ZIVA CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: Strong RF network security necessitates a solution that spans the entire network stack fro

Description

Strong RF network security necessitates a solution that spans the entire network stack from the physical channel (PHY) all the way to the end-user. Wireless PHY security is particularly important due wireless'inherently vulnerable public channel. Current cryptographic security techniques operate exclusively at higher networking layers, leaving exposure at the lower level PHY. Ziva has developed a powerful and comprehensive approach called RF Security with Time Reciprocal Techniques (RESTRICT) which proposes to leverage wireless channel reciprocity, enhancing the security of the RF physical layer while simultaneously removing much of the burdensome key management and distribution requirements, thus creating a system that compliments existing cryptography at higher network layers, resulting in higher overall security. Removal of key management requirements results in a system that can better scale to the expected sizes of future wireless networks. RESTRICT's security benefits are not solely applicable to the military; commercial wireless networks are already massively scaled and contain a host of discovered (and most likely undiscovered) security vulnerabilities. Increasing the PHY layer based security of commercial networks has the potential to decrease information theft that will only increase with the larger and larger amount of commerce transacted over wireless networks.