MSc Thesis Topics

Physical layer security (with Ericsson)
Securing Vehicular Communication Systems
Secure Communication in Adverse Wireless Networks
Your MSc Thesis Topic

 

If you are interested

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Please keep in mind that significant effort, contribution and novelty are expected for an MSc thesis. If you are motivated, please email us (papadim@kth.se) your resume, your KTH transcripts, and one note (max. 1 page) explaining your interest and preparation for the project. Please highlight your relevant skills and expertise and mention what you would expect to do after your graduation. Applications will be reviewed continuously.

Securing Vehicular Communication Systems

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Background

Modern cars are already equipped with many on-board sensors and computers, navigation systems, and often they have the capability for wireless communication (cellular and recently Wi-Fi). 

Over the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in car-to-car communications, in the research community and in the industry. There has been a lot of work on how to add on-board computing and communication capabilities in order to enhance transportation safety and efficiency. 

However, it is well-understood that we cannot have these Vehicular Communication (VC) systems deployed without securing them first. If we did, they would be exposed to hacks, and attackers could create significant damages. Moreover, we would not want the VC system to harm our privacy, e.g., giving away our whereabouts without our agreement.

Problem Statement

There are many open problems in the area, thus multiple MSc theses are available. The selected students can benefit from interactions with industrial partners. The aim for each thesis is to design, implement, evaluate, and analyze one or more secure vehicular communication protocols. We have an automotive testbed in the lab and we received recently an Internet Society and IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize.

Candidates should have good networking and wireless communications knowledge, be fluent in programming and comfortable with security basics.

References

M. Khodaei, H. Jin, and P.Papadimitratos, “SECMACE: Scalable and Robust Identity and Credential Management Infrastructure in Vehicular Communication Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITS), April 2018.

 

G. Calandriello, P. Papadimitratos, A. Lioy, and J.-P. Hubaux, “On the Performance of Secure Vehicular Communication Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (IEEE TDSC), vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 898--912, November 2011.

 

P. Papadimitratos, A. de La Fortelle, K. Evensen, R. Brignolo, and S. Cosenza, “Vehicular communication systems: Enabling technologies, applications, and future outlook on intelligent transportation,” IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 84-95, November 2009

 

P. Papadimitratos, L. Buttyan, T. Holczer, E. Schoch, J. Freudiger, M. Raya, Z. Ma, F. Kargl, A. Kung, and J.-P. Hubaux, "Secure Vehicular Communication Systems: Design and Architecture," IEEE Communications Magazine, November 2008

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Secure Communication in Adverse Wireless Networks

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Background

For many years, wireless networks have been mostly single-hop: two devices would communicate directly over the wireless medium. For example, your cell phone with the cellular provider'™s base station, or your laptop with the airport'™s access point or your home Wi-Fi router. But more and more wireless devices are being used and multi-hop wireless communication is not far from becoming reality in civilian applications. For example, wireless sensor networks, small foot-print devices equipped with relatively short-range radios, are expected to offer valuable services for monitoring the environment, buildings, infrastructure, etc. 

However, the more important such wireless become, the more likely they are to be attacked. There is already rich literature on a variety of attacks against routing protocols, essentially seeking to deny communication across the multi-hop wireless network. While there is already a wide range of alternative schemes, recent results showed that we can still improve resilience significantly, even against powerful adversaries. 

Problem Statement

Our latest results show that there is still space to significantly improve over prior solutions.  Thus, the objective of this thesis (or theses, as it is possible that more than one spots be available) is to design a new protocol or enhancements or variants of state-of-the-art secure communication protocols, and perform detailed comparative performance evaluation and analysis with prior art. 

Candidates should have very good wireless networking knowledge, be fluent in programming, have experience with packet-level simulation, and be at least comfortable with security basics.

 

References

 

W. Galuba, P. Papadimitratos, M. Poturalski, K. Aberer, Z. Despotovic, and W. Kellerer, “Castor: Scalable Secure Routing for Ad-hoc Networks,” IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM), San Diego, CA, March 2010

 

P. Papadimitratos and Z.J. Haas, "Secure Data Communication in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Special Issue on Security in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, February 2006

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Your MSc Thesis Topic

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Background

Our research agenda includes a wide gammut of security, privacy, and networking problems. We are interested in enhancing the security of networked systems and the privacy of their users, and overall in designing trustwrothy, efficient, and effective netwroked systems.

Problem Statement

You are welcome to propose your own topic of MSc thesis. Please explain the background of your idea, specify a problem statement, and briefly discuss how it relates with our group's work and where you would like to perform the work with us (at KTH or a lab/company outside KTH. Please present your idea in a short proposal of max. 1.5 pages.

 

References

Please choose up to five most relevant references from the literature and add them to your proposal.

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Physical Layer Security in Wireless Systems

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Objective: Investigate physical layer security methods in wireless network

 

Background:

Physical layer security has recently become an emerging technique to complement and significantly improve the communication security of wireless networks. Compared to cryptographic approaches, physical layer security is a fundamentally different paradigm where secrecy is achieved by exploiting the physical layer properties of the communication system, such as thermal noise, interference, and the time-varying nature of fading channels. There have been a few methods of physical layer security where even the more physical, close to hardware properties of the systems are used to establish secure exchanges among nodes over wireless. The physical layer security in general is closer to the radio characteristics and its operation. Usually, the analysis aspects of physical layer security is more information theoretic and signal processing centric.

 

Project Description:

The master thesis work will require exploring various security related aspect of a signaling scheme between two users. Student will accomplish the following in the master thesis:
1. A literature survey in physical layer security subject area. It will involve understanding the existing ways of analyzing such schemes. Reading many research papers and preparing summary on them. 2. Simulate some existing physical layer security concepts from the literature to get a deeper understanding of such schemes. 3. Analyze the proposed physical layer security scheme for its effectiveness. 4. Student will also compare the proposed scheme with other schemes to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the scheme. 5. Document the findings and analysis of the work. 6. Write the thesis summarising the outcome of the work.

 

The student will have a seating place at Ericsson research and will have regular visits to KTH for discussions.

 

Required Skills:

- Desire to work on challenging research project and produce timely results
- Strong background in Signal Processing, Digital Communications
- Should have also done a basic course in security
- Proficiency in MATLAB. C++ Programming will be an advantage.

 

Contacts:

Panos Papadimitratos (KTH)
Satyam Dwivedi (Ericsson Research) (satyam.dwivedi@ericsson.com)

 

References

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