The widespread development of communication networks has profoundly transformed our society, resulting in a significant increase in productivity and efficiency. However, the benefits of this increased connectivity are today also counterbalanced by the ease with which malicious individuals can interfere or tamper with sensitive data and information. The past decade has thus witnessed a growing concern for the issues of privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of communications. In many instances, the users in a communication network may now wish to communicate without being detected by others, to maintain privacy, avoid attacks, or escape the attention of regulatory entities monitoring the network. This project takes a distinctive approach to lay the foundation of a comprehensive framework, enabling both the analysis of the fundamental information-theoretic limits and the development of explicit low-complexity algorithms for stealth communication.
The project investigates two interrelated research tasks. In the first task, the researchers will develop information-theoretic tools enabling the systematic analysis of stealth communications over a wide range of channel models; this includes architectures with and without secret keys, as well as wired and wireless networks, in which privacy and un-detectability play a central role. In the second task, the researchers will design low-complexity algorithms from error-control codes for stealth communication, which will be tested on experimental prototypes. Additional activities related to the project include, dissemination of research results in various forms and mentoring of students. The proposed research has the potential to enable advances in the implementation of provably stealth communication systems and lead to novel cost-effective techniques for the the generation of stealth communication system.
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