Enabling coverage-Bounding Communication with visible light for secure proximity interactions

BoundCom targets at conceiving a Visual and Coverage-bounding wireless communication system for secure proximity interactions. “Visual” means that the communication range and process are visible to users, representing an important and user-friendly side-channel for secure wireless communication. “Coverage-bounding” means that the communication coverage can be controlled accurately in 3-dimensions. BoundCom will provide secure wireless communication both psychologically (visible to users) and technically (nodes can only communicate with each other within the coverage delimited by themselves). It will be complementary to existing wireless communications, e.g., NFC and Wi-Fi, and can be used in many applications to provide secure communication, especially those that require secure proximity interactions. The fundamental challenges in BoundCom are how to bound the communication coverage accurately and how to guarantee that the nodes are physically within the delimited coverage. To enable BoundCom, I will mainly exploit the visibility and directionality properties of LED lights. I will design a framework for this wireless communication system, design protocols based on localization and classification (via sensing) to enhance the system security, exploit its scalabilities, build proof-of-concept testbeds to evaluate the performance, and develop an inter-disciplinary application for a demonstration.