Research Challenges

RC1: Threat Synthesis and Assessment

Understanding the vulnerabilities of wireless to RF cyber attacks has hitherto received little attention. Denial of service and manipulating data and control of communications for critical infrastructure will have a profound impact and such mechanisms need to be truly understood and evaluated, requiring a creative approach which actively tries to “hack” the system.

RC2: RF Cyber Detection & Defence

This requires large-scale monitoring addressing a multitude of potential attack methods, necessitating power and cost-effective solutions if wide-scale adoption is to be feasible. Defending against attacks requires resilient waveforms, robust protocols and changes to existing spatial processing techniques.

RC3: Cyber Secure Radio Design

RF architectures which are more resilient to attack, facilitate the detection of an adversary and offers energy and cost-efficient RF reconfigurability for defensive counter-measures and DSA operation will be fundamental building blocks for future secure wireless networks.

RC4: Secure Dynamic Spectrum Access

Understanding the vulnerabilities of sharing protocols is essential in the design and widespread adoption of Spectrum Sharing in future networks alongside the requirements of enhanced RF transceiver technology required versus the cost of implementation and security.