ECE department receives four NSF grants
Melissa Wiegand
Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: Campus News
Stevens' Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department recently received four National Science Foundation (NSF) research grants, totaling more than $1 million for faculty projects in the areas of Wireless Communications, Network Security and Cognitive Radio (CR). Each grant will fund research in the specified project area for three years. Department Director Yu-Dong Yao is pleased with his faculty's achievements and is confident that the projects will "contribute significantly to advances in both CR and wireless network security."
Yao himself received a grant in early September for his project, entitled "xBeam: Cross-Layer Beamforming Against Denial of Service Attacks in Wireless Networks." A common example of Denial of Service (DoS) is the error message one receives when the server of a high-traffic website is overloaded. It is called a DoS attack because the overload is often caused by a hacker, who bombards the server with requests for access. "DoS attacks are a major issue for both commercial and military organizations," says Yao. DoS attacks are easier to generate in wireless networks, since they are less secure and have less bandwidth available than wired networks do. The problem is also more difficult to solve within wireless networks, because one cannot simply isolate the hacker's location or disconnect a cable.
Yao's research focuses on combining various wireless protocol layers to "detect and eliminate DoS attacks." He plans to examine various DoS attacks, develop xBeam algorithms, evaluate the effectiveness of xBeam in deterring DoS attacks, and validate the algorithms using a wireless test bed. He and Research Associate Hongbing Cheng will work together to develop a novel defense approach against DoS attacks in wireless networks. Their ultimate goal is to deter DoS attacks across different networking layers, multiple DoS attacks mounting from different spatial directions, and attacks mounted by malicious attackers who are mobile. Both graduate and undergraduate students will have the opportunity to gain research experience by contributing to this project.
Yao himself received a grant in early September for his project, entitled "xBeam: Cross-Layer Beamforming Against Denial of Service Attacks in Wireless Networks." A common example of Denial of Service (DoS) is the error message one receives when the server of a high-traffic website is overloaded. It is called a DoS attack because the overload is often caused by a hacker, who bombards the server with requests for access. "DoS attacks are a major issue for both commercial and military organizations," says Yao. DoS attacks are easier to generate in wireless networks, since they are less secure and have less bandwidth available than wired networks do. The problem is also more difficult to solve within wireless networks, because one cannot simply isolate the hacker's location or disconnect a cable.
Yao's research focuses on combining various wireless protocol layers to "detect and eliminate DoS attacks." He plans to examine various DoS attacks, develop xBeam algorithms, evaluate the effectiveness of xBeam in deterring DoS attacks, and validate the algorithms using a wireless test bed. He and Research Associate Hongbing Cheng will work together to develop a novel defense approach against DoS attacks in wireless networks. Their ultimate goal is to deter DoS attacks across different networking layers, multiple DoS attacks mounting from different spatial directions, and attacks mounted by malicious attackers who are mobile. Both graduate and undergraduate students will have the opportunity to gain research experience by contributing to this project.