Eric Burger @ Virginia Tech

Interested? Be sure to review what it takes to work for me. If these projects look interesting, reach out to me.

Current Projects

Proposed Projects

Other Research Projects

Past Projects

Current Projects

Next G and 5G: Spectrum Sharing (SWIFT ASCENT)

We are developing a generalized context-aware spectrum sharing and interference analysis tool that provides a set of dynamic policies and extends the state of the art of spectrum policy regulation. Today, the current understanding of ”dynamic” spectrum sharing is embodied by the existing CBRS SAS model. That model has a fixed notion of regulatory policy, namely the fixed hierarchy where Federal users get first priority, then paid users, followed by unlicensed users. Moreover, spectrum repurposing in the U.S. tends to be made with decade-long time horizons. The heart of our proposed work is its ability to apply multiple contextual aspects of the environment for frequency assignments. The dynamic physical environment, such as weather, new buildings, summer/winter foliage, etc. can significantly impact propagation in these bands. Moreover, a dynamic tool for spectrum sharing must take into account future technological and policy choices. Without a dynamic tool for spectrum sharing, users cannot take advantage of the continuing improvement in radio technology until the 10+ year regulatory cycle plays out. Specifically, this research will deliver a tool set for analyzing the impact of various regulatory policies on spectrum usage, sharing, and possibility of harmful interference to primary users, especially passive users. This tool set incorporates analysis for efficient spectrum sharing and harmonious coexistence with active and passive users in geographic space, including altitude, as well as in temporal space, considering, for example, satellite orbits, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or special events.

National Security / Emergency Preparedness Communications

Would you like to know how the communications network really works? Want to get to play with the latest 5G mobile phones, embedded computers, hardware key storage modules, 911 calling, or just learn what this list means? I will need a number of people to work on a project relating to emergency communications, including video and data. Sometimes the call absolutely, positively has to go through!

Obfuscated 5G (ASTRALinQ)

We are developing a universal radio adapter that will enable seamless and secure operation through non-cooperative indigenous 5G networks. This is a multi-university project; our part is around data hiding, also known as obfuscation. We will be using stenographic technologies embedded in popular applications to blend in with local traffic. The obsfucator will be integrated in with a physical radio adapter that runs from HF through Ku bands for military users and UHF through EHF for 5G users.

Cross-administrator Zone Management

This project explores the feasibility and potential of DLT-based ZMSs and develops a secure coordination mechanism to facilitate collaboration among multiple ZMS administrators. The fundamental infrastructure of an automated, secure, and highly spectral-efficient dynamic spectrum allocation platform is constructed by harnessing DLT and smart contract technologies. The focus of this project revolves around policies and enabling technologies for privacy- preserving information exchange and Byzantine-resilient collaboration among participating ZMS administrators. Essential data that must be exchanged among ZMS administrators will be identified. A lightweight (i.e., time bounded), secure, reliable, and trustworthy DLT-based protocol for assignments will be developed. An off-chain secure contract execution approach will be explored to reduce the protocol execution complexity. Privacy-enhancing technologies stemming from multiparty computation and trusted execution environments will be explored to safeguard the privacy of both ZMS administrator’s proprietary data and algorithms and their customers while simultaneously enabling the unique policy requirements set forth by the FCC regulations, such as contiguous channel assignments and contiguous geographic frequency assignment.

Efficient and On-Demand Spectrum Coexistence for Satellite-Terrestrial Systems

The escalating demand for wireless communications, fueled by emerging applications, has led to a crit- ical limitation in the availability of radio spectrum. The development of coexistence schemes that enable multiple systems to operate concurrently on the same frequency band has emerged as a solution for CBRS and WiFi 6E, among others. These schemes aim to ensure that each system can function properly without causing significant interference to others. The objective of this project is to design efficient spectrum coexis- tence schemes for satellite and terrestrial systems. A unique challenge arises due to the presence of passive users in satellite systems, whereas previous designs have primarily focused on active users. Consequently, our design must incorporate specific considerations to cater to the requirements of passive users.

Proposed Projects

Fuzzing for Reliable Open RAN

One of the objections to Open RAN systems is with more exposed interfaces the attack surface grows. That is a philosophical argument, given proprietary systems have the same or more interfaces. However, there is still a need to ensure reliability of the decomposed network. This project uses AI/ML to generate intelligent fuzzed test vectors to exercise Open RAN systems and components.

Resilient and Reliable ML for Wireless Systems

5G and more especially 6G fundamentally relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning. However, there are well-known attacks as well as it being well-known that attacks may be really hard to detect. This project will investigate and develop tools and architectures that are reliable and resilient. If you are interested in poisoning, redundant majority-stake systems, high-reliability, and really cool ML applications, this project could be for you.

Closing the Digital Divide - Accessibility and Affordability

The FCC says nearly the entire country has access to high-speed broadband access. Measurements by Microsoft, Akamai, and Ookla, to name a few, tell a different story. Is someone lying? It turns out that No - both are right. This project is building tools to help SLTT practitioners - i.e., folks with little formal engineering training, extremely broad job scope, and almost no budget - figure out how to expand broadband use.

If you are interested in wireless access technologies, wired technologies, economics, or policy, there is a lot of opportunities to make a difference!

Other Projects

Next G wireless networks

Protocols, applications, services, and policy for future wireless networks, 5G and Beyond. Some of this work is in association with the Next G Alliance. You would get to participate in the creation of new standards for reestablishing North American leadership in wireless networking technology, applications, services, and manufacturing.

Distributed Oracles

What is truth? How do we get information from the real world onto a blockchain? This project looks at the epistemological, computer science, and game theoretic aspects of encouraging distributed actors to tell the truth about real world events. Some events are trivially easy, like a Bitcoin transaction on the bitcoin blockchain. Some events are unknowable, like what number I am thinking of this instant. However, for the events in between, we are characterizing events to create an ontology of knowable and unknowable events and a framework, model, and prototype of bringing knowable events onto a blockchain.

Blockchain

Use of blockchain for identity management. Economics of blockchain versus conventional, distributed computing. Which legal contracts are computable on the blockchain? The policy, legal, and economic impacts of blockchain.

Cyber Threat Intelligence Information Exchange

Whatever is necessary to improve the security posture of the world’s networks, whether attacked by nation states, professional organized crime, lone hackers, or confused users.

Policy and Governance for Secure Communications

How to ensure compliance with applicable regulations, fiduciary responsibility, and legal requirements to interconnect enterprises with security or compliance responsibilities.

Past Projects

Economics of Illegal Robocall Mitigation

The FCC has implemented many regulations requiring the deployment of cryptographically secure caller identification signaling in the all-IP network. This enables the carrier to put a notation on the call saying the number was verified. This notation is the “Caller Verified” or green check mark on mobile phones and “[v]” in some networks for landline Caller-ID. However, subscribers still might not answer a verified call from a number they do not recognize. The issue is the subscriber may want to answer the call. It could be a store trying to schedule a delivery, a school calling about a school closure, or a bank calling about a suspicious charge. One proposal to address this is to have the carrier display the caller’s logo, or brand, to the subscriber when the call arrives. The presumption is that if the subscriber does not recognize the caller’s number, they will recognize their logo.

This project will look at the economic impact of branded calling on answer rates, and how the answer rates impact the caller’s business.

DeFi Liquidity State of the Art

Examine the status quo of liquidity pools and existing automated market makers across different decentralized exchanges.

DeFi Arbitrage State of the Art

Most liquidity models presume arbitrage as a mechanism to provide fair pricing to realize liquidity. However, experience has shown that tokens with different characteristics have different arbitrage opportunities than tokens with similar characteristics, resulting in different distributed exchanges using vastly different algorithms, usually with the goal of reducing slippage between the tokens in the pool. Examine the arbitrage state of the art by collecting and analyzing structural characteristics of various arbitrage schemes between different implementations.

Return on Investment in a DoD Environment

Interested in how technology businesses market high technology products and services? Interested in how the Department of Defense’s needs are different from commercial enterprises? Interested in how technology gets adopted? The goal of this project is to improve the defense acquisition process to enable better acquisition decisions by adapting the best practices of the private sector and non-DoD public sector’s Return on Investment (ROI) calculations to reflect the unique, non-monetary components the DoD considers as its ‘return.’ For example, more effective stealth, faster delivery of technology to the battle field, and more complete data for analysts do not necessarily have a dollar value, but have immense value to the DoD mission.

Except for pure enterprise IT projects addressing classical enterprise IT functions of the DoD, such as payroll or non-warfighter travel, there does not exist a generic framework for ROI calculations that take into account the unique mission values for DoD acquisition. This project attempts to address this need. Moreover, we hypothesize that a standard framework for evaluating ROI may allow acquisition personnel to accelerate the development, letting, and award of contracts.

I am always open for interesting project proposals that we can market to extramural funders and clearly am open for independent study and thesis work.