ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Alperen Yasar

ECE PhD Prospectus Defense: Alperen Yasar

Title: Embedding Physical-Layer Security into Resource-Constrained Analog Sensors: Applications in Biosensing

Presenter: Alperen Yasar

Advisor: Prof. Rabia Tugce Yazicigil

Chair: Prof. David Starobinski Committee: Prof. Rabia Tugce Yazicigil, Prof. Ajay Joshi, Prof. David Starobinski, Lei Poo

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tcPB6NgAAAAJ&hl=en

Abstract: Sensor communication utilizing controllers today remains largely unprotected. Most analog front-end sensors are severely constrained in power and computing resources to keep costs low. Sensor manufacturers often leave security to the equipment manufacturers who integrate the sensors, but this design consideration is typically treated as an afterthought, leaving vulnerabilities exposed. While some sensors can be physically protected by virtue of their close proximity to the controller device, there are many remote sensing use cases where implementing full digital encryption with a cryptographic engine and microcontroller at the sensor adds excessive power overhead. We present Secure Delta-Sigma Modulator (SDSM), a low-power, low-complexity hardware scheme that can be incorporated directly into a sensor to provide embedded physical-layer security. SDSM was tested under various attack scenarios and adapted to multimodal biosensing applications within bioreactors for sustainable biomanufacturing. This monitoring system requires low power consumption to support a long lifetime within the bioreactor, which makes conventional security approaches unfeasible.