Software-Defined Radio and Extensible Sensor Platform
Software-defined radio (SDR) refers to a radio device whose function is not fixed in hardware, but rather can be programmed by software using digital signal processing (DSP) techniques. The analog portions of the software-defined radio are kept to a minimum, allowing the radio to become a cellular telephone, a GPS receiver, an amateur packet radio, an 802.11 network node, or any other sort of radio transmitting or receiving device. The SDR Project developed a PC-based transceiver to facilitate further research and development of SDR, including new front-end hardware, algorithms, protocols, security, and operational visualization.

The Extensible Sensor Platform (ESP) is a merging of sensors and SDR. Similar to standard sensor platforms, the ESP can be used in a wide range of applications. For example, tiny ESP sensors equipped with SDR could be deployed to gather data for climate research or monitor pollution in the atmosphere. In the realm of biological research, they could be attached to animals to gain insight into their environment, habits, and health. However, its SDR capabilities extend its communication capabilities in a number of useful ways. The sensor platform can use its SDR to communicate in ways normal sensors cannot, utilizing any available data communications infrastructure.

These projects are closely linked in that the ESP project utilizes radio frequency (RF) front-end hardware developed for the SDR project. DSP algorithms and software architecture research and development will migrate to the radio portions of the ESP devices.
 
Project Leads
Donna Cox, NCSA

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The National Center for Advanced Secure Systems Research NCASSR) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a multi-institutional cybersecurity research team. NCASSR focuses basic and applied research necessary to develop next generation information security technologies that address national cybersecurity needs. NCASSR is led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).


SELS 0.7 released
Secure Email List Services (SELS) is an open source software for creating and developing secure email list services among user communities.
 
Strong community engagement strengthens cybersecurity research and development
NCASSR-supported exploratory research at NCSA and elsewhere has sparked additional external funding and development opportunities as well as successful deployment and adoption by users ranging from the defense sector to state law enforcement to the utilities industry.
 
NCASSR Collaborator Goes To Washington
Carl Gunter, a professor in the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science and a project lead on NCASSR-supported work involving adaptive, secure messaging, recently spoke to an audience of congressional staffers and lobbyists on Capitol Hill regarding ways to address a variety of critical cybersecurity issues in areas such as healthcare and energy distribution.