Adaptation, optimization, and security of Wi-Fi networks

The wide deployment of Wi-Fi serves for smart homes, intelligent transport systems (ITS), healthcare, and so on.  Such ubiquitous deployment raises coverage, capacity, efficiency, and security concerns about Wi-Fi networks. Though the continuous evolvement of Wi-Fi has addressed above concerns to certain extent, there are some remaining spots that have not been well tackled.  Firstly, adaptation of certain Wi-Fi protocols is necessary to support user-defined functionality, asymmetric full-duplex communications, and opportunistic transmissions. Moreover, channel access fairness should be regulated to guarantee the overall throughput as the spectrum is too limited for dense deployment and heavy traffic. Finally, Wi-Fi networks operating on unlicensed band are exposed to various Physical-layer and medium access control (MAC) layer attacks which motivates us to develop defense mechanisms. 

Our research agenda includes but not limited to following tasks:

  • Adaptive Preamble Embedding for User-defined Functionalities
  • Attacks and Countermeasures against the Wi-Fi Networks
  • Mechanisms for Fair Channel Access and Aggressive Behavior Detection
  • Provisioning QoS in Wi-Fi Systems with Asymmetric Full-Duplex Communications
  • Autonomous and Scheduled Transmissions in Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) Systems
  • Throughput-Fairness Tradeoff with Adaptive Clear Channel Assessment
  • Adaptive Cross-Layer Protocol Design for Opportunistic WLANs over TVWS

Related Publications:

  • Zhengguang Zhang and Marwan Krunz, “Preamble injection and spoofing attacks in Wi-Fi networks,” accepted for the IEEE GLOBECOM Conference, Madrid, Spain, Dec. 2021.
  • Amir Yazdani Abyaneh and Marwan Krunz, “CWmin estimation and collision identification in Wi-Fi systems,” accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS), Oct. 2021 (invited paper).
  • Zhengguang Zhang, Hanif Rahbari, and Marwan Krunz, “Adaptive Preamble Embedding with MIMO to Support User-defined Functionalities in WLANs,” accepted to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, May 2021.
  • Zhengguang Zhang, Hanif Rahbari, and Marwan Krunz, “Expanding the role of preambles to support user-defined functionality in MIMO-based WLANs,” Proc. of the IEEE INFOCOM 2020 Conference, Online, July 2020, pp. 1191-1200.
  • Amirhossein Yazdani Abyaneh, Mohammed Hirzallah, and Marwan Krunz, “Intelligent-CW: AI-based framework for controlling contention window in WLANs,” Proc. of the IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN’19), Newark, Nov. 2019.
  • Mohammed Hirzallah, Wessam Afifi, and Marwan Krunz, “Provisioning QoS in Wi-Fi systems with asymmetric full-duplex communications,” IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 942-953, Dec. 2018.
  • Mohammed Hirzallah, Wessam Afifi, and Marwan Krunz, "Joint mode and rate adaptation for asymmetric full-duplex communications in WLANs," Proc. of the IEEE ICC 2018 Conf., Kansas City, MO, 2018, pp. 1-7.
  • Hanif Rahbari and Marwan Krunz, "Exploiting frame preamble waveforms to support new physical-layer functions in OFDM-based 802.11 systems," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC), vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 3775-3786, June 2017.
  • Hanif Rahbari and Marwan Krunz, "Full frame encryption and modulation obfuscation using channel-independent preamble identifier," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security, vol. 11, issue 12, pp. 2732-2747, Dec. 2016.
  • Hanif Rahbari and Marwan Krunz, "Rolling preambles: Mitigating stealthy FO estimation attacks in OFDM-based 802.11 systems," Proc. of the IEEE CNS 2016 Conference, Philadelphia, Oct. 2016.
  • Wessam Afifi, Enrico-Henrik Rantala, Esa Tuomaala, Sayantan Choudhury, and Marwan Krunz, "Throughput-fairness tradeoff evaluation for next-generation WLANs with adaptive clear channel assessment," Proc. of the IEEE ICC 2016 Conference (Mobile and Wireless Networking Symposium), May 2016.
  • Hanif Rahbari, Marwan Krunz, and Loukas Lazos, "Swift jamming attack on frequency offset estimation: The Achilles' heel of OFDM systems," IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), vol. 15, issue 5, pp. 1264-1278, May 2016.
  • Hanif Rahbari, Marwan Krunz, and Loukas Lazos, "Security vulnerability and countermeasures of frequency offset correction in 802.11a systems," Proc. of the IEEE INFOCOM 2014 Conference, 1015-1023, Toronto, April 2014.
  • Mohammad Abdel Rahman, Harish Kumar Shankar, and Marwan Krunz, "Adaptive cross-layer protocol design for opportunistic WLANs over TVWS," Proc. of the IEEE DySPAN 2014 Conference, (Technology Track), pp. 519-530, McLean, VA, April 2014.