Prof. Jing Deng's Research

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[Star]Selected Grants

[Star]Sponsor

Our research was partly supported by Microsoft Windows Phone Global Trial Program.

[Star]Research Areas

The following are selected publications. Please see publications for a full reverse chronicle order list.

[Star] Online Social Networks (back to top)

In online social networks, we focus on information propagation, fabricated user detection, shortest path discovery, as well as market analysis on e-commerce sites.

[Star] Security (back to top)

We focus on several research areas in security. These include key pre-distribution, misbehavior detection, covert transmission, and information assurance.

Our key pre-distribution research concentrates on how to distribute randomly-chosen key rings to wireless sensors prior to sensor deployment. The goal is to allow sensors to share common keys with a pre-defined probability. Security connectivity and vulnerability against node capture or compromise are two of the main concerns.

Since there are disconnected neighbors on the security plane after the random key pre-distribution techniques are used, we designed new mechanisms to efficiently deliver secret link keys through multiple multi-hop secured paths and common bridge node. With the use of information coding on multiple multi-hop secured paths, we were able to achieve "just enough" redundancy combating information leakage and alteration in transit. We also designed a technique termed Babel, using a single common bridge node to deliver secret information from a source to several insecure neighbors securely.

In the area of information assurance, we proposed techniques to mitigate the effects of routing misbehavior caused by selfish nodes or users. Malicious attackers may also attack control messages such as the CTS (Clear-To-Send) and ACK (Acknowledgment) packets. For instance, when ACK packets are jammed by adversaries, the data packet sender must re-transmit and this wastes the precious wireless channel. We developed a technique to randomize the ACK packet transmission within a window so that the adverse effect of ACK jamming is mitigated. We also investigated fusion assurance in wireless sensor networks and used a witness approach to improve data fusion assurance.

We designed a covert channel communication technique to take advantage of the splitting tree algorithm in collision resolution of Multiple Access Control protocols. Using our technique, the covert receivers do not need to know the identity of the covert senders, achieving mutual anonymous covert communication.

[Star] Networking (back to top)

In networking, we investigate Multiple Access Control (MAC), data forwarding, energy preservation, back-off control, and a spectrum of broader issues in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), and cognitive radio networks.

Our study of data delivery in large wireless networks such wireless sensor networks focused on communication energy conservation and balancing to extend network lifetime.

Our MAC study focused on how to improve the throughput performance of MAC schemes while maintaining fair access. Besides proposing new MAC schemes for MANETs, we are also investigating the benefits and drawbacks of using multiple subchannels instead of a single channel in MAC schemes in networks such as cognitive radio networks.

Energy conservation in wireless communication is a huge challenge. This is mainly because wireless devices are highly resource (energy) constrained. We investigated a broad range of problems in energy conservation in wireless networks, using techniques such as radio transmission range optimization and node sleeping.

Geographic routing and data forwarding can identify optimum route toward the final destination with help from geographic information from the source, the routers, and the destination. We investigated forwarding area optimization,

We published several papers on MAC scheme survey, design, and backoff control optimization. We have also designed a fairness index, based on the transmission sequence's variation from the fair access sequences, to evaluate the access pattern to the channel from all contending nodes.

It is essential to perform efficient message broadcast and to search for a known service in large wireless networks. We investigated different broadcast techniques and search schemes.