2018 Physics/Theoretical Colloquium
 
Thursday, July 26th , 2018
3:45 – 4:45 p.m.
Rosen Auditorium (TA-53, Bldg. 1)
Refreshments at 3:15pm
 
Speaker:   Prof. Aylin Yener
Pennsylvania State University
 
“Towards Design Principles of Next Generation Networked Systems: Information Security and Energy Sustainability”
Abstract: 
 
Next generation networked systems, e.g., internet-of-things, are expected to have several salient features that require new paradigms in related systems research areas. These systems are expected to contain a large number of connected nodes of various heterogeneous capabilities. They are expected to be dynamic, self-organizing networks that operate in the wireless medium. Operating in a vulnerable medium with many others of various trust levels, they call for new security measures, that are low overhead and scalable, yet powerful in their guarantees. As importantly, they are expected to be energy self-sufficient with extended life times. In this talk, we will focus on two system-level directions that are promising in each of these concerns: physical-layer security and energy harvesting communication networks.
 
Physical layer security aims to provide secure communication guarantees built in to the network design at its foundation. Having its roots in existence results in information theory and incubated in the information theory community for a decade, wireless physical layer security research has grown to be a vibrant area in communications, information theory, coding theory and signal processing for communications. In this talk, we will provide an overview of our results in physical layer security in the last decade, and the resulting design insights. These include insights related to inducing judicious interference for confidentiality, i.e., cooperative jamming, structured signaling, and multi-antenna signaling strategies. We will next provide directions of current and future interest in this research area, notably those that aim to bring the potential of information-theoretic security into real systems.
 
Energy harvesting communications offers the possibility of perpetual network operation without adverse effects on the environment and will lead to the green future of wireless. Energy harvesting brings new considerations, most notably, intermittency of available energy and its temporary storage. Communication and network theoretic design of such networks is an emerging area. In this talk, we will present a brief overview of our results in this emerging area, and the ensuing algorithmic design insights. The focus will be on transmission scheduling policies that amortize the energy expenditure for optimum system operation, highlighting the trade-offs arising from practical considerations in these systems, notably the role of the size and the storage efficiency of the battery.