Advanced Networking & Security Research Lab

Description

This project falls into the R&D category. We have built a prototype of body area networks in ANSLab. Three sensors (blood pressure, temperature and heart beat rate) continuously report patient's medical status. We have used mobile phone's communication channel to transmit the data to a cloud-based monitoring system. The system allows physicians to track their patients' medical status and also take actions (like tuning the medicine injection rate) via actuators.

Description

Security and privacy have become challenging as everything is going electronic. We now have best practices and standards for e-health such as HL7 which also addresses security and privacy in its annexes (PASS). Although the health system has gained some successes in automation of services and processes by IT means, security has usually been overlooked or not taken seriously, so has been privacy. This is a recently initiated research project which tries to address privacy concerns in e-health systems by developing new security architectures and access control models.

Description

Previously, we had independent systems whose security provisioning was challenging itself. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have emerged from the inter-connection of systems in the areas of power and energy, automotive, healthcare, aerospace, etc. This interconnection creates unprecedented threats and security challenges. In this research project, we aim to study an create general-purpose frameworks to secure CPSs. So far, we made a good progress in building models for intrusions as well as the system itself. We also have an eye on the data-driven approaches since sometimes the complexity of CPS systems cannot be coped with. This project is complemented by a few other projects in our Lab such as the "Smart Grid Security" and "IoT-TRUST".

Description

Stores and shopping malls are where the competition in pricing is usually high. In the IoT initiative we are running, we are working on smart electronic tags which can be updated without human interference. We are adopting the concepts used in wireless sensor networks to make the solution scalable and reduce power consumption. This is part of a bigger project under the IoT initiative which we call smart shopping mall.

Description

Finding a free parking space is getting harder and harder, especially in the crowded areas. We have all seen the classic solutions for spotting the free parking lots using green lights in under-cover parkings. But what about outdoors? In this R&D project, which is part of the IoT initiative, we are working on a technical yet inexpensive solution to this problem which is scalable to the extent that can be applied in large scales e.g. for a city.

Description

As part of the IoT initiative, we are working on a generic multi-purpose platform for service management/provisioning and the first pilot is going to be launched for restaurants. The food or service is ordered via an app or a web service which is backed by a cloud-based management system catering for the personal characteristics of customers e.g. location, favorites, allergies, etc. The solution can work both independently in a local restaurant, coffee shop or store or be extended to form a global network providing the customer with a wider range of options.

Description

This is part of the smart shopping mall project under the IoT initiative. We are using multiple technologies ranging from indoor positioning to data mining in order to getter a detailed view of customers' shopping behavior. The goal is to use the data to optimize the shopping experience and increase customer satisfaction. This is an R&D project for which we are developing prototypes as well as new technologies.

Status: Finished
$10000 AUD (secured)

Description

IOT-TRUST is a research project focusing on the models of trust management in IoT. Due to the decentralized and heterogeneous nature of IoT network, relying on trusted 3rd parties to evaluate the trust to unknown entities does not seem plausible. In this project we aim to construct a decentralized solution for trust management so that things can reliably get answers to their queries about the level of trust to potential service providers.

Description

Virtual Private Networks have been around for decades. There are numerous technologies for them and some have even been standardized. However, when it comes to reliability or loss and delay tolerance, not all perform well. In an R&D project, we are working on a cloud-based solution for a commercial-grade VPN with high resilience to loss and jitter while maintaining all the security requirements. We have made part of the project available online to show our commitment to the spread of knowledge:

lib_UT_TUN/TAP Git Project

Description

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies have become so popular that new variants of them are born almost everyday. However, the security of blockchains and their derivatives (such as smart contracts) has hardly been studied. Researchers have shown that some of the naive assumptions upon which many security guarantees have been built can be easily violated. Among these, we can refer to the assumption that says double spending does not happen because no player can secure over 50% of the network power. Now we know that this is wrong. In this project, we aim to both design new attacks and develop safeguards for blockchain security.

Description

Security is fundamental to the operation of smart grid and its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). This is a research project defined under the umbrella of IoT initiative which aims to provide state of the art lightweight security solutions for the future power grid. At the moment, we have focused on the key management and privacy issues in smart grid. We aim to reduce the high overhead and complexity of the current protocols while maintaining the same level of security.

Description

Internet of Things or Cyber Physical Systems, whatever you call these complex mixture of IT and physical systems, they have something unique which differentiates them from the traditional systems; They are not merely software inside computers whose only way of communicating with the real world is the display! They have actuators, robotic arms, electronic taps and relays, etc. which take physical actions in the real world. We noticed this change in our group and tried to capture it from the security perspective. This project of the IoT initiative is targeting physical security, mainly next generation smart surveillance technologies. For this purpose, ANSLab is collaborating with colleagues whose area of expertise is mechanical and control engineering. A robot is being built as a part of this R&D project.

Description

Smart home, smart car, smart toy, smart everything, it seems that it's becoming a trend. New ideas pop up every day, thanks to the ever-increasing connectivity, and of course economies of scale. In ANSLab, we have some efforts which are carried out by our members and students and can be categorized under the IoT initiative we have defined. We call it the "smart home" project, however, we sometimes deviate from the home part and go farther. We have done projects in the areas of vehicular networks, smart green house, smart toy and many more. There's no rule for this part and we let the members and students open the wings of their imagination and creativity. Below are just a few outputs of these projects.

Description

We are working on an interesting interdisciplinary R&D project to treat children with crossed eyes (minor Strabism condition) using virtual reality. This is a joint effort that requires software development, image processing, mini robots development and also medical expertise. Over four university academics are involved in this initiative. We have developed prototypes for the VR software on both Android and IOS and also 3-axis mini robots to mimic a human's eye movements. Some photos and videos are available for this intiative.