arXiv subjects

Gaurav S. Kasbekar

Publications and source records attributed to Gaurav S. Kasbekar.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Joint Optimization of Qubit Leasing and Quantum Circuit Distribution

We consider an agent, who would like to execute a given quantum circuit using resources leased from a set of quantum computers (QCs) connected by a quantum network. For this purpose, the agent needs to make the following four key decisions: (i) how many qubits to lease from each QC, (ii) at which QCs to store different circuit qubits in different time slots, (iii) at which QC to execute each gate in the circuit, and (iv) when to teleport qubits between different pairs of QCs. We refer to this problem facing the agent as the joint qubit leasing and quantum circuit distribution (JQLQCD) problem, and provide a comprehensive integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for it. We show that the JQLQCD problem is NP-complete. Next, we identify several special cases in which the problem can be optimally solved in closed form or via polynomial-time algorithms. Also, we propose a greedy algorithm with local search refinement to solve large instances of the general JQLQCD problem. Finally, using extensive numerical computations, we show that the proposed greedy algorithm achieves solutions within $15 \, \%$ of simulated annealing on general problem instances, while being $8-40\times$ faster, and that it attains the optimal solution in two of the special cases for which polynomial-time optimal algorithms are available.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Design and Performance Evaluation of Secure RF and WiFi-Based Communication in Drone Swarms via Testbed Implementation

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms rely on distributed coordination and cooperative communication to support scalable operations, extended coverage, and applications such as surveillance and real-time data exchange. Wireless technologies such as radio frequency (RF) and WiFi are widely used for UAV-to-UAV and UAV-to-ground control station (GCS) communication but introduce significant security challenges. MAVLink, the predominant communication protocol in UAV systems, provides message integrity and authentication but lacks built-in encryption, leaving telemetry traffic vulnerable to eavesdropping. In our previous work, we proposed MAVShield, a lightweight encryption framework for MAVLink communications. In this paper, MAVShield, AES-CTR, Speck-CTR, ChaCha20, and Rabbit are integrated into four custom-built UAVs to establish secure communication links over RF and WiFi channels. Their performance is evaluated through flight experiments using a UAV swarm testbed. Encrypted telemetry data enable autonomous formation control and collision avoidance during flight. For collision avoidance, we develop a modified artificial potential field (APF) algorithm that computes attractive and repulsive forces directly in geodetic coordinates, eliminating Cartesian transformations and reducing trajectory oscillations while avoiding local-minimum trapping. CPU utilization, memory consumption, and packet delivery ratio (PDR) are measured for each encryption scheme. Results show that MAVShield achieves performance comparable to unencrypted communication while outperforming AES-CTR, Speck-CTR, ChaCha20, and Rabbit in overall efficiency. Algebraic cryptanalysis and Wireshark-based traffic analysis demonstrate resistance to key-recovery attacks and protection of telemetry confidentiality. The results indicate that MAVShield is an efficient and secure solution for UAV swarm communication.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

Quantum-Resistant Authentication Scheme for RFID Systems Using Lattice-Based Cryptography

We propose a novel quantum-resistant mutual authentication scheme for radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Our scheme uses lattice-based cryptography and, in particular, achieves quantum-resistance by leveraging the hardness of the inhomogeneous short integer solution (ISIS) problem. In contrast to prior work, which assumes that the reader-server communication channel is secure, our scheme is secure even when both the reader-server and tag-reader communication channels are insecure. Our proposed protocol provides robust security against man-in-the-middle (MITM), replay, impersonation, and reflection attacks, while also ensuring unforgeability and preserving anonymity. We present a detailed security analysis, including semi-formal analysis and formal verification using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. In addition, we analyze the storage, computation, and communication costs of the proposed protocol and compare its security properties with those of existing protocols, demonstrating that our scheme offers strong security guarantees. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first quantum-resistant authentication protocol for RFID systems that comprehensively addresses the insecurity of both the reader-server and tag-reader communication channels.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Coalitional Game Framework for Multicast in Wireless Networks

We consider a wireless network in which there is a transmitter and a set of users, all of whom want to download a popular file from the transmitter. Using the framework of cooperative game theory, we investigate conditions under which users have incentives to cooperate among themselves to form coalitions for the purpose of receiving the file via multicast from the transmitter. First, using the solution concept of core, we investigate conditions under which it is beneficial for all users to cooperate, i.e., the grand coalition is stable. We provide several sets of sufficient conditions under which the core is non-empty as well as those under which the core is empty. Next, we use the concept of $\mathbb{D}_c$-stability to identify a set of sufficient conditions under which the users in the network form a certain fixed number of coalitions such that all the users within each coalition cooperate among themselves. Our analytical results show how the values of different system parameters, e.g., data rates of different users, transmit and receive power, file size, bandwidth cost, etc., influence stability properties of coalitions, and provide a systematic approach to evaluating cooperation of users for multicast. We also study cooperation among different users using numerical computations. The problem of coalition formation in the context of multicast addressed in this paper is fundamental, and our analysis provides new insights into the feasibility of stable cooperative multicast strategies, contributing to a deeper understanding of cooperation in wireless networks.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

Relay Selection in Wireless Networks as Restless Bandits

We consider a wireless network in which a source node needs to transmit a large file to a destination node. The direct wireless link between the source and the destination is assumed to be blocked. Multiple candidate relays are available to forward packets from the source to the destination. A holding cost is incurred for each packet stored at every relay in each time slot. The objective is to design a policy for selecting a relay in each time slot to which the source attempts to send a packet, so as to minimize the expected long-run time-averaged total packet holding cost at the relays. This problem is an instance of the restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) problem, which is provably hard to solve. We prove that this relay selection problem is Whittle-indexable, and propose a method to compute the Whittle index of each relay in every time slot. In each time slot, our relay selection policy transmits a packet to the relay with the smallest Whittle index. Using simulations, we show that the proposed policy outperforms the relay selection policies proposed in prior work in terms of average cost, delay, as well as throughput.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2025

A Novel Cipher for Enhancing MAVLink Security: Design, Security Analysis, and Performance Evaluation Using a Drone Testbed

We present MAVShield, a novel lightweight cipher designed to secure communications in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) using the MAVLink protocol, which by default transmits unencrypted messages between UAVs and Ground Control Stations (GCS). While existing studies propose encryption for MAVLink, most remain theoretical or simulation-based. We implement MAVShield alongside AES-CTR, ChaCha20, Speck-CTR, and Rabbit, and evaluate them on a real drone testbed. A comprehensive security analysis using statistical test suites (NIST and Diehard) demonstrates strong resistance of the novel cipher to cryptanalysis. Performance evaluation across key metrics including memory usage, CPU load, and battery power consumption, demonstrates that MAVShield outperforms existing algorithms and offers an efficient, real-world solution for securing MAVLink communications in UAVs.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Beam Scheduling in Millimeter Wave Networks Using the Whittle Index

We address the problem of beam scheduling for downlink transmissions in a single-cell millimeter wave (mmWave) network. The cell contains a mmWave base station (mBS) and its associated users. At the end of each time slot, a packet arrives into the queue of a user at the mBS with a certain probability. A holding cost is incurred for the packets stored in a user's queue at the mBS in every time slot. The number of simultaneous beams that the mBS can form to different users is less than the number of associated users. Also, a cost is incurred whenever a beam is formed from the mBS to a user. In a given time slot, a packet transmitted from the mBS to a user that has been assigned a beam is successfully received (respectively, not received) if the channel quality between the mBS and the user is good (respectively, bad). In every time slot, the mBS needs to assign the available beams to a subset of the users, in order to minimize the long-run expected average cost. This problem can be modeled as a restless multi-armed bandit problem, which is provably hard to solve. We prove the Whittle indexability of the above beam scheduling problem and propose a strategy to compute the Whittle index of each user. In each time slot, our proposed beam scheduling policy assigns beams to the users with the smallest Whittle indices. Using extensive simulations, we show that our proposed Whittle index-based beam scheduling policy significantly outperforms several scheduling policies proposed in prior work in terms of the average cost, average delay, as well as energy efficiency.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2024

Joint User and Beam Selection in Millimeter Wave Networks

We study the problem of selecting a user equipment (UE) and a beam for each access point (AP) for concurrent transmissions in a millimeter wave (mmWave) network, such that the sum of weighted rates of UEs is maximized. We prove that this problem is NP-complete. We propose two algorithms -- Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based and local interaction game (LIG) based UE and beam selection -- and prove that both of them asymptotically achieve the optimal solution. Also, we propose two fast greedy algorithms -- NGUB1 and NGUB2 -- for UE and beam selection. Through extensive simulations, we show that our proposed greedy algorithms outperform the most relevant algorithms proposed in prior work and perform close to the asymptotically optimal algorithms.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

Whittle Index Based User Association in Dense Millimeter Wave Networks

We address the problem of user association in a dense millimeter wave (mmWave) network, in which each arriving user brings a file containing a random number of packets and each time slot is divided into multiple mini-slots. This problem is an instance of the restless multi-armed bandit problem, and is provably hard to solve. Using a technique introduced by Whittle, we relax the hard per-stage constraint that each arriving user must be associated with exactly one mmWave base station (mBS) to a long-term constraint and then use the Lagrangian multiplier technique to convert the problem into an unconstrained problem. This decouples the process governing the system into separate Markov Decision Processes at different mBSs. We prove that the problem is Whittle indexable, present a scheme for computing the Whittle indices of different mBSs, and propose an association scheme under which, each arriving user is associated with the mBS with the smallest value of the Whittle index. Using extensive simulations, we show that the proposed Whittle index based scheme outperforms several user association schemes proposed in prior work in terms of various performance metrics such as average cost, delay, throughput, and Jain's fairness index.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2023

Node Cardinality Estimation in the Internet of Things Using Privileged Feature Distillation

The Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging as a critical technology to connect resource-constrained devices such as sensors and actuators as well as appliances to the Internet. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for node cardinality estimation in wireless networks such as the IoT and Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems, which uses the privileged feature distillation (PFD) technique and works using a neural network with a teacher-student model. The teacher is trained using both privileged and regular features, and the student is trained with predictions from the teacher and regular features. We propose node cardinality estimation algorithms based on the PFD technique for homogeneous as well as heterogeneous wireless networks. We show via extensive simulations that the proposed PFD based algorithms for homogeneous as well as heterogeneous networks achieve much lower mean squared errors in the computed node cardinality estimates than state-of-the-art protocols proposed in prior work, while taking the same number of time slots for executing the node cardinality estimation process as the latter protocols.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2023

Node Cardinality Estimation in a Heterogeneous Wireless Network Deployed Over a Large Region Using a Mobile Base Station

We consider the problem of estimation of the node cardinality of each node type in a heterogeneous wireless network with $T$ types of nodes deployed over a large region, where $T \ge 2$ is an integer. A mobile base station (MBS), such as that mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle, is used in such cases since a single static base station is not sufficient to cover such a large region. The MBS moves around in the region and makes multiple stops, and at the last stop, it is able to estimate the node cardinalities for the entire region. In this paper, two schemes, viz., HSRC-M1 and HSRC-M2, are proposed to rapidly estimate the number of nodes of each type. Both schemes have two phases, and they are performed at each stop. We prove that the node cardinality estimates computed using our proposed schemes are equal to, and hence as accurate as, the estimates that would have been obtained if a well-known estimation protocol designed for homogeneous networks in prior work were separately executed $T$ times. Closed-form expressions for the expected number of slots required by HSRC-M1 to execute and the expected energy consumption of a node under HSRC-M1 are computed. The problem of finding the optimal tour of the MBS around the region, which covers all the nodes and minimizes the travel cost of the MBS, is formulated and shown to be NP-complete, and a greedy algorithm is provided to solve it. Using simulations, it is shown that the numbers of slots required by the proposed schemes, HSRC-M1 and HSRC-M2, for computing node cardinality estimates are significantly less than the number of slots required for $T$ separate executions of the above estimation protocol for homogeneous networks.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

Distributed Probabilistic Congestion Control in LEO Satellite Networks

In a dense Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, using a centralized algorithm for minimum-delay routing would incur significant signaling and computational overhead. In this work, we exploit the deterministic topology of the constellation to calculate the minimum-delay path between any two nodes in a satellite network. We propose a distributed probabilistic congestion control scheme to minimize end-to-end delay, which is built on top of the existing Datagram Routing Algorithm (DRA). The decision to route packets is taken based on the latest traffic information received from neighbours. We provide an analysis of the congestion caused by a simplified DRA on a uniform infinite mesh of nodes. We compare the proposed congestion control mechanism with the existing congestion control used by the DRA via simulations, and show improvements over the latter.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

Efficacy of Asynchronous GPS Spoofing Against High Volume Consumer GNSS Receivers

The vulnerability of the Global Positioning System (GPS) against spoofing is known for quite some time. Also, the positioning and navigation of most semi-autonomous and autonomous drones are dependent on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals. In prior work, simplistic or asynchronous GPS spoofing was found to be a simple, efficient, and effective cyber attack against L1 GPS or GNSS dependent commercial drones. In this paper, first we make some important observations on asynchronous GPS spoofing attacks on drones presented in prior research literature. Then, we design an asynchronous GPS spoofing attack plan. Next, we test the effectiveness of this attack against GNSS receivers (high volume consumer devices based on Android mobile phones) of different capabilities and a commercial drone (DJI Mavic 2 Pro) under various conditions. Finally, we present several novel insights based on the results of the tests.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

Scheduling in Wireless Networks using Whittle Index Theory

We consider the problem of scheduling packet transmissions in a wireless network of users while minimizing the energy consumed and the transmission delay. A challenge is that transmissions of users that are close to each other mutually interfere, while users that are far apart can transmit simultaneously without much interference. Each user has a queue of packets that are transmitted on a single channel and mutually non interfering users reuse the spectrum. Using the theory of Whittle index for cost minimizing restless bandits, we design four index-based policies and compare their performance with that of the well-known policies: Slotted ALOHA, maximum weight scheduling, quadratic Lyapunov drift, Cella and Cesa Bianchi algorithm, and two Whittle index based policies from a recently published paper. We make the code used to perform our simulations publicly available, so that it can be used for future work by the research community at large.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

Application of Data Collected by Endpoint Detection and Response Systems for Implementation of a Network Security System based on Zero Trust Principles and the EigenTrust Algorithm

Traditionally, security systems for enterprises have implicit access based on strong cryptography, authentication and key sharing, wherein access control is based on Role Based Access Control (RBAC), in which roles such as manager, accountant and so on provide a way of deciding a subject's authority. However, years of post-attack analysis on enterprise networks has shown that a majority of times, security breaches occur intentionally or accidently due to implicitly trusted people of an enterprise itself. Zero Trust Architecture works on the principle of never granting trust implicitly, but rather continuously evaluating the trust parameters for each resource access request and has a strict, but not rigid, set of protocols for access control of a subject to resources. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems are tools that collect a large number of attributes in and around machines within an enterprise network to have close visibility into sophisticated intrusion. In our work, we seek to deploy EDR systems and build trust algorithms using tactical provenance analysis, threshold cryptography and reputation management to continuously record data, evaluate trust of a subject, and simultaneously analyze them against a database of known threat vectors to provide conditional access control. However, EDR tools generate a high volume of data that leads to false alarms, misdetections and correspondingly a high backlog of tasks that makes it infeasible, which is addressed using tactical provenance analysis and information theory.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

A Wireless Intrusion Detection System for 802.11 WPA3 Networks

Wi-Fi (802.11) networks have become an essential part of our daily lives; hence, their security is of utmost importance. However, Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3), the latest security certification for 802.11 standards, has recently been shown to be vulnerable to several attacks. In this paper, we first describe the attacks on WPA3 networks that have been reported in prior work; additionally, we show that a deauthentication attack and a beacon flood attack, known to be possible on a WPA2 network, are still possible with WPA3. We launch and test all the above (a total of nine) attacks using a testbed that contains an enterprise Access Point (AP) and Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Our experimental results show that the AP is vulnerable to eight out of the nine attacks and the IDS is unable to detect any of them. We propose a design for a signature-based IDS, which incorporates techniques to detect all the above attacks. Also, we implement these techniques on our testbed and verify that our IDS is able to successfully detect all the above attacks. We provide schemes for mitigating the impact of the above attacks once they are detected. We make the code to perform the above attacks as well as that of our IDS publicly available, so that it can be used for future work by the research community at large.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

Secure, Anonymity-Preserving and Lightweight Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for Home Automation IoT Networks

Home automation Internet of Things (IoT) systems have recently become a target for several types of attacks. In this paper, we present an authentication and key agreement protocol for a home automation network based on the ZigBee standard, which connects together a central controller and several end devices. Our scheme performs mutual authentication between end devices and the controller, which is followed by device-to-device communication. The scheme achieves confidentiality, message integrity, anonymity, unlinkability, forward and backward secrecy, and availability. Our scheme uses only simple hash and XOR computations and symmetric key encryption, and hence is resource-efficient. We show using a detailed security analysis and numerical results that our proposed scheme provides better security and anonymity, and is more efficient in terms of computation time, communication cost, and storage cost than schemes proposed in prior works.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2020

Efficient, Flexible and Secure Group Key Management Protocol for Dynamic IoT Settings

Many Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios require communication to and data acquisition from multiple devices with similar functionalities. For such scenarios, group communication in the form of multicasting and broadcasting has proven to be effective. Group Key Management (GKM) involves the handling, revocation, updation and distribution of cryptographic keys to members of various groups. Classical GKM schemes perform inefficiently in dynamic IoT environments, which are those wherein nodes frequently leave or join a network or migrate from one group to another over time. Recently, the `GroupIt' scheme has been proposed for GKM in dynamic IoT environments. However, this scheme has several limitations such as vulnerability to collusion attacks, the use of computationally expensive asymmetric encryption and threats to the backward secrecy of the system. In this paper, we present a highly efficient and secure GKM protocol for dynamic IoT settings, which maintains forward and backward secrecy at all times. Our proposed protocol uses only symmetric encryption, and is completely resistant to collusion attacks. Also, our protocol is highly flexible and can handle several new scenarios in which device or user dynamics may take place, e.g., allowing a device group to join or leave the network or creation or dissolution of a user group, which are not handled by schemes proposed in prior literature. We evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol via extensive mathematical analysis and numerical computations, and show that it outperforms the GroupIt scheme in terms of the communication and computation costs incurred by users and devices.

cs.NI↗