University Events

Description: Topic: SECURING COGNITIVE-RADIO-BASED INTERNET OF THINGS

LOCATION: College of Engineering Conference Room, Textiles Building (TXT), Room 101E

Abstract:
Due to the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT), it is expected to have 7 trillion wireless devices for 7 billion of people by 2020. Hence, spectrum scarcity and spectrum congestion becomes an issue. Cognitive Radio (CR) can opportunistically access the spectrum bands in a dynamically changing environment. Specifically, our CR can sense the spectrum in terms of power, time, and frequency; learn modulation schemes, Baud rate, and time varying patterns of licensed users; and autonomously generate adaptive waveform to minimize the interference from/to the licensed users and maximize the transmission data rate over non-contiguous multiple spectrum bands. Therefore, CR-based IoT can efficiently utilize spectrum, significantly reduce the cost of purchasing spectrum, and intelligently make decisions to achieve interference-free and on-demand services. On the other hand, System-on-Chip Field Programmable Gate Array (SoC-FPGA) enables vastly growing IoT applications due to low power, low latency, and high determinism with re-programmable and re-configurable capabilities. Therefore, it is necessary to implement such a CR-based IoT on SoC-FPGA. To defend against threats and attacks to FPGA designs, we encrypt FPGA bitstream to prevent device cloning and protect the confidentiality of the design data. To generate a unique key for bitstream encryption, physical unclonable function (PUF) is applied and implemented on FPGAs. Meanwhile, FPGA bitstream authentication is also applied to ensure the correct and intended operation of the FPGA as well as prevent spoofing and Trojan Horse attacks.

Biography:
Dr. Ruolin Zhou is currently an assistant professor (has been promoted to an associate professor with tenure) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Western New England University (WNE) in Springfield, Massachusetts. She received her B.S. in 2003 from Dalian Jiaotong University in China; M.S. in 2007 and Ph.D. in 2012 from Wright State University in the USA, all in Electrical Engineering. Her research interests include Cognitive Internet of Things, Intelligent Real-time Embedded System, FPGA and Software Defined Radio (SDR) based Cognitive Radio, Data Analytics, Signal/Image Processing, and Wireless Sensor Networks. She has served as a principle investigator on several projects sponsored by SBIR/STTR DoD, Lockheed Martin, Xilinx, and Intel FPGA. She has successfully secured $239K external research grants. She is the author or co-author of over thirty peer-reviewed papers in top journals and conferences. She has served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member and reviewer for various conferences and journals.
The seminar is open to the public free of charge.

*For further information, please contact Dr. Karen L. Payton at 508.999.8434, or by via email at kpayton@umassd.edu.