News on Drakkar Group - LIG

RIOT Summit 2026

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

11th get-together of the friendly Operating System for the Internet of Things

The 1st Ariel OS Community Day (1AD)

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

GDR RSD — 2026 general meeting

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The 2026 GDR RSD general meeting will be held in Grenoble in March 2026. Further details to follow.

See the event page.

Thesis defense — Olivier Hureau — December 19th

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

DNS, Gateway to a more secured Internet #

The defence will take place on Tuesday 19 December 2024 at 14:00 at the Maison du doctorat Jean Kuntzmann, 110 rue de la Chimie, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères.

Abstract #

As the Internet has grown, so have its security challenges. This thesis examines how the Domain Name System (DNS), as a trusted infrastructure, can strengthen Internet security. It focuses on two protocols: DMARC, which addresses the lack of protection against sender-address spoofing in email, and RDAP, which provides secure, standardized access to domain name registration data.

Thesis defense — Ben C. Benjamin — October 1st

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Measuring, Analysing and Mitigating Malicious Activities on the Internet: A Study on DNS, Open Proxies and Domain Name Defensive Registrations #

Will take place on the 1st of October 2024 at 9:00 am at the main Auditorium in the IMAG building.

Abstract #

The landscape of cybersecurity is constantly evolving as new and complex threats emerge. To address the challenges posed by these threats, we perform a series of measurements, analyze the results, and recommend strategies to mitigate malicious activities on the Internet more, with a particular focus on the Domain Name System (DNS) and open proxies.

Thesis defense — Yevheniya Nosyk — November 26th

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Domain Name System: a Tool and a Target for Internet-Wide Measurements #

Will take place on Tuesday, 26 November 2024 at 14:00 at the main Auditorium in the IMAG building.

Abstract #

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the oldest Internet protocols to date, with its history dating back to 1987 when it was standardized in its current form. As the Internet was growing at a rapid pace, there was a need for an extensible, interoperable, and distributed naming scheme to replace the plain text file with the address to human-readable name mappings. Despite DNS not considering security aspects at first, it was subsequently amended to provide origin authentication, data integrity, and transaction privacy. It also remains highly flexible to accommodate future protocol extensions. DNS has largely outgrown in original purpose and size, and it is now an extremely complex system with over 460 Requests for Comments (RFCs), 362.4 million registered domain names, and millions of authoritative nameservers and recursive resolvers. It is also one of the most critical components of the Internet, as more and more operations are preceded by a domain name lookup. Such an increasing reliance on DNS makes it an attractive attack target, an efficient attack tool, and a victim of collateral damage. Given its scale, DNS is becoming highly opaque and, therefore, difficult to comprehend and characterize. As a result, one cannot prevent outages, misuse, and misconfigurations if the inner workings of the system are not well understood. This issue raises significant barriers to researchers and operators alike whose aim is to ensure that the Internet remains resilient in the face of numerous threats. On the other hand, one can think of DNS infrastructure as a set of distributed measurement vantage points with a unique view of the underlying networks, in which case, the scale becomes an advantage. With the lack of wide-coverage measurement platforms, DNS servers can be used as measurement nodes themselves. This thesis addresses the following research questions: 1) Can the scope of vulnerabilities in the global DNS be effectively quantified and assessed? and 2) Can DNS be leveraged as a reliable tool for measuring other aspects of the Internet? Four contributions discussed in the remainder of the thesis address the two questions with the help of passive and active measurement techniques. The first contribution analyzes the mechanism of Extended DNS Errors (EDE) and discusses some of the most common misconfigurations of registered domain names observed in the wild. The second contribution investigates the extent to which DNS root server queries suffer from manipulation and proposes several countermeasures to avoid the negative impact on end users. The third contribution uncovers powerful DNS-based mega amplifiers and hypothesizes that the combination of routing loops and middleboxes is behind the phenomenon. The final contribution uses DNS resolvers to infer the absence and the presence of inbound Source Address Validation (SAV) in remote networks.

NTN Days 2024

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The NTN Days 2024, organized by CNRS GDRs RSD and IASIS, focus on Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) communications. This event gathers researchers, industry professionals, and academics to discuss advances and challenges in NTN technologies.

See the event page.

Internships in Cybersecurity 2022/2023 (M1/M2 students)

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Drakkar research group at LIG Lab is looking for M1/M2 interns. Some of the topics addressed by our team are strongly related to a wide range of practical aspects of cybersecurity. They would allow you to work on subjects such as:

Application of machine learning/artificial intelligence methods to cybersecurity problems
Phishing attacks (e.g., discovering malicious domains, typosquatting, phishing attacks against financial institutions, etc.)
Denial-of-Service attacks and defenses (e.g., prevention, discovering protocols and networks enabling attacks)
Internet-wide vulnerability scanning (e.g., building tools to search for vulnerabilities, vulnerability notifications)
Cybercrime (e.g., bulletproof hosting providers)
IoT Honeypots, sandboxes, botnets, malicious infrastructures
Bypassing security measures, creating effective countermeasures and secure systems
Network security (e.g., BGP, DNS)
Measurements of the deployment of secure protocols (e.g., DNSSEC, DMARC)
Malware reverse engineering

If you are motivated and have a background in any of the topics listed above or other areas of cybersecurity and you’d like to propose your own subject, please send your CV to Maciej Korczynski [maciej.korczynski at univ-grenoble-alpes.fr]. Solid systems and programming skills are a big plus, but not required.

HDR defense — Maciej Korczynski — December 17

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Traffic Measurements and Data Analysis for DNS Security #

The habilitation defence will take place on Friday 17 December 2021 at 14:00 in the auditorium of the IMAG building, 700 avenue Centrale, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères.

Abstract #

The Domain Name System (DNS) protocol maps easy-to-remember domain names to their computer-friendly numeric labels, assigned to each Internet-connected device that uses the Internet Protocol. DNS is the most critical and largely unheralded protocol, in the absence of which Internet users would need to memorize IP addresses of all the Internet applications, including banking sites, emails, or social media. In the early days of the Internet, as highlighted by Dr. Paul Vixie, scientists invested all their efforts in facilitating communications because they believed that “something like the Internet could become humanity’s collective digital nervous system.” When the DNS principles and specifications were designed nearly four decades ago, security consideration was not an issue because the Internet was a network of trusted users. Danny Hillis, an American inventor and scientist, when registering the third domain name on the Internet thought that he should register a few more just in case, but he felt that “it wouldn’t be nice.” This example illustrates the trust within the community; the trust that was also built into the protocols of the Internet, including DNS. Today’s Internet is not only “humanity’s collective digital nervous system” but also a place where cybercriminals exploit technical vulnerabilities and human weaknesses for financial gain. Spammers, phishers, malware creators, speculators, or organized ecrime groups widely abuse the DNS protocol and domain names. DNS has become as critical for them to operate as it is for regular users. Preventing registration of malicious domains is challenging because it requires assessing the (bad) intentions of domain owners. Prompt removal of domain names directly involved in e-crime requires collecting evidence or verifying evidence provided by trusted notifiers of malicious activity. DNS and hosting providers do not have the financial incentives to effectively confront domain name abuse. The DNS infrastructure itself remains vulnerable to attacks due to not restrictive enough assumptions about cybercriminals and the threat model when designing protocols in the early days of the Internet. Newly discovered vulnerabilities inherent to the DNS design drive the development and deployment of new extensions to the DNS protocol. However, their uptake has been very slow. It has become less of a technology issue than an economic incentive problem, i.e., whether implementing such security technologies can be profitable for the operators deploying them. The distributed nature and architecture of the DNS protocol also allow for increased Internet security and stability. One example in which DNS plays an important role is in email security protocols: the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC). While the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), designed for email distribution, is inherently insecure, SPF and DMARC providing a set of rules stored in the ‘TXT’ records of DNS resources can eliminate the problem of domain spoofing. Cybercriminals also abuse the DNS protocol architecture and its features to enhance the resilience of malicious infrastructures, amplify attacks, and avoid detection. Just mention Automatically Generated Domains (AGD) combined with fast-flux networks or Distributed Reflective Denial-of-Service (DRDoS) attacks that leverage open DNS resolvers. Motivated by the problems of DNS security and domain name abuse, this dissertation has been devoted to DNS security: to make communications more selective and more difficult for malicious actors so that the “collective digital nervous system” – the Internet – stays less affected, more secure, and trusted by their benign users. The first three contributions present DNS measurement studies related to weaknesses inherent to Internet protocols and domain names that can lead to the exploitation of DNS infrastructure and domain names. The following three contributions present statistical and machine learning approaches related to domain name abuse based on traffic measurements and inferential analysis from DNS-related data. The first contribution illuminates the problem of non-secure DNS dynamic updates, which allow a miscreant to manipulate DNS entries in the zone files of authoritative name servers. We refer to this type of attack as zone poisoning. In its simplest version, a malicious actor could replace an existing ‘A’ or ‘MX’ resource record (RR) in a zone file of an authoritative server and point the domain name to an IP address under control of an attacker, thus effectively hijacking the domain name. We present the first measurement study of the vulnerability. Among the vulnerable domains are governments, health care providers, and banks, demonstrating that the threat impacts important services. With this study and subsequent notifications to affected parties, we aim to improve the security of the DNS ecosystem. Source Address Validation (SAV) is a standard aimed at discarding packets with spoofed source IP addresses. The absence of SAV for outgoing traffic is a root cause of DRDoS attacks and received widespread attention. While less obvious, the absence of inbound filtering enables an attacker to appear as an internal host of a network and reveals valuable information about the network infrastructure. It may enable other attack vectors such as DNS cache poisoning. As a second contribution, we present the results of the Closed Resolver Project that aims at mitigating the problem of inbound IP spoofing. We perform the first Internet-wide active measurement study to enumerate networks that do not enforce filtering of incoming packets based on their source addresses. To achieve this goal, we identify closed and open DNS resolvers that accept spoofed requests coming from the outside of their network. Our work implies that the absence of inbound SAV makes DNS resolvers vulnerable to several types of attacks, including DNS cache poisoning, DNS zone poisoning, NXNSAttack, or zero-day vulnerabilities in the DNS server software. Sending forged emails by taking advantage of domain spoofing is a common technique used by attackers. The lack of appropriate email anti-spoofing schemes or their misconfiguration lead to successful phishing attacks or spam dissemination. In the third contribution, we evaluate the coverage of SPF and DMARC deployment in two large-scale campaigns measuring their global adoption rate and deployment by high-profile domains. We propose a new algorithm for identifying defensively registered domains and enumerating the domains with misconfigured SPF rules. We define for the first time, new threat models involving subdomain spoofing and present a methodology for preventing domain spoofing, a combination of good practices for managing SPF and DMARC records and analyzing DNS logs. Our measurement results show that a large part of the domains do not correctly configure the SPF and DMARC rules, which enables attackers to deliver forged emails to user inboxes. Finally, we report on remediation and its effects by presenting the results of notifications sent to Computer Security Incident Response Teams responsible for affected domains. To enhance competition and choice in the domain name system, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers introduced the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program, which added hundreds of new gTLDs (e.g. .nyc, .top) to the root DNS zone. While the program arguably increased the range of domain names available to consumers, it has also created new opportunities for cybercriminals. To investigate this issue, in the fourth contribution, we present the first comparative study of abuse in the domains registered under the new gTLD program and legacy gTLDs (e.g. .com, .org). We combine historical datasets from various sources, including DNS zone files, WHOIS records, passive and active DNS and HTTP measurements, and reputable domain name blacklists to study abuse across gTLDs. We find that the new gTLDs appear to have diverted abuse from the legacy gTLDs: while the total number of domains abused for spam remains stable across gTLDs, we observe a growing number of spam domains in new gTLDs, which suggests a shift from legacy gTLDs to new gTLDs. We also analyze the relationship between DNS abuse, operator security indicators, and the structural properties of new gTLDs. The results indicate that there is an inverse correlation between abuse and stricter registration policies. Our findings suggest that cybercriminals increasingly prefer to register, rather than hack, domain names and some new gTLDs have become a magnet for malicious actors. As the presented state of the art in gTLD abuse is in clear need of improvement, we have developed cases for modifying the existing safeguards and proposed new ones. ICANN is currently using these results to review the existing anti-abuse safeguards, evaluate their joint effects, and introduce more effective safeguards before an upcoming new gTLD rollout. Malicious actors abuse thousands of domain names every day by launching large-scale attacks such as phishing or malware campaigns. While some domains are solely registered for malicious purposes, others are benign but get compromised and misused to serve malicious content. Existing methods for their detection can either predict malicious domains at the time of registration or identify indicators of an ongoing malicious activity conflating maliciously registered and compromised domains into common blacklists. Since the mitigation actions for these two types domains are different, in the fifth contribution, we propose COMAR (Classification of Compromised versus Maliciously Registered Domains), an approach to differentiate between compromised and maliciously registered domains, complementary to previously proposed domain reputation systems. We start with a thorough analysis of the domain life cycle to determine the relationship between each step and define its associated features. Based on the analysis, we define a set of 38 features costly to evade. We evaluate COMAR using phishing and malware blacklists and show that it can achieve high accuracy (97% accuracy with a 2.5% false-positive rate) without using any privileged or non publicly available data, which makes it suitable for the use by any organization. We plan to deploy COMAR at two domain registry operators of the European country-code TLDs and set up an early notification system to facilitate the remediation of blacklisted domains. In 2016, law enforcement dismantled the infrastructure of the Avalanche bulletproof hosting service, the largest takedown of a cybercrime operation so far. The malware families supported by Avalanche use Domain Generation Algorithms (DGAs) to generate random domain names for controlling their botnets. The takedown proactively targeted these presumably malicious domains, however, as coincidental collisions with legitimate domains are possible, investigators had first to classify domains to prevent undesirable harm to website owners and botnet victims. The constraints of this real-world takedown (proactive decisions without access to malware activity, no bulk patterns, and no active connections) mean that approaches based on the state of the art cannot be applied. The problem of classifying thousands of registered DGA domain names therefore required an extensive, painstaking manual effort by law enforcement investigators. To significantly reduce this effort without compromising correctness, we develop a model that automates the classification. Through a synergetic approach, we achieve an accuracy of 97.6% with ground truth from the 2017 and 2018 Avalanche takedowns. For the 2019 takedown, this translates into a reduction of 76.9% in manual investigation effort. Furthermore, we interpret the model to provide investigators with insights into how benign and malicious domains differ in behavior, which features and data sources are the most important, and how the model can be applied according to the practical requirements of a real-world takedown. Finally, we assisted law enforcement agencies by applying our approach to the 2019 Avalanche takedown iteration. It is beyond doubt that selective and secure DNS communication is the basis for a more secure and stable Internet. Armed with the experience of the early days of the Internet and technological advances providing several missing security blocks in DNS, our work contributes to the implementation of security protocols, the identification of new (old) security problems overlooked by the community, as well as the development of statistical and machine learning methods to help intermediaries more effectively mitigate domain name abuse.

Thesis defense — Takwa Attia — December 15

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Optimization and experimental characterization of Low Power Wide Area Networks #

The defence will take place on Wednesday 15 December 2021 at 14:00 in lecture theatre H at Ensimag, 161 rue des Mathématiques, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères.

Abstract #

Low Power Wider Area Networks (LPWAN) are getting increased interest from academia and industry. They address the Internet of Things (IoT) needs for low power and long-range networks, providing efficient connectivity over wide areas and enabling innovative applications. This thesis focuses on the LoRa/LoRaWAN technology, a promising LPWAN candidate, which offers many advantages but presents some challenges in terms of scalability and reliability. In the first part of this thesis, we study, evaluate, and characterize the LoRaWAN network link quality; then, we consider one of the major limitations of the technology, namely the channel access, by proposing a technique to improve the capacity of the network. In a first contribution, we explore the actual LoRaWAN network state by monitoring all traffic on a LoRaWAN gateway and, subsequently, conducting a thorough analysis of the current practice for setting the different parameters by the ambient traffic. In a second contribution, we evaluate and characterize the transmission quality of LoRa links by measuring the Packet Reception Rate (PRR) as a function of the payload length. We conducted extensive experiments on a test-bed in The Things Network (TTN) and investigated the resulting analysis, which shows only a slight impact on the payload length on PRR.In the third contribution, we characterize the wireless channel experimentally, determine its behavior, and examine what factors depend on it.For both an indoor and outdoor sender, we have identified different patterns, considering the time variability of the channel at different gateways. Finally, we address one of the major limiting factors in LoRaWAN networks, the Aloha-like access method. We study how the Message In Message (MIM) technique for LoRaWAN would have the potential to improve the network capacity. We show that while LoRaWAN with capture effect only allows reaching 23% of the channel utilization, MIM enables us to increase this utilization rate up to 35% in a single LoRaWAN cell scenario.

Thesis defense — Ulysse Coutaud — December 7

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Reliability and scalabity of low power and long range networks. #

The defence will take place on Tuesday 7 December 2021 at 10:00 in the lecture theatre of the Maison Jean Kuntzmann, 110 rue de la Chimie, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères.

Abstract #

This thesis focuses on Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), a new class of wireless networks which aim to provide massive connectivity at a low cost in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT).This thesis focuses more particularly on the LoRaWAN technology, which is an open protocol based on the LoRa proprietary modulation.LoRaWAN knows a significant success and is now established as one of the major players in LPWAN networks. A typical LoRaWAN network is composed of a massive number of end devices (ED), i.e. connected objects, a set of gateways (GW) acting as bridges between the LoRa network and the Internet Protocol (IP) network and finally a network server (NS).EDs transmit their data via LoRa modulation with an random channel access method (unslotted Aloha-like), i.e. without any form of coordination. The GWs transmit to the NS via the IP network all the data captured on their LoRa interface. The NS is responsible for processing the received data.LoRaWAN is an uplink oriented network, meaning that the overwhelming majority of the traffic is expected to be from the EDs to the NS.However, LoRaWAN also allows rare downlink transmissions, from the NS to the EDs.Due to the massive number of EDs, the low transmission powers and the random channel access method, data is sometimes lost by the LoRa link. This thesis proposes solutions to make LoRaWAN communication more reliable, i.e. to deliver more than 99% of the application data. The reliability gain must be achieved in a realistic manner with respect to the capacity of the network, i.e. the number of EDs that can be served by the network in the same area. The consequence of this constraint is twofold: on the one hand the Time On Air (TOA) for the uplink transmissions must be kept as low as possible in order to avoid network congestion as much as possible, and on the other hand the TOA for downlink transmissions must be kept extremely low due to the limited downstream capability of LoRaWAN.With the goal of a reliable LoRaWAN communication, this thesis firstly proposes an in-depth study of the characteristics of the LoRaWAN link, based on experimental measurements in a public urban network. Our characterization of the LoRaWAN link leads us to conclude that the reliability mechanisms currently existing in the LoRaWAN protocol are unfit to provide a highly reliable link. We therefore propose adaptations to make the LoRaWAN protocol reliable while conserving the technology scalability. The thesis proposes two types of adaptations:The first adaptation consists in adding an error recovery protocol overlay, transparent for LoRaWAN, based on error correcting codes applied transversely to the packet flow. This approach makes it possible to reconstitute all of the data transmitted despite packet losses. The thesis proposes two distinct algorithms for this error recovery aspect, one based on the Reed-Solomon correcting code, and the other based on a correcting code derived from Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes. This thesis evaluates the performance of the two proposed error recovery algorithms. The second proposed adaptation consists in reviewing the distribution of the transmission parameters of the EDs in the network. It is based both on the characterization of the LoRaWAN channel and on the observation that the proposed error recovery overlay makes it possible to obtain high reliability while making it possible to be tolerant to a certain threshold of packet loss. This thesis therefore proposes to review the LoRaWAN’s Adaptive Data Rate (ADR) algorithm. The ADR is an algorithm which supports over-the-air and dynamic configuration of the EDs transmission parameters. We propose in this thesis, to optimize the ADR in order to reduce the TOA of the EDs to the minimum required.

Thesis defense — Timothy Claeys — December 19

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Security for the Internet of Things: A bottom-up approach to the secure and standardized Internet of Things #

Soutenance prévue le jeudi 19 décembre 2019 à 14h dans la salle de séminaire 1 du bâtiment IMAG, 700 avenue Centrale, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint Martin d’Hères.

Abstract #

The rapid expansion of the IoT has unleashed a tidal wave of cheap Internet-connected hardware. For many of these products, security was merely an afterthought. Due to their advanced sensing and actuating functionalities, poorly-secured IoT devices endanger the privacy and safety of their users. While the IoT contains hardware with varying capabilities, in this work, we primarily focus on the constrained IoT. The restrictions on energy, computational power, and memory limit not only the processing capabilities of the devices but also their capacity to protect their data and users from attacks. To secure the IoT, we need several building blocks. We structure them in a bottom-up fashion where each block provides security services to the next one.

Thesis defense — Pierre Brunisholz — July 10

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Ubiquitous communications for smart city networks #

The defence will take place on Wednesday 10 July 2019 at 14:00 in the auditorium of the IMAG building, 700 avenue Centrale, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères.

Abstract #

Wi-Fi is everywhere in cities, whether through the growing number of public access points, or the massive private access points deployment, in the form of set-top boxes for the major part. If we assume that all these access points are usable in order to allow any device to access the Internet, then we would potentially have network coverage throughout the city. This assumption led us to wonder if Wi-Fi could be used as a city-wide network. This network could, more specifically, be used in a context of mobility. However, Wi-Fi was not designed to manage mobile users, and devices have too often change their access points when they no longer have connectivity. This mechanism, called handover, can be long because devices must first detect their connectivity losses before they can start looking for the next access point to associate with. It can be particularly long for devices such as smartphones because they are energy constrained and therefore do not apply an aggressive handover policy. In this context we tried to characterize the possible Wi-Fi applications for a moving user, considering the handover duration, the user speed and the access points density in the city. We found that for slow-moving users, the impact of the handover is small compared to the their overall connectivity. This allows them to use bandwidth-intensive applications as long as they are to some extent delay-tolerant. However, when the user’s speed increases, the impact of handover’s duration gradually degrades the user’s connectivity, so that high speed users can no longer expect to use different access points. Fast moving devices spend more time performing handovers with new access points than transmitting application data. Retransmissions play an important role in the duration of handover. In order to study in detail the retransmissions in 802.11, we have set up a testbed allowing us to observe the sequences of retransmitted messages using different implementations of 802.11 when we suddenly make the access point disappear. We compared these sequences with the one described in the standard, and we found that the maximum number of retransmissions as well as the growth in the contention window were not respected. In addition, these implementations spend a lot of time trying to retransmit before initiating their handover procedures. Retransmissions are also used in the rate control algorithms to determine if the link is deteriorating. However, during contention, the number of losses increases with the higher probability of collisions. In order to observe the impact of retransmissions on the rate control algorithms during contention, we have set up a testbed composed of about thirty identical stations. We found that the rate control algorithm used underperforms compared to the use of a single modulation. Finally, we proposed a geographical addressing scheme compliant with the Internet infrastructure. It allows to obtain both a hierarchical division of the world, and a hierarchical prefix for the addresses, similar to the one used in the CIDR format. We show that this addressing scheme can be used in multicast addresses to send messages to specific geographical areas (minimum area of one square meter).

CLOSED: PhD offer in the area of measurements for cybersecurity

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Cybersecurity Institute at Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Software and Intelligent Systems (LSI) Carnot Institute and Grenoble Informatics Laboratory (LIG) invite applications for a PhD Student position in the area of measurements for cybersecurity and Domain Name System (DNS) abuse.

Position: PhD Student Université Grenoble Alpes
Contract: fixed-term 36 months
Start date: ASAP
Location: Grenoble, Rhône-Alpes, France
Hosting institution: Drakkar group, LIG Laboratory, Université Grenoble Alpes
Scientific advisors: Maciej Korczyński and Andrzej Duda @LIG/UGA
Project partners: Cybersecurity Institute at Univ. Grenoble Alpes, LSI Carnot Institute and ICANN
Application deadline: 31/07/2019 (applications submitted after the deadline will be evaluated until the position is filled)

Job description

Internships 2019/2020

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Drakkar research group at LIG Lab is looking for M1/M2 interns. Some of the topics addressed by our team are strongly related to empirical aspects of cybersecurity and would allow you to work on subjects such as:

Denial-of-Service attacks and defenses (e.g.: prevention, discovering protocols and networks enabling attacks)
Internet-wide vulnerability scanning (e.g.: building tools to search for vulnerabilities, vulnerability notifications)
Phishing attacks (e.g.: discovering malicious domains, typo squatting, phishing attacks against financial institutions, etc.)
Economics of cybersecurity (e.g. why attackers tend to register malicious domains rather than compromising vulnerable websites)
Cybercrime (e.g.: bulletproof hosting providers)

If you are motivated and have a background in any of the topics listed above, or other areas of cybersecurity and you’d like to propose your own subject, please contact Maciej Korczyński [maciej.korczynski at univ-grenoble-alpes.fr], send your CV and explain your motivation. We can meet to discuss and potentially define an internship project. International students are encouraged to apply. A doctoral position may be available at the end of the internship, so that the intern can carry the work on as a PhD student.

Thesis defense — Andreina Liendo — October 25

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Study of adaptation mechanisms of the wireless sensor nodes to the context for ultra-low power consumption #

Soutenance prévue le jeudi 25 octobre 2018 à 14h au bâtiment IMAG, 700 avenue Centrale, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint Martin d’Hères - Salle de séminaire 2

Abstract #

The Internet of Things (IoT) is announced as the next big technological revolution where billions of devices will interconnect using Internet technologies and let users interact with the physical world, allowing Smart Home, Smart Cities, smart everything. Wireless Sensor Network are crucial for turning the vision of IoT into a reality, but for this to come true, many of these devices need to be autonomous in energy. Hence, one major challenge is to provide multi-year lifetime while powered on batteries or using harvested energy. Bluetooth Low Energy has shown higher energy efficiency and robustness than other well known WSN protocols, making it a strong candidate for implementation in IoT scenarios. Additionally, BLE is present in almost every smartphone, turning it into perfect ubiquitous remote control for smart homes, buildings or cities. Nevertheless, BLE performance improvement for typical IoT use cases, where battery lifetime should reach many years, is still necessary.

New Franco-Dutch research project on automatic classification of domain name abuse

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

SIDN Labs, Afnic Labs, and Grenoble Alps University will be starting a new research project called “Classification of compromised versus maliciously registered domains” (COMAR) on 1 October 2018. The Franco-Dutch project will address the problem of automatically distinguishing between domain names registered by cybercriminals for the purpose of malicious activities, and domain names exploited through vulnerable web applications. The project is designed to help intermediaries such as registrars and ccTLD registries further optimize their anti-abuse processes.

Post-Doc/Research Engineer short-term position on LoRa

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We have 1 Post-Doc/Engineer position open in the area of IoT LRWAN.

Thesis defense — Élodie Morin — April 24

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Interoperability of adaptive low power consumption communication protocol for sensor networks #

The defence will take place on Tuesday 24 April 2018 at 14:00 in the IMAG building, 700 avenue Centrale, Domaine universitaire, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères — seminar room 2.

Abstract #

The growth of various technologies dedicated to sensor networks (WSN) has led to the development of platforms capable of operating in two different technologies, adaptive to transmission contexts. Such platforms open the door to the design of multi-technology networks, which we propose to exploit to reduce overall energy consumption. In order to exploit these multi-technology networks, we describe the main Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, comparing them on an equal footing thanks to the analyzer we developed, and classify them according to the MAC mechanisms they use. We then analyze the link between the application context (latency and frequency of data generation) and the MAC mechanism that consumes the least energy for this application context. We note that the technologies operating with a synchronous MAC mechanism are the most suitable for periodic application traffic with short intervals between data generation. For these traffic patterns, clock drift leads to extensive traffic overhead because of the need to actively maintain synchronization for sparse periodic traffic. Moreover, we notice that, in the existing solutions, the management of sparce application traffic management is based on the use of an always-on platform (in reception mode). We thus propose to exploit the multi-technology platforms to build a synchronous network in which each node distributes its activity over time to globally save energy by replacing the role of the always-on platform, while guaranteeing the delivery of the latency-constrained asynchronous traffic. We notice that during the synchronous network joining phase, the situation of the node attempting to join a synchronous network is similar to the situation of an asynchronous node wanting to deliver data through a synchronous network. Thus, we propose to exploit the synchronous network joining phase to route latency-constrained traffic originating from asynchronous nodes through the synchronous network. However, the currently standardised network attachment procedures are naïve and energy-greedy, which discourages the use of an asynchronous communication mode, based on a succession of network associations/dissociations: we thus propose two approaches to reduce the cost of the TSCH network attachment procedure. The first is based on the use of mathematical sequences wich distribute the periods of activity over time, while minimizing the impact on the latency of the procedure, in order to reduce the overall energy cost of the attachment procedure. The second proposed method exploits the acknowledgement frames (ACK) of TSCH data communications to embed the date of the next synchronization frame transmission on the same physical channel as the ACK frame. Thanks to the development of a simulator of the TSCH joining phase, we show that the proposed protocols achieve better performance, either in terms of joining latency, or in terms of overall energy consumption, than the standard joining protocols used in WSN.Finally, we propose to exploit the mechanisms of the second proposal for sending request frames to a node operating with an asynchronous technology, thus enabling asynchronous traffic to be routed through a synchronous network in bounded latency. We demonstrate the value and feasibility of such a proposal.

Post-Doc offer in the area of distributed algorithms for wireless sensor network

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We have 1 Post-Doc position open in the area of distributed algorithms for wireless sensor network.

PhD offer in the area of measurements for cybersecurity

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We have 1 PhD position open in the area of measurements for cybersecurity.

We are hiring: 1 engineer position still open

Thu, 25 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We have 1 research engineer short-term position open, contact us for more information.

We are hiring: 3 engineer positions open

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We have 3 research engineer positions open

WalT Best Demo Award at CNERT San Francisco

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Our paper and demo presented at CNERT, WalT: A Reproducible Testbed for Reproducible Network Experiments

Check WalT on the forge: you will find everything you need to build your own testbed.

Thesis defense — Michał Król — March 15

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks #

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm envisions expanding the current Internet with a huge number of intelligent communicating devices. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) deploy the devices running on limited energy supplies and measuring environmental phenomena (like temperature, radioactivity, or CO2). Popular WSN applications include monitoring, telemetry, and natural disaster prevention. Major WSN challenges are energy efficiency, overcoming impairments of wireless medium, and self-organisation. WSN integrating IoT will rely on a set of open standards striving to offer scalability and reliability in a variety of operating scenarios and conditions. Nevertheless, the current state of the standards present interoperability issues and can benefit from further improvements. The contributions of the thesis are the following:

PhD offer Reliable transport of live multimedia traffic

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Position: PhD Student Start date: ASAP Contract: permanent contract with Digigram Location: Grenoble, Rhône-Alpes, France Hosting Institutions:

Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble Institute of Technology, LIG lab
Digigram Research themes: networking, coding, live multimedia, reliable transport Scientific advisor: Franck Rousseau Application deadline: 01/07/2016

Research #

This research focuses on reliable transport of live multimedia flows, mainly audio and video. You will work on characterizing different types of networks, and propose original solutions to provide high quality of service on top of these networks when using several paths simultaneously. The two main goals to achieve are low latency, since we focus on live communications, and high quality of service, to provide the best experience to the user.

Thesis defense — Liviu Octavian Varga — December 16

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of the thesis is to enable IPv6 harvested and autonomous wireless sensor networks with very low duty-cycle. It is part of an industrial project, GreenNet, hosted by STMicroelectronics with the goal of being a pioneer in the Internet of Things. The new platform differentiates from its existing competitors by a small size, which implies small battery capacity. However, a photovoltaic cell is capable of recharging the battery even under low light conditions. On top of this, we aim at nodes that sleep for very long periods. Hence, the existing solutions were not completely suited for our needs. The thesis proposes to analyze the possible challenges that one can meet while developing a harvested low-duty cycle platform. The most important contribution of this work is that we implement and evaluate the performance of our solutions on real hardware platforms in conditions very close to real-life. In this dissertation, we first of all develop and implement a basic solution based on the IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled standard. We choose the synchronized mode because it allows nodes to reach duty-cycles as low as 0.01%. A more difficult step was to bring multi-hop: we design a new routing scheme inside our network, and a time based access for routers and devices to eliminate interferences as much as possible. The routing scheme is meant to be simple and efficient. We go even further to optimize the total time the nodes are on: we proposed to shut down coordinators before their standardized end of slot when there is no communication. Devices that do not need to send data can skip beacons and only need to wake up to synchronize their clock or to send data. In the same time we solve the problem of multicast for long sleeping nodes by converting these packets into unicast traffic. We also improved the duty-cycle of routers that do no have associated devices by forcing them to beacon at a slower rate, as long as they do not have any associated devices. To improve the network performance we also propose a backward compatible multi-channel solution. Such a scheme is useful when a link between two nodes achieves very bad performance on a certain channel but better results on a different frequency. All the solutions presented above and discussed in the dissertation were implemented and tested on the GreenNet platform. We also realized measurements of the nodes efficiency while in harvested conditions and showed that it is possible to handle harvested routers, when there is enough available light.

Thesis defense — Malisa Vucinic — November 17

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Architectures and Protocols for Secure and Energy-Efficient Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks with the Internet of Things #

Soutenance prévue le mardi 17 novembre 2015 à 14h à l’UFR IM2AG, 60 rue de la Chimie, Domaine universitaire, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères - Salle F022

Abstract #

Our research explores the intersection of academic, industrial and standardization spheres to enable secure and energy-efficient Internet of Things. We study standards-based security solutions bottom-up and first observe that hardware accelerated cryptography is a necessity for Internet of Things devices, as it leads to reductions in computational time, as much as two orders of magnitude. Overhead of the cryptographic primitives is, however, only one of the factors that influences the overall performance in the networking context. To understand the energy – security tradeoffs, we evaluate the effect of link-layer security features on the performance of Wireless Sensors Networks. We show that for practical applications and implementations, link-layer security features introduce a negligible degradation on the order of a couple of percent, that is often acceptable even for the most energy-constrained systems, such as those based on harvesting. Because link-layer security puts trust on each node on the communication path consisted of multiple, potentially compromised devices, we protect the information flows by end-to-end security mechanisms. We therefore consider Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) protocol, the IETF standard for end-to-end security in the Internet of Things and contribute to the debate in both the standardization and research communities on the applicability of DTLS to constrained environments. We provide a thorough performance evaluation of DTLS in different duty-cycled networks through real-world experimentation, emulation and analysis. Our results demonstrate surprisingly poor performance of DTLS in networks where energy efficiency is paramount. Because a DTLS client and a server exchange many signaling packets, the DTLS handshake takes between a handful of seconds and several tens of seconds, with similar results for different duty cycling protocols. But apart from its performance issues, DTLS was designed for point-to-point communication dominant in the traditional Internet. The novel Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) was tailored for constrained devices by facilitating asynchronous application traffic, group communication and absolute need for caching. The security architecture based on DTLS is, however, not able to keep up and advanced features of CoAP simply become futile when used in conjunction with DTLS. We propose an architecture that leverages the security concepts both from content-centric and traditional connection-oriented approaches. We rely on secure channels established by means of DTLS for key exchange, but we get rid of the notion of “state” among communicating entities by leveraging the concept of object security. We provide a mechanism to protect from replay attacks by coupling the capability-based access control with network communication and CoAP header. OSCAR, our object-based security architecture, intrinsically supports caching and multicast, and does not affect the radio duty-cycling operation of constrained devices. Ideas from OSCAR have already found their way towards the Internet standards and are heavily discussed as potential solutions for standardization. Keywords: Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Network, security, performance, object security.

CLOSED — PhD position Internet of Things and Security

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Position: PhD Student Start date: ASAP or September 2015 Contract: 3-year contract Location: Grenoble, Rhône-Alpes, France Hosting Institution: Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble Institute of Technology, LIG lab Research themes: Internet of things, security, wireless networks, near-fields communications Scientific advisor: Franck Rousseau Application deadline: 31/08/2015

Research #

The goal of this research is to participate in the study and design of security protocols for the Internet of Things. It will take place in the scope of the IoTize project. Forecasts predict that several billions “things” will be connected to the Internet in the coming years. This emerging IoT will change the way we interact with many types of devices.

IoTize kick-off

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The IoTize project was launched on Thursday 30 April at Keolabs in Montbonnot.

Thesis defense — Gabriele Romaniello — March 17

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Energy Efficient Protocols for Harvested Wireless Sensor Networks #

Soutenance prévue le jeudi 17 mars 2015 à 14h à l’Ensimag, 681 rue de la Passerelle, Domaine universitaire, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères - Amphi E

Abstract

This thesis concerns energy efficient protocols for harvested wireless sensor networks. It is a part of an industrial Internet of Things project. STMicroelectronics started the GreenNet project with the objective to develop and design a new generation of harvesting smart objects to be integrated in the Internet of Things. The GreenNet platform is novel with respect to the existing solutions due to its small size that implies a small energy buffer and small harvesting capabilities. This aspect makes the standard protocols and precedent solutions not directly applicable on this extremely low power platform. In this dissertation, we analyse standard protocols and existing solutions to identify their issues in the GreenNet platform. Then, we provide protocol and algorithm adaptations to make feasible the concept of auto configurable and sustainable networks of GreenNet nodes. We proposed MCBT, an energy efficient protocol for the bootstrap procedure. It enables low power nodes to be enrolled in multi-hop multi-channel wireless sensor networks thanks to the network support for enrolling new nodes. It represents an energy efficient solution that extends the standard protocol. We proposed STADA, a sustainable algorithm to adapt the node activity according to the available energy and traffic conditions. STADA is based on a weighted function that takes into account the energy present in the battery, the energy harvesting rate, and network traffic. In this way, the algorithm takes into account all main parameters to adapt the energy consumption and improve the node performance. To make the harvested network more efficient according to light variations, we proposed a novel metric that makes the path choice a simple process. With the Expected Delay, we synthesize all network parameters in a single monotonic variable that facilitates the path choice in multi-hop harvesting wireless sensor networks. All proposed solutions are designed to work with standard beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 protocols and are easily portable on the future version of IEEE 802.15.4e. We validated the proposed protocols with emulations and simulations. The evaluation results shown better performance in terms of energy consumption and quality of service.

Measuring Internet Experience from Home Networks — Renata Cruz Teixeira — Feb. 23

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

With the availability of cheap broadband connectivity, Internet access from the home has become a ubiquity. Modern households host a multitude of networked devices, ranging from personal devices such as laptops and smartphones to printers and media centers. These devices connect among themselves and to the Internet via a local-area network—a home network— that has become an important part of the “Internet experience”, and consequently, has started to attract the interest of the network monitoring community. Our long-term goal is to assist users with concrete indicators of the causes of potential problems and—ideally—ways to fix them. In this talk, I’ll present our research in home network diagnosis.

Troubleshooting home networks from Home Gateways — Christophe Diot — Feb. 23

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

ISPs’ number-one problem is home network troubleshooting, with Wi-Fi related questions causing the large majority of complaints. Together with a major European NSP, Technicolor, who is providing home gateways (HGWs) to many broadband and cable service providers worldwide, has launched a new initiative to diagnose home network problems from the operational HGW. The talk will describe this effort (platform, and early observations) and show how we manage to (1) track performance problems in home networks and (2) infer personal information from purely technical data such as traffic counters, IP addresses, ARP tables.

Thesis defense — Maria Eugenia Berezin — December 19

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Cross-Layer Techniques for Wireless Local Area Networks #

Soutenance prévue le jeudi 19 décembre 2013 à 14h à l’Ensimag, 681 rue de la Passerelle, Domaine universitaire, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères

Abstract

In this dissertation, we examine important aspects of infrastructure IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) and identify issues that can affect their performance. Reviewing the state of the art, we observe that numerous research efforts have proposed diverse solutions with several limitations that impede their deployment in existing WLANs. Moreover, users have ever-increasing expectations of availability, reliability, instantaneous response and security from their wireless connections. Motivated by these challenges, we design and implement novel but practical solutions that address open issues affecting the performance of IEEE 802.11 WLANs. We adopt an Access Point (AP)-based approach, which does not require any modification in the clients. We focus on the following aspects of WLANs: client mobility, channel management, and quality of service, and explore three different scenarios for the most common deployments: an enterprise, a city (urban area), and a personal residence (home). To provide a common basis for practical implementation of new 802.11 solutions, we present a Smart AP model, inspired by self-management techniques. The main contributions of this thesis are:

Thesis defense — Ana Bildea — November 19

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Qualité des liens dans les réseaux de capteurs sans fil #

Soutenance prévue le mardi 19 novembre 2013 à 14h dans l’Amphi Vaujany au CNAM, 701 rue de la Piscine, Domaine universitaire, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères

Abstract

The goal of the thesis is to investigate the issues related to the temporal link quality variation in large scale WSN environments, to design energy efficient link quality estimators able to distinguish among links with different quality on a short and a long term. First, we investigate the characteristics of two physical layer metrics: RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) and LQI (Link Quality Indication) on SensLAB, an indoor large scale wireless sensor network testbed. We observe that RSSI and LQI have distinct values that can discriminate the quality of links. Second, to obtain an estimator of PRR (Packet Reception Ratio), we have fitted a Fermi-Dirac function to the scatter diagram of the average and standard variation of LQI and RSSI. The function enables us to find PRR for a given level of LQI. We evaluate the estimator by computing PRR over a varying size window of transmissions and comparing with the estimator. Furthermore, we show using the Gilbert-Elliot two-state Markov model that the correlation of packet losses and successful receptions depend on the link category. The model allows to accurately distinguish among strongly varying intermediate links based on transition probabilities derived from the average and the standard variation of LQI. Finally, we propose a link quality routing model driven from the F-D fitting functions and the Markov model able to discriminate accurately link categories as well as high variable links.

Thesis defense — Cédric Chauvenet — October 10

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

IPv6 protocols for powerline communication sensor network #

The defence will take place on Thursday 10 October 2013 at 10:00 in the Amphithéâtre Chabauty, Institut Fourier, 100 rue des Mathématiques, 38402 Saint-Martin-d’Hères.

Abstract #

This thesis demonstrate the relevance of Powerline Communication (PLC) usage for sensor networks applications. We focus in particular on the low power and low data rate PLC technology “Watt Pulse Communication” (WPC) developed by the Watteco company and justify its usage for sensor network applications. We situate the WPC technology in the PLC landscape and define compatible protocols. We then describe the WPC module and the PLC media implementation in the COOJA network simulator. This allows us to propose a network solution over this technology, leveraging on the adaptation of the 802.15.4 standard over the WPC technology. We then demonstrate the benefit of media convergence at the network layer level, with the use of the IPv6 standard that we adapted over our PLC solution thanks to the 6LoWPAN protocol. We justify the usage of standards protocols over our PLC solution and show that a routing solutions must be developed over WPC. We show through experiments that our PLC solution match low power and lossy network (LLNs) criterions for which the RPL standard protocol has been designed. We justify the usage of this routing protocol over our PLC solution, and validate its implementation through 2 experiments conducted in tertiary types buildings. Respectively composed of 7 and 26 PLC nodes, results show that the routing topology created by RPL enable the coverage an entire floor of a tertiary building with a tree based topology and 3 hops maximum path length. We also show that the WPC technology exhibits a high connectivity between nodes and that the link quality is highly dynamic. Though, we observed that the routing topology was able to handle these variations. We point out the limitations of our PLC solution, which presents high delays and low throughput, creating high constraints on applications. Our sensor network solution over PLC relies on the IP standard, enabling packets exchanges with other technologies using the same protocol. In particular, we study the possibility to create heterogeneous networks mixing the WPC technology with 802.15.4 radio. We show that our protocol stack used over PLC enable to create this type of network, in order to benefit from the best of these 2 worlds. We purpose an architecture of a hybrid Radio / PLC node enabling to transfer packets between these 2 media. Then, we show that the combined usage of these 2 media increase the number of available paths and facilitate the routing, while diminishing the number of hops and possible unreachability of nodes. We then demonstrate that the addition of PLC and Radio/PLC nodes in a RF based battery powered sensor network enable to relieve their routing charge in order to expand their lifetime. We then continue the energy study with a power consumption optimization of a wireless sensor network platform from the hardware and software standpoint. We first determine the operating frequency, the wake up frequency and the mode of operation of the micro controller offering the lowest power consumption. We then conduct an energy study of 4 different radio transceivers using the 2.4 GHz and 868 MHz frequency band, in order to determine the most efficient architecture. We determine the protocols parameters and the software optimization to reach the lower power consumption of this architecture. Finally, we realize the energy study of several probes than can be embedded on the node, according to their nature and functioning mode. Our final architecture exhibits a total power consumption that is lower than 17 μW, with an applicative reporting each 10 minutes and the maintenance of the reachability with the network. We also mention in annex parts our implication in standards developments organizations such as the IETF a the IPSO alliance, that allow us to validate the implementation of our solution through interoperability events.

Thesis defense — Isabel Vergara — October 3

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Smarter Radios for Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks #

Soutenance prévue le jeudi 3 octobre 2013 à 14h dans l’Amphi H à l’Ensimag, 681 rue de la Passerelle, Domaine universitaire, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères

Abstract

The constraints of Wireless Sensor Networks scenarios require the introduction of optimization techniques at different design levels: from the hardware to the software and communication protocol stack. In fact, the design of energy efficient WSNs involves an appropriate Hardware/Software co-design oriented to the concerned application. Given the event driven and multitasking nature of WSNs applications, one could think of adding different processing units that cooperate to manage events and tasks in an optimal way. Then, the complexity of tasks performed by the main processing unit can be reduced and energy efficiency can be achieved. In this PhD thesis we study protocols that leverage the implementation of smart radios. The idea of smart radios is introducing intelligence into the radio chip; in this way, it will be able to take decisions and perform several tasks in an autonomous way and without any intervention of the main CPU. The CPU will be charged of bootstrapping the network and, after a stable state is reached, it can remain inactive most of the time while the radio chip provides a given set of services. The proposed protocol is called Wake on Idle and it provides integrated neighborhood maintenance and low duty-cycle medium access control. These services are provided based on analog transmissions that are time encoded; then, as soon as the network enters the stable state ( i.e. the topology is formed and nodes are associated and synchronized) digital processing of frames is not needed. Since it relies on low level information, Wake on Idle can be easily implemented on hardware and integrated into the radio chip; then, it works as a coprocessor that provides high level services ( i.e. neighborhood maintenance and medium access) to the main processing unit. Through theoretical analysis and a preliminary implementation we demonstrate the feasibility of the protocol and we show several interesting characteristics that help achieving energy efficiency and good performance. Then, we further exploit analog signaling to optimize duty cycle of existing medium access control protocols. We propose a mechanism called Sleep on Idle and it is based on the exchange of analog busy tones. Sleep on Idle can also be integrated into the smart radio to take decisions about whether the CPU has to be woken up. We apply the decision mechanism to the slotted IEEE802.15.4 standard and validate it through simulations and experimentations. The results show an important gain in terms of energy consumption and network reactivity.

Christelle Molle leaves the group

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Christelle Caillouet leaves the group.

Fabrice Theoleyre leaves the group

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Fabrice Theoleyre has joined the LSIIT lab at the university of Strasbourg.

Martin Heusse will defend his "HDR"

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Martin Heusse will defend his “HDR” on Monday 30 November 2009 at 2pm in amphi H at Ensimag.

Isabel Vergara joins Drakkar as a PhD student

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Maria Isabel Vergara Gallego joins the group to develop research on flexible radio networks in the project Trek.

Ana Bildea joins Drakkar as a PhD student

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Ana Bildea joins the group to develop research in wireless sensor networks in the project ANR ARESA2 2009–2012.

Carina Teixeira de Oliveira joins Drakkar as a PhD student

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Carina Teixeira de Oliveira joins the group to develop research in wireless multichannel and multiradio mesh networks.

Bogdan Pavkovic joins Drakkar as a PhD student

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Bogdan Pavkovic joins the group to develop research in urban wireless sensor networks for the project SENCITY 2009–2011.

Christelle Molle joins Drakkar as a post-doc

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Christelle Caillouet joins the group to develop research in wireless networks for the project EU INDECT 2009–2013.

Maria Eugenia Berezin starts a PhD with Drakkar

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Maria Eugenia Berezin starts a PhD to develop research in wireless networks for the project ANR ELAN 2009–2011.

Abdelmalik Bachir awarded best PhD thesis in computer science from Grenoble INP

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Abdelmalik Bachir has received the best PhD thesis award from Grenoble-INP.

The award, given by Grenoble INP, recognizes Abdelmalik Bachir’s work on wireless sensor networks.

Asif-Iqbal Baba joins Drakkar as a PhD student

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Asif-Iqbal Baba joins the group to develop research in wireless sensor networks for the project SAMEE 2008–2011

Apple ARTS award

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The WindSeedS project Wireless Neighborhood Dissemination Seeking Data for Share, led by Franck Rousseau, has received the ARTS award, the Apple Research & Technology Support.

This award, given by Apple, recognizes the talent of European researchers across all fields.

About the project

Wireless Neighborhood Dissemination Seeking Data for Share

The latest mobile devices — of which the iPhone and iPod Touch are the most accomplished examples — pack several kinds of wireless link, spatial positioning, and the ability to capture and handle rich multimedia content into an extremely compact form. In parallel, research has produced a great many new approaches to wireless network communication. We propose to run experiments that test whether such approaches are feasible and useful in two concrete scenarios, and in time to offer a platform for studying new uses and potential applications built on these advances — for users, application designers and network operators alike.

Doug Leith visits the Drakkar group

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Doug Leith from the Hamilton Institute will visit the group on the 23rd and 24th of February.

Carine Toham will defend her PhD thesis on December 2nd, 2008

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Carine Toham will defend her PhD thesis on December 2nd, 2008 at 2pm in room F018 at UFR IMAG.

Yan Grunenberger will defend his PhD thesis on December 2nd, 2008

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Yan Grunenberger will defend his PhD thesis on December 2nd, 2008 at 2:30pm.

Nazim Abdeddaïm joins Drakkar as a PhD student

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Nazim Abdeddaïm joins the group to develop research in wireless sensor networks for the project SAMEE 2008–2011

Mohammad Nassiri will defend his PhD thesis on November 24th, 2008

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Mohammad Nassiri will defend his PhD thesis on November 24th, 2008 at 2pm.

Maria Eugenia Berezin joins Drakkar as a research engineer

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Maria Eugenia Berezin joins the group to implement protocols proposed in the project EU IST WIP 2005–2009.

Benoit Darties joins Drakkar as a post-doc

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Benoit Darties joins the group for a post-doc and to work on the project RNRT ARESA 2006–2009.

Noha Ibrahim joins Drakkar as a post-doc

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Noha Ibrahim joins the group for a post-doc and to work on the project EU IST WIP 2005–2009.

Interns' presentations (AGH Krakow)

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Interns from AGH Krakow will present their work in D207:

Analysis tools for the performance of a mobility testbed;
P2P for e-learning.

Fabrice Valois will give a talk on self-organization in MANET

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Fabrice Valois from INSA of Lyon will present a seminar (30/04/2008 - 10h). The presentation will be given in the room D102 (building D of Ensimag).

Damien Magoni will give a talk on the Internet

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Damien Magoni from Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg) will present a seminar (04/09/2008 - 10am). The presentation will be given in the room D102 (building D of Ensimag).

CFIP 2008 at Les Arcs

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

CFIP 2008 is organized by the Drakkar group.

In Memoriam - Jacques Chassin de Kergommeaux

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Our friend and colleague Jacques passed away on November 18th, 2006.

SIGCOMM’05 - Idle Sense: A better access method for Wi-Fi networks

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Idle Sense improves the performance of IEEE 802.11

[SIGCOMM'05] Martin Heusse, Franck Rousseau, Romaric Guillier, Andrzej Duda. Idle Sense: An Optimal Access Method for High Throughput and Fairness in Rate Diverse Wireless LANs. In Proceedings of SIGCOMM'05, Philadelphia, USA, August 22-26, 2005.
[IEEE Wireless] IEEE standards for wireless networks

Lilith defines a new interconnection architecture

Sat, 15 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

An interconnection architecture for spontaneous networks based on label switching #

Communication between devices of every kind keeps becoming more common, giving equipment that used to stand alone new capabilities, at home as much as at work. Many technologies — wireless ones in particular — have distinct characteristics suited to their own application domains. The resulting network is therefore heterogeneous, and it changes often as equipment is added and removed, largely because devices move along with their users.

INFOCOM'03 — Performance anomaly of Wi-Fi networks

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Wireless local networks based on the IEEE 802.11b standard, better known as Wi-Fi or Airport, are starting to be deployed fairly widely, and many laptop models now ship with a card of this kind. Attempts to provide connectivity in public places through what are called hot spots are also multiplying: stations, cafés, hotels. With the number of potential users growing quickly and the first hot spot deployments well under way, it is worth asking how well this kind of network stands up to the load of many users and the throughput they ask for.