and hence may have different delivery requirements. In this paper, we address differentiated data delivery in the presence of congestion in wireless sensor networks. We propose a class of algorithms that enforce differentiated routing based on the congested areas of a network and data priority. The basic protocol, called congestion-aware routing (CAR), discovers the congested zone of the network that exists between high-priority data sources and the data sink and, using simple forwarding rules, dedicates this portion of the network to forwarding primarily high-priority traffic. Since CAR requires some overhead for establishing the high-priority routing zone, it is unsuitable for highly mobile data sources. To accommodate these, we define MAC-enhanced CAR (MCAR), which includes MAC-layer enhancements and a protocol for forming high-priority paths on the fly for each burst of data. MCAR effectively handles the mobility of high-priority data sources, at the expense of degrading the performance of low-priority traffic. We present extensive simulation results for CAR and MCAR, and an implementation of MCAR on a 48-node testbed.

LIGER: implementing efficient hybrid security mechanisms for heterogeneous sensor networks

Many applications that make use of sensor networks require secure communication. Because asymmetric-key solutions are difficult to implement in such a resource-constrained environment, symmetric-key methods coupled with a priori key distribution schemes have been proposed to achieve the goals of data secrecy and integrity. These approaches typically assume that all nodes are similar in terms of capabilities and, hence, deploy the same number of keys in all sensors in a network to provide the aforementioned protections. In this paper, we demonstrate that a probabilistic unbalanced distribution of keys throughout the network that leverages the existence of a small percentage of more capable sensor nodes can not only provide an equal level of security, but also reduce the consequences of node compromise. To fully characterize the effects of the unbalanced key management system, we design, implement, and measure the performance of a complementary suite of key establishment protocols known as LIGER. Using their predeployed keys, nodes operating in isolation from external networks can securely and efficiently establish keys with each other. Should resources such as a backhaul link to a key distribution center (KDC) become available, networks implementing LIGER automatically incorporate and benefit from such facilities. Detailed experiments demonstrate that the unbalanced distribution in combination with the multimodal LIGER suite offers a robust and practical solution to the security needs in sensor networks

Network Coding aware Rate Selection in multi-rate IEEE 802.11

Network coding has been proposed as an alternative to the conventional store-and-forward routing paradigm for data delivery in networks. When deployed in a multi-rate wireless network, network coding has to interact with rate adaptation. When multicasting packets (a requirement of network coding) in a multi-rate IEEE 802.11 wireless network, one must use care when selecting the transmission rate to use. We refer to this problem as rate selection. We analyze the performance of network coding for a small set of scenarios representative of common topologies in a network that lead to coding opportunities. Based on this analysis, we present our Network Coding aware Rate Selection (NCRS) algorithm which takes into account transmission rates used for unicast links to all multicast targets. Simulation results show that in a multi-hop wireless network, network coding with NCRS achieves up to 24% more gain over routing than network coding with other rate selection algorithms.

Multi-Hop Wireless Relay Networks of Mesh Clients

In typical deployments of infrastructure wireless mesh networks, mesh clients are directly connected to a mesh router. The mesh routers form a multi-hop wireless mesh backbone to provide connectivity to the Internet. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a set of distributed algorithms that enable mesh clients to form a multi-hop wireless relay network to have access to the mesh backbone. The proposed algorithms include path discovery, channel allocation, path selection, and local tuning of the resulting relay network. Results show that the performance of the relay network formed by our algorithms is very close to the optimal performance that the network can achieve.

Broadcasting in multi channel wireless networks in the presence of adversaries

We propose an analytical framework to study broadcasting performance in multi channel wireless networks in the presence of adversary attacks. In order to reduce the effect of such attacks on the dissemination performance we use network coding and show that it can bring significant benefits to the broadcasting process. We investigate the impact that different medium access, transmission schemes and channel conditions have on the information exchange among all nodes. We analyze such impact in terms of reception delay and robustness with respect to malicious interference generated by adversary nodes. In order to do so, we model the process of data broadcasting as a coupon collectors problem. We derive the average delay required to retrieve partial and complete information by all nodes in the network, and quantify the gains obtained when using a multi channel system. We take into account the presence of different types of adversaries and find the optimum number of channels that nodes have to access in order to minimize the data reception delay.

Interference cancellation-based RFID tags identification

In this paper we investigate interference cancellation to faster identify tags in RFID networks. We explore how interference cancellation can be applied to ALOHA and tree-based identification schemes, its limitations, the extent of achievable improvements, and the overhead incurred to obtain effective gains. Analytical and simulation results show that for an ALOHA-based scheme interference cancellation allows us to identify nearly 23% of tags without directly interrogating them. This speeds up tag identification (over 20% faster) while producing little overhead. For a tree-based scheme nearly 50% of the tags are identified by exploiting interference cancellation, resulting in an improvement of the identification rate of over 20%. Finally, we propose an enhancement of the tree-based scheme with interference cancellation that achieves a further identification speed up of 50%.

Relay-based Multi-hop Access to Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are emerging as a means to provide ubiquitous network connectivity using various radio technologies. In this paper we propose and evaluate a set of distributed algorithms to form a multi-hop relay network to access the backbone in wireless mesh networks. The proposed algorithms include path discovery, frequency allocation, path selection, and local tuning of the resulting relay network. Our results show that the performance of the relay network formed by our algorithms is very close to the optimal performance that the network can achieve.

Channelization for Network Coding in Wireless Networks

Network coding is increasingly being investigated as an alternative to routing to increase throughput in packet networks. Like most data transfer schemes, the effectiveness of network coding may be limited by extreme congestion. When using network coding, these congested conditions are mitigated somewhat, but may still occur. We propose a selective channelization scheme in which links that experience congestion at a level that cannot be overcome by network coding are given reserved communication resources. This method has the following benefits. First, the algorithm proposed allows network coding full opportunity to overcome congestion before performing channelization, thus reducing the number of reserved resources used. Second, when triggered, the channelization of severely congested links greatly improves the end-to-end performance of flows that traverse the channelized link. To determine the point at which channelization should be triggered, we perform a thorough analysis of potential coding gains in a network facing errors due to collisions, and determine the point at which network coding loses its effectiveness.

Channelization for dynamic multi-frequency, multi-hop wireless cellular networks

Multi-hop relaying in cellular networks can greatly increase capacity and performance by exploiting the best available links to a base station. We envision an environment in which relay networks are dynamically formed when performance on the radio access network is degraded and then dissolved when the performance improves or the radio spectrum on which the relay network is operating is reclaimed. Each relay network operates on a different frequency band. Likewise, a relay network may channelize its frequency band to offer non-interfering links among the mobile nodes within a single relay network. We propose a set of algorithms used to form such relay networks on-demand. Each algorithm provides a simple and distributed frequency assignment scheme. We also propose two enhancements to improve network throughput of resulting relay networks. We evaluate these algorithms in terms of the overhead of the relay network formation. The evaluation results show that having nodes outmost from the BS initiate route discovery first is the best approach for reducing the formation overhead. The results also show that there is a large increase in throughput when using multiple frequencies in a relay network. Further, the performance of the network using multiple frequencies based on our simple frequency assignment is very close to that of a network using optimal frequency assignment.