Over the next few blog posts, we will cover some of the basic principles of testing the performance of the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) physical layer. Each set of DSL transceivers operates over a local loop of the telephone network. Essentially, this is a transmission line consisting of two copper conductors that are twisted together. The exact wire gauge, dielectric insulation between the co...

by Glenn J. Bradford Increasing data rates in wireless devices is particularly challenging due to the presence of many impairments in the medium, including multipath fading. Diversity techniques are a means of increasing transmission reliability in multipath environments. This thesis focuses on cooperative diversity, a concept that obtains spatial diversity via relaying. Cooperative diversity e...

Conventional wired networks are subject to being tapped by a variety of means, whether copper or fiber connections are used. In addition, methods of network snooping exist that make such eavesdropping minimally invasive, but no less significant. Wireless networking has additional characteristics that also decrease physical network security. As new technologies emerge, the potential for loss of ...

1053-5888/13/$31.00©2013IEEE ireless comm u n i c a t i o n s systems are particularly vulnerable to security attacks because of the inherent openness of the transmission medium. In this article, we focus on guaranteeing confidentiality against eavesdropping attacks where an unauthorized entity aims to intercept an ongoing wireless communication, and we provide a comprehensive summary of recent...

Security in wireless networks has traditionally been considered to be an issue to be addressed separately from the physical radio transmission aspects of wireless systems. However, with the emergence of new networking architectures that are not amenable to traditional methods of secure communication such as data encryption, there has been an increase in interest in the potential of the physical...

A main distinguishing feature of a wireless network compared with a wired network is its broadcast nature, in which the signal transmitted by a node may reach several other nodes, and a node may receive signals from several other nodes simultaneously. Rather than a blessing, this feature is treated more as an interference-inducing nuisance in most wireless networks today (e.g., IEEE 802.11). Th...