Hybrid authentication systems: towards robust user authentication on wireless and mobile devices using biometric technologies

Adequate user authentication is a persistent problem, particularly with mobile devices, which tend to be highly personal and at the fringes of an organisation's influence. Yet these devices are being used increasingly in various business settings, where they pose a risk to security and privacy, not only from sensitive information they may contain, but also from the means they typically offer to access such information over wireless networks. User authentication is the first line of defence for a mobile device that falls into the hands of an unauthorised user. However, motivating users to enable simple password mechanisms and periodically update their authentication information is difficult at best. This paper examines some of the issues relating to the use of biometrics as a viable method of authentication on mobile wireless devices. It is also a critical analysis of some of the techniques currently employed and where appropriate, suggests novel hybrid ways in which they could be improved or modified. Both biometric technology and wireless setting based constraints that determine the feasibility and the performance of the authentication feature are specified. Some well known biometric technologies are briefly reviewed and their feasibility for wireless and mobile use is reviewed. Furthermore, a number of quantitative and qualitative parameters for evaluation are also presented. Biometric technologies are continuously advancing toward commercial implementation in wireless devices. When carefully designed and implemented, the advantage of biometric authentication arises mainly from increased convenience and coexistent improved security.

Miniaturization and Integration of Optoelectronics for Contact Lens Embedded Display and Wireless Communication

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013

Software for wireless broadband system design

The paper looks at the software of leading companies in the field of wireless broadband systems development. The basic characteristics of appropriate software and design systems are shown including the most typical examples for their implementation.

The modified Max-Log-MAP turbo decoding algorithm by extrinsic information scaling for wireless applications

The iterative nature of turbo-decoding algorithms increases their complexity compare to conventional FEC decoding algorithms. Two iterative decoding algorithms, Soft-Output-Viterbi Algorithm (SOVA) and Maximum A posteriori Probability (MAP) Algorithm require complex decoding operations over several iteration cycles. So, for real-time implementation of turbo codes, reducing the decoder complexity while preserving bit-error-rate (BER) performance is an important design consideration. In this chapter, a modification to the Max-Log-MAP algorithm is presented. This modification is to scale the extrinsic information exchange between the constituent decoders. The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: An overview of the turbo encoding and decoding processes, the MAP algorithm and its simplified versions the Log-MAP and Max-Log-MAP algorithms are presented in section 1. The extrinsic information scaling is introduced, simulation results are presented, and the performance of different methods to choose the best scaling factor is discussed in Section 2. Section 3 discusses trends and applications of turbo coding from the perspective of wireless applications.

Compensation of undesired effects in MIMO wireless transceivers

This paper presents compensation of all undesired effects (Power Amplifier (PA) nonlinearity, transmitter and receiver antenna crosstalk, before-PA nonlinear crosstalk, Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channel fading and crosstalk) in MIMO Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) wireless systems. It has been demonstrated that reduced-complexity Crossover Digital Predistortion (CO-DPD) algorithm on transmitter side and Matrix Inversion algorithm on receiver side can suppress almost all undesired effects introduced by transmitter, channel and receiver in 4×4 MIMO OFDM System that can be used in modern wireless system applications. A significant complexity reduction is achieved due to the fact that Digital Signal Processing (DSP) during CO-DPD process on transmitter side is done with real instead of complex numbers.

Nonlinear distortion evaluation of reconfigurable RF circuits in wireless communication systems

A compact highly linear microstrip dual - mode optically switchable filter and a reconfigurable power amplifier are presented. The key characteristics of the dual - mode switchable filter are investigated and described. A second order filter design procedure is outlined to facilitate the realisation of Butterworth and Chebyshev functions. The proposed filter was built and tested with an optical switch, which comprised of a silicon dice acti vated using near infrared light. The measured and simulated results are in good agreement. The measured insertion loss in the ON state was 3.0 dB the isolation in the OFF state was 45 dB at the centre frequency. An evaluation of filter distortion is presen ted for digitally modulated M - QAM and M - QAM OFDM singals.

Compact tunable bandstop filters using defected microstrip structure for multi-standard wireless systems

A novel compact tunable bandstop filter using Defected Microstrip Structure (DMS) is presented in this paper. The structure utilizes a modified T shaped DMS which helps in miniaturization of the filter. To verify the concept, one such filter was simulated, designed, fabricated and tested. Measurements on a fabricated tunable filter confirm the accuracy of the design procedure. The tuning range of 20% is achieved, ranging from 2.26 GHz to 2.747 GHz. Tuning is achieved by using NXP BB179 varactor diode. A nonlinear distortion evaluation in a tunable filter was experimentally verified. Experimental verification shows the filter is highly linear.

LNT: a logical neighbor tree secure group communication scheme for wireless sensor networks

Secure group communication is a paradigm that primarily designates one-to-many communication security. The proposed works relevant to secure group communication have predominantly considered the whole network as being a single group managed by a central powerful node capable of supporting heavy communication, computation and storage cost. However, a typical Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) may contain several groups, and each one is maintained by a sensor node (the group controller) with constrained resources. Moreover, the previously proposed schemes require a multicast routing support to deliver the rekeying messages. Nevertheless, multicast routing can incur heavy storage and communication overheads in the case of a wireless sensor network. Due to these two major limitations, we have reckoned it necessary to propose a new secure group communication with a lightweight rekeying process. Our proposal overcomes the two limitations mentioned above, and can be applied to a homogeneous WSN with resource-constrained nodes with no need for a multicast routing support. Actually, the analysis and simulation results have clearly demonstrated that our scheme outperforms the previous well-known solutions.

RadiaLE: A framework for designing and assessing link quality estimators in wireless sensor networks

Stringent cost and energy constraints impose the use of low-cost and low-power radio transceivers in large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This fact, together with the harsh characteristics of the physical environment, requires a rigorous WSN design. Mechanisms for WSN deployment and topology control, MAC and routing, resource and mobility management, greatly depend on reliable link quality estimators (LQEs). This paper describes the RadiaLE framework, which enables the experimental assessment, design and optimization of LQEs. RadiaLE comprises (i) the hardware components of the WSN testbed and (ii) a software tool for setting-up and controlling the experiments, automating link measurements gathering through packets-statistics collection, and analyzing the collected data, allowing for LQEs evaluation. We also propose a methodology that allows (i) to properly set different types of links and different types of traffic, (ii) to collect rich link measurements, and (iii) to validate LQEs using a holistic and unified approach. To demonstrate the validity and usefulness of RadiaLE, we present two case studies: the characterization of low-power links and a comparison between six representative LQEs. We also extend the second study for evaluating the accuracy of the TOSSIM 2 channel model.

Radio link quality estimation in wireless sensor networks: a survey

Radio link quality estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has a fundamental impact on the network performance and also affects the design of higher-layer protocols. Therefore, for about a decade, it has been attracting a vast array of research works. Reported works on link quality estimation are typically based on different assumptions, consider different scenarios, and provide radically different (and sometimes contradictory) results. This article provides a comprehensive survey on related literature, covering the characteristics of low-power links, the fundamental concepts of link quality estimation in WSNs, a taxonomy of existing link quality estimators, and their performance analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey tackling in detail link quality estimation in WSNs. We believe our efforts will serve as a reference to orient researchers and system designers in this area.

Nano-CF: a Coordination Framework for macro-programming in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are being used for a number of applications involving infrastructure monitoring, building energy monitoring and industrial sensing. The difficulty of programming individual sensor nodes and the associated overhead have encouraged researchers to design macro-programming systems which can help program the network as a whole or as a combination of subnets. Most of the current macro-programming schemes do not support multiple users seamlessly deploying diverse applications on the same shared sensor network. As WSNs are becoming more common, it is important to provide such support, since it enables higher-level optimizations such as code reuse, energy savings, and traffic reduction. In this paper, we propose a macro-programming framework called Nano-CF, which, in addition to supporting in-network programming, allows multiple applications written by different programmers to be executed simultaneously on a sensor networking infrastructure. This framework enables the use of a common sensing infrastructure for a number of applications without the users having to worrying about the applications already deployed on the network. The framework also supports timing constraints and resource reservations using the Nano-RK operating system. Nano- CF is efficient at improving WSN performance by (a) combining multiple user programs, (b) aggregating packets for data delivery, and (c) satisfying timing and energy specifications using Rate- Harmonized Scheduling. Using representative applications, we demonstrate that Nano-CF achieves 90% reduction in Source Lines-of-Code (SLoC) and 50% energy savings from aggregated data delivery.

Bandwidth allocation in hexagonal wireless sensor networks for real-time communications

We present an algorithm for bandwidth allocation for delay-sensitive traffic in multi-hop wireless sensor networks. Our solution considers both periodic as well as aperiodic real-time traffic in an unified manner. We also present a distributed MAC protocol that conforms to the bandwidth allocation and thus satisfies the latency requirements of realtime traffic. Additionally, the protocol provides best-effort service to non real-time traffic. We derive the utilization bounds of our MAC protocol.