In response to the NSF Dear Colleague Letter 20-046, three teams recently received a supplement award to conduct advanced wireless experimental research in the NSF PAWR COSMOS testbed.

Prof. Leandros Tassiulas from Yale University received a supplement to his current NSF project NETS: Small: Optimizing Network Control and Function Virtualization in Internet of Things Architectures, which aims to leverage software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies in Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems, in order to help deliver new advanced IoT services in an efficient, scalable and manageable manner. The proposed research tasks include the experimental evaluation of SDN control architectures for 5G base stations and IoT gateways, as well as network slicing and service scheduling in IoT scenarios using the wireless and compute resources provided by the COSMOS testbed.

Prof. Ahmed S. Ibrahim from Florida International University (FIU) has been awarded supplemental funding to his current NSF project NETS: Small: Towards mmWave-based Vehicular Communications. This supplemental award focuses on conducting experimental research on the COSMOS platform. The goal of this supplemental award is to employ a reinforcement learning model, namely, combinatorial multiarmed bandit (CMAB), for simultaneous beamforming tracking of multiple moving objects at the 28GHz and 60GHz frequency bands making use of the COSMOS Sandbox-1 and X-Y tables.

Prof. Boulat Bash from the University of Arizona has been awarded a supplement to his NSF project FET: Small: Quantum-secure Quantum-enhanced Covert Networks over Generalized Bosonic Channels. Covert (or low probability of detection/intercept (LPD/LPI)) communication prevents detection of transmission by the adversary. The publications by the PI of the fundamental limits on rate of covert communication caused an explosion of research activity by the information and communication theory communities. However, most of this work focused on covert communications using classical security approaches. On the other hand, quantum methods offer significant advantages in both security and throughput in many settings. Thus, the PI is conducting a comprehensive investigation of applications of quantum information processing to covert communications. Indeed, the PI and colleagues characterized the performance of quantum-secure covert communication links, which are covert against an adversary that is only limited by the laws of quantum mechanics.  Although the PI used the bosonic channel model, which is the quantum-mechanical description of many practical networks (including optical, microwave, and radio frequency (RF)), experimental evaluation is needed to validate the possibility of practical quantum-secure covert communication.  Therefore, the goal of this supplemental project is to demonstrate quantum-secure covert communication using widely available equipment in conditions close to the “wild.” This would move quantum-secure covert communication outside of the realm of theoretical possibility. The outcome of this work will be the methodology for covert communication experiments on COSMOS and similar platforms, the experimentally achievable covert communication bit rates, and the system design used to attain them.