• Compared with wired network, wireless ad hoc networks are more vulnerable to malicious attacks as well as failures due to their unique features, such as constrained energy, error-prone communication media and highly dynamic network topology. Especially, every node (or end user) may have quite different “social” behaviors. For example, selfish nodes refuse to forward packets for other nodes in order to save their own energy. While, with no intention for energy-saving, malicious nodes may launch all kinds of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks by replaying, reordering or/and dropping packets from time to time, and even by sending fake routing messages.
• As we known, the cooperation of mobile nodes is critical to the normal operation of multi-hop wireless networks, thus all aforementioned misbehaviors have prompted open challenges to many issues, such as protocol design, service availability, and topology management, in mobile ad hoc networks. Therefore, we are investigating node behaviors in order to design a general node model so that we can have an in-depth understanding on the evolution of different node behaviors and their impact to network survivability. The modeling and analysis of node behaviors will yield new insights into the analysis and design of resilient wireless multi-hop networks.

Publications

Fei Xing and Wenye Wang, " On the survivability of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks in the Presence of Routing Malfunction," in preparation for journal submission. April 2007.

Fei Xing and Wenye Wang, " Modeling and Analysis of Connectivity in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks with Misbehaving Nodes," in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC '07), Vol. 4, pp. 1879-1884, June 2006.

• Understanding the link and path stochastic properties can greatly help researchers design mobility-resilient MANETs, maximize routing performance, optimize topology control, and achieve the desired network performance.
• We are focused on developing new models to study link and path properties under the circumstances such as varying radio link conditions, node mobility, geographical constraints, and interferences. In particular, we aim to study probabilistic and statistical properties of link/path lifetime, link/path reliability in the presence of node or link failures due to radio channels and node mobility. Currently, we are developing an analytical model of the reliability problem in wireless ad hoc networks, as well as algorithms for computing two-terminal reliability in mobile ad hoc networks.

Publications

Ming Zhao and Wenye Wang, "Analyzing Topology Dynamics in Ad Hoc Networks Using A Smooth Mobility Model," in the Proc. of IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), March 2007.

Shawqi Kharbash and Wenye Wang, "Computing Two-Terminal Reliability in Mobile Ad hoc Networks," in the Proc. of IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), March 2007.

• Mobility modeling is a fundamental issue in wireless mobile networks, which has a significant impact on research areas, such as routing protocol design, network performance evaluation, link and path lifetime analysis, network connectivity study and network topology control. Therefore, we are actively working on how to design a mobility model which can effectively mimic smooth transient moving behaviors of mobile nodes and have the desired steady state properties, such as stable node speed and uniform node distribution, is a challenging issue. We aim to design a mobility model which can i) achieve the above goals, ii) integrate a variety of nice properties of existing mobility models and iii) be flexible to mimic the realistic network scenarios.
• In order to provide better performance and quality of service, we develop a framework to capture user mobility profile (UMP) which is a combination of historic records and predictive patterns of mobile terminals and to estimate service patterns and locations of mobile users, including descriptions of location, mobility, and service requirements. We aimed to develop new mobility model to characterize not only stochastic behaviors, but historical records and predictive future locations of mobile users as well, that is, to incorporate aggregate history and current system parameters to acquire UMP. We are also interested in the characterization of mobility uncertainty and its impact on network topology.

Publications

Ming Zhao and Wenye Wang, "A Unified Mobility Model for Analysis and Simulation of Mobile Wireless Networks," submitted for journal publications, December 2006.

Ming Zhao and Wenye Wang, "A Novel Semi-Markov Smooth Mobility Model for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks," in the Proc. of IEEE GLOBECOM'06, (Best Paper Award), San Francisco, CA, November 2006.

Ian F. Akyildiz and Wenye Wang, "A Predictive User Mobility Profile Framework for Wireless Multimedia Networks," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 1021-1035. Dec. 2004.

• Our recent work in this direction examines how vulnerabilities, resilience, and robustness emerge in mobile and wireless systems when protocol weaknesses, user-facing security mechanisms, and adversarial mobility behaviors interact with network performance. We study authentication flaws in LTE/5G access, identity spoofing and denial-of-service attacks in LTE networks, permission authorization risks in mobile platforms, and attack dynamics in vehicular networks under evacuation scenarios.
• By combining protocol analysis, attack implementation, measurement, and performance modeling, these efforts aim to understand how practical threats propagate through communication systems and to identify design enhancements that improve service continuity, trustworthiness, and robustness in next-generation mobile networks.

Publications

Teng Fei and Wenye Wang, "The Vulnerability and Enhancement of AKA Protocol for Mobile Authentication in LTE/5G Networks," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 22, no. 11, pp. 8320-8335, 2021.

Teng Fei and Wenye Wang, "LTE is Vulnerable: Implementing Identity Spoofing and Denial-of-Service Attacks in LTE Networks," in Proc. of IEEE GLOBECOM, December 2019.

Mingkui Wei, Zhuo Lu, and Wenye Wang, "On Modeling and Understanding Vehicle Evacuation Attacks in VANETs," in Proc. of IEEE ICC, June 2017.

Mingkui Wei, Xi Gong, and Wenye Wang, "Claim What You Need: A Text-Mining Approach on Android Permission Request Authorization," in Proc. of IEEE GLOBECOM, December 2015.