Ricerc@Sapienza

The defining features of the Internet of Things systems and networks, including high network density, the presence of heterogeneous devices characterized by the availability of multiple Radio Access Technologies, the integration between user networks and critical infrastructure systems, and the presence of Device-2-Device links beyond the traditional Device-2-Infrastructure communications, pose new, challenging security issues, calling for new strategies in order to ensure authentication of users/devices and confidentiality/integrity of information. An additional feature of the 5G radio interfaces that are expected to be an integral part of IoT deployment can however support the design of such new strategies: this is the support for high accuracy indoor positioning.
The SecurPos project investigates the interaction between indoor positioning and security in 5G IoT systems. The project addresses this topic from a twofold point of view. On one hand, SecurPos aims at defining new algorithms for indoor positioning in 5G systems that take into account the security threats inherent to the novel network scenarios introduced by the IoT paradigm, and take advantage of the features of 5G devices in order to face such threats while guaranteeing the required accuracy and availability of position information. On the other hand, SecurPos assesses how position information can be used as an additional security feature, in particular for IoT devices that do not possess the hardware and processing capabilities required to implement advanced physical layer security strategies.
The theoretical analysis leading to the design of positioning algorithms and security strategies is supported by performance evaluation carried out by means of computer simulations as well as of experiments run on an indoor positioning testbed supporting multiple wireless technologies.