Establishing Pair-Wise Keys in 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 sensors 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. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on small networks using a variety of trust models and then demonstrate the application of this method to very large systems. The approach and analysis presented in this paper can be applied to all protocols that use probabilistic keys including those that employ broadcast mechanisms, hash functions or polynomials for the generation of keys.

title: Secure reporting of traffic forwarding activity in mobile ad hoc networks
abstract: Nodes forward data on behalf of each other in mobile ad hoc networks. In a civilian application, nodes are assumed to be selfish and rational, i.e., they pursue their own self-interest. Hence, the ability to accurately measure traffic forwarding is critical to ensure proper network operation. These measurements are often used to credit nodes based on their level of participation, or to detect loss. Past solutions employ neighbor monitoring and reporting on node forwarding traffic. These methods are not applicable in civilian networks where neighbor nodes lack the desire or ability to perform the monitoring function. Such environments occur frequently in which neighbor hosts are resource constrained, or in networks where directional antennas are used and reliable monitoring is difficult or impossible. In this paper, we propose a protocol that uses nodes on the data path to securely produce packet forwarding reports. Reporting nodes are chosen randomly and secretly so that malicious nodes cannot modify their behavior based upon the monitoring point. The integrity and authenticity of reports are preserved through the use of secure link layer acknowledgments and monitoring reports. The robustness of the reporting mechanism is strengthened by forwarding the report to multiple destinations (source and destination). We explore the security, cost, and accuracy of our protocol.

title: Mobile multi-layered IPsec
abstract: To achieve high throughput in wireless networks, smart forwarding and processing of packets in access routers is critical for overcoming the effects of the wireless links. However, these services cannot be provided if data sessions are protected using end-to-end encryption as with IPsec, because the information needed by these algorithms resides inside the portion of the packet that is encrypted, and can therefore not be used by the access routers. A previously proposed protocol, called Multi-layered IPsec (ML-IPsec) modifies IPsec in a way so that certain portions of the datagram may be exposed to intermediate network elements, enabling these elements to provide performance enhancements. In this paper we extend ML-IPsec to deal with mobility and make it suitable for wireless networks. We define and implement an efficient key distribution protocol to enable fast ML-IPsec session initialization, and two mobility protocols that are compatible with Mobile IP and maintain ML-IPsec sessions. Our measurements show that, depending on the mobility protocol chosen, integrated Mobile IP/ML-IPsec handoffs result in a pause of 53–100 milliseconds, of which only 28–75 milliseconds may be attributed to ML-IPsec. Further, we provide detailed discussion and performance measurements of our MML-IPsec implementation. We find the resulting protocol, when coupled with SNOOP, greatly increases throughput over scenarios using standard TCP over IPsec (165% on average). By profiling the MML-IPsec implementation, we determine the bottleneck to be sending packets over the wireless link. In addition, we propose and implement an extension to MML-IPsec, called dynamic MML-IPsec, in which a flow may switch between plaintext, IPsec and MML-IPsec. Using dynamic MML-IPsec, we can balance the tradeoff between performance and security.

title: On monitoring transparent optical networks
abstract: Fault identification and localization problems in optical networks have become crucial. Due to network transparency and high data rates, optical networks are vulnerable to sophisticated attacks on the physical infrastructure, and hence require adequate fault monitoring in order to accurately identify and locate network failures. In transparent optical networks, faults may propagate to various parts of the network from the origin, and multiple alarms can be generated for a single failure. In order to reduce the number of redundant alarms, simplify fault localization, as well as lower financial investment in network monitoring equipment, fault monitor placement should be optimized for a given network. In this paper, we formulate a problem on the optimal placement of network monitoring devices and propose a solution approach. We provide a brief summary of available physical-layer monitoring devices, and present a scheme for optimal monitor placement.

title: Robust kernel Isomap
abstract: Isomap is one of widely used low-dimensional embedding methods, where geodesic distances on a weighted graph are incorporated with the classical scaling (metric multidimensional scaling). In this paper we pay our attention to two critical issues that were not considered in Isomap, such as: (1) generalization property (projection property); (2) topological stability. Then we present a robust kernel Isomap method, armed with such two properties. We present a method which relates the Isomap to Mercer kernel machines, so that the generalization property naturally emerges, through kernel principal component analysis. For topological stability, we investigate the network flow in a graph, providing a method for eliminating critical outliers. The useful behavior of the robust kernel Isomap is confirmed through numerical experiments with several data sets.

title: The Optimum Network on Chip Architectures for Video Object Plane Decoder Design
abstract: On Chip Network (OCN) has been proposed as a new methodology for addressing the design challenges of future massly integrated system in nanoscale. In this paper, three differently heterogenous Tree-based network topologies are proposed as the OCN architectures for Video Object Plane Decoder (VOPD). The topologies are designed in order to maximize the system throughput. This paper also evaluates the proposed topologies by comparing them to other conventional topologies such as 2-D Mesh and Fat-Tree with respects to throughput, power consumption and size. We use the power modelling tool, known as Orion model to calculate the static powers, areas, and dynamic energies of three topologies. The experiment results show that our Tree-based topologies offer similar throughputs as Fat-Tree does and much higher throughputs compared to 2-D Mesh while use less chip areas and power consumptions.

title: Analyzing the Performance of Mesh and Fat-Tree Topologies for Network on Chip Design
abstract: The demand of integration of many heterogeneous semiconductor intellectual property (IP) blocks has been introducing a new chip design paradigm so called on chip network. This paradigm promisingly offers a packet switched network among IPs to reduce the main problems in the very deep sub micron technologies that arise from non-scalable global wire delay, failure to achieve global synchronization, errors due to the signal integrity, non-scalable bus based functional interconnection, etc. This paper introduces interconnected or switched network topologies and also analyze their performances in terms of communication protocol related to the issues such as routing strategy, buffer size, routing algorithm , etc. The above mentioned evaluations are done by utilizing the tool that has been widely used in the research domain of computer network design, so called NS-2.

title: Efficient route establishment and maintenance in wireless sensor networks with mobile base stations
abstract: The integration of ground wireless adhoc networks and airborne UAVs is a promising solution for realtime data collection in wireless sensor networks. Such networks play a vital role in many mission critical tasks such as forest fire-fighting and battlefield support. An important problem is to establish/maintain efficient routing structures in the ground sensor network for packet relaying. Our problem is unique in that the base stations are non-static, which necessitates frequent update of the routing structure. The performance of flooding based methods are evaluated. Particularly, in order to deal with non-uniform node density, we propose to introduce an artificial delay factor to control the flooding pattern. We mathematically prove that the delay should be proportional to local node density. Our simulation results show that the proposed method achieves good load balance among multiple base stations.