Computing and Information Sciences Contacts

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Mobile, Wireless Communications and Networks  

Dr. Robert Ulman
919.549.4330
robert.ulman

The Mobile, Wireless Communications and Networks Research Program is concerned primarily with establishing the fundamental understanding necessary to support the Army's future mobile, wireless tactical battlefield communications needs. The research in this program primarily targets the tactical battlefield at brigade and below. These systems must support broad-based and highly mobile communications and must perform in environments of impressive diversity, from dense foliage to dense urban obstructions, and unintentional and intentional jamming.

Future Army tactical communication systems for the digital battlefield will consist of many different types of networks and must be capable of communicating on the move. These systems will be highly mobile creating highly dynamic network topologies (mobile ad-hoc networks) and routing multimedia (voice, data and video) data. Unlike commercial systems, the communications infrastructure must be mobile. In addition to the highly mobile communications, there is interest in algorithms for small, very energy-limited, stationary, unattended ground sensors.

Wireless Network Theory: Research is required in the broad area of wireless network science including fundamental limits, performance characterization, novel architectures, and high fidelity simulation. Metrics, fundamental limits, and performance need to be characterized for multi-hop wireless networks with mobility, node loss, and bursty traffic. Architectures other than Open Systems interconnection (OSI) models, particularly that facilitate interaction between current layer functionality, are desirable. New simulation techniques are necessary to allow for very large simulations without losing the fidelity at the physical layer that is necessary for realistic results.

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET): Research is required in the broad area of mobile ad hoc networks, including cross layer design, robust, survivable, and cooperative networking, and physical layer design. In order to meet energy, throughput, and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, cross layer design is necessary starting with the physical and Media Access Control (MAC) layers, but also including routing admission control and transport protocols, which exploit information available at the other layers. Robust and survivable network solutions are needed to recover from network disconnects, failures, and malfunctioning nodes in order to minimize disruption to communications and services. There is a cogent need to develop spatial, temporal, frequency, and other diversity techniques for the MANET. LPI/LPD/AJ and physical layer authentication are key design considerations.

Sensor Networks: Potentially hundreds, or even thousands, of energy constrained, low-cost networked sensors will be used for sensing, actuation, and control. Key issues include enhanced sensor and network lifetime, network setup, node geolocation and synchronization, duty-cycling, analysis and design of cross-layer interactions, network management, data exfiltration, and authentication and security. Low energy consumption is of primary concern for sensor networks. Cross layer design techniques are of interest, which take into account energy consumption at various part of the network, from sensing devices to RF computations, from medium access and networking to duty cycling protocols. Networking algorithms that take into account the network mission and needs of data aggregation and fusion algorithms are required.

Network Integration: The integrated network may be highly heterogeneous, including disadvantaged nodes with severe energy and bandwidth constraints, as well as mobile access points such as in UAVs, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and satellites. There is a need for managing the heterogeneity of networks, nodes and protocols, for resolving interoperability issues when a common platform does not exist, as well as creating network architectures that maximize performance. Research is needed in spectrum management and reuse, including wideband sensing and networking protocols, and implementing spectrum policy.

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Information and Software Assurance

Dr. Cliff Wang
919.549.4207
cliff.wang

From the Army perspective, Information Assurance must address the delivery of authentic, accurate, secure, reliable, timely information, regardless of threat conditions, over the distributed and heterogeneous computing and communication system. The computing system may range from a hand-held mobile unit to a centralized high performance information process system. Heterogeneous communication system consists of both tactical (mobile, wireless) and fixed (wired) communications infrastructures.

Supporting Army Mission Characteristics: The objective of this research is to enable dynamic management of communities of interest (COI) by the battlefield commander. The commander needs the ability to alert the membership in a specific COI based on issues ranging from classification of the data to specifics of the battlefield situation. Individual war fighters may simultaneously be members of multiple COIs depending upon battle space specifics. Research is needed in the areas of protocols and techniques, which support reconfigurable, survivable and self-healing, efficient, and computing and communication environments that would allow for the dynamic creation of COI as well as to assure delivery of trustworthy data within reconfigurable and network centric environments. Reconfigurable, survivable, and self-healing systems allow a combat unit to dynamically establish and maintain its command and communication capability under diversified and extreme battlefield situations. New computing and communication protocols and techniques need to be developed so that critical information delivery and critical infrastructure functions can be assured, while maximizing the longevity of such systems under the resource constraints.

The Army requires a fully mobile, fully communicating, agile, and situationally aware force that operates in a highly dynamic, network-centric environment. This force consists of a heterogeneous mixture of individual Soldiers, ground vehicles, airborne platforms, unmanned aerial vehicles, robotics, and unattended sensor networks that operate in a complex wireless environment. To support net-centric warfare, new research is needed to 1) develop novel techniques for intrusion or anomaly detection and vulnerability assessment of mobile wireless networks that is automated, efficient, scalable, adaptive, and secure; and 2) develop security services and wireless security infrastructures for highly mobile tactical and unattended sensor networks that are distributed, scalable, and extremely resource efficient.

Innovative Approaches to Attack Prevention, Detection, and Response: Prevention works best when it is designed into the system architecture instead of being added on later, and so the development of system-security architectures and protocols that mitigate or reduce vulnerabilities is of critical importance. Research is needed to address the development and implementation of the security polices that these systems will need to support, as well as automated system configuration updates to allow a system to be flexible enough to meet a change in security policy or threat situation.

Formal representations coupled with cognitive learning-based approaches for zero-second identification and characterization are of utmost importance, potentially providing means of responding to unknown attacks based on automatically generated attack response processes, as opposed to employing the current signature-based state of the art. Research is needed on cognitive-based analytical techniques of attack response planning, wherein automatic processes are able to conjecture and determine response solutions to attacks, while providing confidence levels in the likelihood of correct attack categorization, and self-assessment of response impact to a host system's capabilities. Research on detection and mitigation of sophisticated cyber threats, enhancement of the security interoperability of new security technologies, and determination of hostile intent are sought in the following areas: 1) reasoning mechanisms supporting the identification, representation, and understanding of system, network, and application vulnerabilities by which security objectives are compromised their origin, properties, and manifestation in software and hardware, and remediation; 2) development of techniques for detecting and depicting vulnerabilities using models, taxonomies, patterns, and representational tools (graphs, trees, etc.), including their structure and interrelationship of active and passive components; 3) diagnosis and analysis of attack mechanisms by which threats target our systems, networks, and information infrastructure, including study of preconditions and dependencies; 4) investigation and development of architectural strategies and solutions to counter potential security threats, using advanced methodologies and novel technologies; and 5) exploration, identification, and validation of metrics, measurement techniques, and probabilistic techniques by which the effectiveness of specific security solutions and compositions of security solutions may be characterized and differentiated.

Intrusion protection includes both host-based defenses that harden a host against attack and network-based defenses that identify and respond to problems identified in the network itself. New technologies will need to be developed that take into account the needs and special properties of emerging types of platforms such as wireless mobile devices. Innovative approaches to system protection are sought which will incorporate the development of anomaly based detection, correlation, and fusion methods, adaptive response mechanisms, and automatic generation of responses.

Development of Next Generation Resilient Computing and Communication Systems: A primary goal of this Information Assurance thrust is to define, develop, and evaluate systems and network architecture structures that would survive sophisticated attacks and intrusions. Another important goal of this research thrust is to define, develop, and evaluate systems and network architectures that scale to large configurations and yet retain the ability to self-heal and recover from unexpected events with measurable confidence. The objectives of this thrust are to: 1) gain advanced understanding and knowledge of survivability principles for complex system design and development; 2) develop next generation communication and computing systems that are resilient against attacks of different levels of severity and are capable of recovering and self-healing from any potential compromises; and 3) develop benchmark and testing metrics to evaluate system integrity and survivability.

Embedded System Security: Embedded systems are used heavily in critical defense applications. Malicious or accidental failures in embedded systems can have dire consequences. The integrity of embedded infrastructures, such as configuration and code, is of utmost importance. Another distinguishing feature of embedded systems is autonomous operation, which poses new challenges in the context of system integrity. Since embedded systems are reactive (interact with their environment), unexpected environment events can cause failures in embedded systems. Environment events can also be generated by a malicious adversary, whose goal is to have the embedded system fail. Novel techniques are needed to verify the integrity of embedded infrastructure (which may include device, software code, and configuration). These techniques should be geared towards discovering behavior of embedded systems under environment events and discovering "weak spots" or vulnerabilities in embedded infrastructures. Advanced techniques based on static, dynamic, or hybrid (a combination of static and dynamic) analysis of an embedded system are sought to identify exploitable vulnerabilities in embedded infrastructure (an exploitable vulnerability can be used by an adversary to drive the embedded system to an unsafe state) and to verify the integrity of embedded infrastructure.

Embedded systems often have to operate autonomously in a changing environment. Therefore, infrastructure of an embedded system has to be updated to adapt its behavior to the change in environment or change in the overall mission. Infrastructure updates manifest themselves as software updates or changes in the deployment configuration. Unauthorized or unverified updates to the infrastructure of an embedded system can compromise its integrity. New techniques are needed that allow updates to the infrastructure of an embedded system without violating its integrity. In addition techniques that prevent tampering with embedded infrastructures are also needed since field deployed embedded devices such as unmanned sensor nodes are prone to capture.

High Confidence, Robust, and Resilient Software: Today's software has unique characteristics of being large, complex, and decentralized. In addition, the current generation of software often operates in a heterogeneous environment, involving both infrastructure servers and mobile devices. To achieve the goal of information superiority in network-centric operations for the DoD, software for tactical systems must be highly reliable, adaptable, and flexible to changing environments, as well as resilient against potential attacks and intrusions. Research is needed in the area of high confidence, robust, and resilient software design, development, and verification, especially for mobile code and software supporting tactical mobile systems. The next generation software must provide full fault tolerance; can defend effectively against exploits and attacks; and be capable of healing and recovering from faults and potential compromises in order to sustain mission critical services. To achieve that goal, reliable and effective mechanisms to monitor and verify software execution status are also sought.

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Information and Signal Processing

Dr. Liyi Dai
919.549.4350
liyi.dai

The objective of the Information and Signal Processing Program is the pursuit of theories, algorithms, models, and metrics concerning data processing, information extraction, and information integration to support the development of real-time situational awareness and advanced targeting capabilities for military operations. Investment of this program is concentrated on the following thrust areas.

Mathematical Image Processing and Understanding: Imagery sensing is among the essential capabilities in the Army's FCS and battlefield operations. This thrust area emphasizes mathematical methodologies underlying image acquisition, processing, analysis, and understanding. Of significant interest are algorithms for improving range and quality of imagery through passive and active imaging capabilities. Topics of interest include novel imaging modalities and adaptive radar. Effective resource-aware image processing algorithms are sought for image compression, reconstruction, and enhancement. Image analysis and understanding are aimed at information extraction and exploitation for performance improvements of automatic target recognition, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), navigation, and battlespace visualization. Investment seeks innovative approaches utilizing novel sensing modalities, both imaging (e.g., electro-optic (EO)/IR, multi/hyperspectral, ultra-wideband, LADAR, and polarimetric) and non-imaging (e.g., acoustic and seismic) and contextual information for adequate performance. Additional topics of interest include spatiotemporal image analysis, three-dimensional (3-D) imaging, dynamic battlefield modeling and visualization, and automated video content indexing and retrieval.

Data and Information Fusion: Multisensor and multidimensional data acquisition systems are increasingly prevalent with disparate sensors distributed on the battlefield. This thrust area seeks advanced mathematical theories and approaches to integrating sensor data and contextual information to support the Army's network-centric warfare with information dominance. Of particular interests are systematic, unified, and theoretical approaches to fusion of data and information from diverse sources. Examples of topics are 1) data representation, 2) data encoding and transmission, 3) pooling of diverse data into a coherent picture, and 4) measurement of the informativeness of both data and the fusion system. Research is needed for efficiently handling vast amount of data through methods such as dimensionality reduction and data mining. Fusion in networked environments addressing issues such as adaptive, distributed, and cooperative fusion is emphasized. Theories and principles for performance analysis and guarantees at all fusion levels to support robust data and information fusion are important to ensuring successful military operations.

Target Acquisition and Tracking: There is significant interest in robust data association and target tracking in military robotic systems and targeting systems for precision munitions. Performance of target acquisition and tracking can be improved through effective coordination of data collection by multiple sensors. Sensors can be actively positioned to maximize target acquisition and discrimination performance while minimizing the amount of data that needs to be collected, particularly for urban operations with building blocking. This active data acquisition must be performed in conjunction with whatever other contextual information available. Innovative research is needed in collaborative target acquisition algorithms so that optimal performance can be achieved with available sensing resources. Further, sensing capabilities need to be seamlessly coupled with weapon systems to achieve maximal effects and with the decision-making process to serve overall objectives of military operations. Topics of interest include persistent surveillance, precision sensor positioning, sensing/tracking integration, and dynamic resource allocation. Research should exploit intrinsic characteristics and performance of available sensing platforms or modalities.

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