Background
I’m happy to consider compelling project proposals that involve hardware, networking, security or wireless technologies. Ideally they will be well aligned with my research interests.
In recent years students have worked on projects in security and crypto, VPNs, homomorphic encryption, Vehicular Networking, Distributed online control, Underwater communications, music visualisation and some fundamental Quantum Communication concepts.
It might be interesting to look at the application and relevance of some of these aspects to the nanocommunications domain also.
We have also just completed an EC project on offshore wind and wave energy and have some highly novel concepts on structural health monitoring involving drones that we would be interested in exploring with a view to commercialisation. These will stray across into modelling and (possibly) some flow and fluid dynamics so might be of greatest interest to Engineering student(s). We do have a variety of unresolved comms modelling and associated challenges that would be interesting to work on also.
Project Detail
Some years ago we wrote the first paper on the use of secure side channels in helping ensure robustness, reliability and integrity in inter device communication and messaging in the presence of active channel attack and compromise. Our validation context was that of autonomous vehicles, using only existing sidechannel hardware present in modern vehicles such as ultrasonics, cameras and visual signalling, and using the blockchain as a public, shared, open data ledger. This project proposes to revisit the original concept with two different goals: i) to consider recent innovations in distributed ledger and consensus concepts and systems and how they will reshape what can constitute a data/information side-channel, and ii) to more broadly consider what constitutes a ‘side channel’ (in information theoretic terms) for modern communication and networking systems and protocols.
The principles under investigation have considerable applicability across systems and platforms that employ and rely on Distributed Ledger Technologies (e.g. financial services and cryptocurrencies), and in areas such as network DDoS protection and network backpressure. Required: A strong interest in the principles, concepts and actualities of how and where DLTs are used. A willingness and ability to consider and explore some of the mathematical aspects of consensus protocols. An interest in understanding how data and information are encoded and representated in emerging systems and protocols.