Advanced Seminar Embedded Systems and Internet of Things

This semester we offer the following 10 topics for the advanced seminar "Embedded Systems and Internet of Things":

Automatic System Methodologies for the Internet of Things
Comparison of Description Languages for the Internet of Things
Penetration Testing in the Context of Web of Things
Blockchain-Based Decentralized Trust Management in Vehicular Networks
Renovating Blockchain with Distributed Databases:An Open Source System
A blockchain future for internet of things security: a position paper
Access Control: Attribute-Based Encryption with Blockchain
Post-Quantum Cryptography for IoT: NIST Round 2
Decentralized Dynamic Task Mapping
Hybrid Mapping Approaches

You will find the description of the topics below. Furthermore, we put a reference paper for each topic as a starting point for your research. Your task for each topic will be to read and analyze several references, get an overview of the current state-of-the-art and summarize your findings in a paper-style report. Afterwards you will present your findings in a short talk in front of your fellow students.

During the seminar you will also learn how to conduct the research, how to write a scientific paper and how to present your work.

Topic Assignment

Due to the high interest in our seminar topics we use an application process to assign the topics.

If you are interested in one of the topics, please apply for a topic by writing an email to the supervisor of the topic. Express your interest and why you want to have that specific topic and why you think that you are most suitable for the topic.

Additionally, you should state a second topic that you would like to take, such that we can still find a topic for you if your primary choice is not available.

Deadline: We encourage you to apply until the 23.09.2019. We will assign topics on the 23.09.2019 based on the requests until then and mark which topics are taken. After this date, we will answer to requests within 3 days, assuming that there is enough motivation for the given topic. Once you are given the topic, we will ask for your confirmation

Note: Applying for a topic in advance shows your interest but we can still choose another applicant. Generally we have 3-4 applicants per topic. Please think carefully if you are able to do the work required, we will have to say no to other students for you to take this topic. Generally, email clients remember the people you have communicated with.

Kick-off meeting

The kick-off meeting will be on the 17th of October at 9:45 in room 4981. We ask all selected participants who have been assigned a topic to be present in the kick-off meeting. Please notify us in case you can not make it to the meeting, otherwise we will give your place to another applicant.

Topics

1. Automatic System Composition Methodologies for the Internet of Things

IoT is bringing Internet connectivity to a variety of devices but the initial goal of building systems from these devices is still difficult to achieve. This is due to the fact that people who build the devices and the the ones who build the systems have different backgrounds and knowledge. This problem has resulted in research on how to automate the system composition as much as possible in order to facilitate the job of the system builder/integrator. Your task will be to analyze different such composition methods and highlight what additional layers (middleware programs, device models, etc.) are usually added between the device and the system integrator.

Reference 1: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7444198

Reference 2: https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1196145

Supervisor: Ege Korkan

Topic assigned

2. Comparison of Description Languages for the Internet of Things

All of the devices we connect to Internet via a platform (not necessarily) have a description format or model associated with them. We see that each IoT platform provider, also obliges a certain format that the developers need to understand from scratch each time. W3C Thing Description standard aims to standardize this and offer a single way to describe device capabilities. However, this standard is very recent compared to the multitude of IoT platforms and a study on how it compares to these platforms does not exist. Your task will be to understand the differences between different models and do a comparative study.

Reference: https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-thing-description/

Supervisor: Ege Korkan

Topic assigned

3. Penetration Testing in the Context of Web of Things

Penetration is used to check if devices are susceptible to attacks from the outside. For internet-connected devices, this is generally done through varied requests to the device. In this topic you are expected to look at penetration testing from safety and security aspects, while evaluating found methods in the context of Web of Things and Thing Description standard.

Reference1 : https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-thing-description/

Reference 1a: https://w3c.github.io/wot-security/

Reference 2: Another document will be given to you at the kick-off meeting

Supervisor: Ege Korkan

Topic assigned

4. Blockchain-Based Decentralized Trust Management in Vehicular Networks

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) as one branch of the IoT connects vehicles to the Internet. Current IoV development must consider the fact that vehicles are more and more capable of making decisions autonomously. Successful management of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) heavily depends on vehicle safety and does not allow fatal accidents caused by technology failure. Autonomous decisions of vehicles depend on real time availability of diverse data sources which in turn communicate their data using secure authentication mechanisms. For this topic, you should compare different distributed ledger based real-time authentication systems for secure trust and identification management in the IoV.

Reference: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8358773

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Topic assigned

5. Renovating Blockchain with Distributed Databases: An Open Source System

In IoT, computational limited devices are prone to failures and evoke service or connection unavailability. For ensuring resilience and failure resistance in IoT, decentralized architecture approaches provide a way to optimize distribution of computational resources within infrastructures and counteract single point of failure design. From a security perspective, advanced IoT architectures are capable to perform real-time attack detection, analysis, response planning, and recovery methodologies. Security enhancing distributed ledger infrastructure concepts rely on conventional security components such as distributed storage for attack/monitoring data collection, analysis, and response planning. For this topic, you should compare different approaches of blockchain connected shared repositories/distributed databases which provide advanced information sharing functionalities.

Reference: http://iranarze.ir/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/E10146-IranArze.pdf

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Topic assigned

6. A blockchain future for internet of things security: a position paper

The approach of leveraging distributed ledger technology in the IoT field helps to secure common distributed architecture requirements of IoT infrastructures. With distributed ledger technology as a security foundation for the network, intrusion detection and prevention methodologies have to adapt to blockchain specific design properties which come along blockchain utilization. An objective of advanced IoT infrastructures is minimal attack response time. For this topic, you should compare existing towards real-time attack detection and response strategies for distributed ledger infrastructures.

Reference: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S2352864817302900?token=B8E9A4B695F5F0D32DEF9030D4AB25E483EB9FC564C693DF2755F79A84B7E112D9206D727604F55F098A399C7E7B0922

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Topic assigned

7. Access Control: Attribute-Based Encryption with Blockchain

Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) is a asymmetric cryptographic scheme that realizes a fine-grained access control mechanism for data. In this seminar topic it should be investigated whether and how Blockchain and its validated transaction system can be utilized to enforce an attribute-based temporarily data access in a decentralized IoT network.

References:

Supervisor: Emanuel Regnath

Topic assigned

8. Post-Quantum Cryptography for IoT: NIST Round 2

Quantum computing poses challenges to public key signatures, because current schemes such as RSA and ECC will be broken by Shor's algorithm. NITS currently evaluates new proposals for quantum-secure signatures.

However, these quantum-secure schemes require a larger key and signature size, which might pose a problem for the limited memories of embedded devices.

For this topic, you should compare the different signature schemes that currently evaluated by NIST according to their suitability for embedded IoT devices.

References:

Supervisor: Emanuel Regnath

Topic assigned

9. Decentralized Dynamic Task Mapping

As a part of our research on fail-operational decentralized automotive system architectures we are investigating decentralized, dynamic mapping approaches. Since future automotive software architectures will be highly customizable and frequently updated, design time methods that provide static solutions are not applicable anymore. In this topic you should give an overview of current decentralized mapping approaches.

References:

Supervisor: Philipp Weiß

Topic assigned

10. Hybrid mapping approaches

In contrast to decentralized mapping approaches, hybrid mapping approaches combine design-time analysis and run-time reconfiguration and try to cope with changing workload at run-time. The design-time analysis provides a subset of optimized solution options, while a runtime manager chooses one of the solutions that fulfill certain constraints at run-time. In this topic you should provide an overview of state-of-the-art hybrid mapping approaches and point out the advantages and disadvantages over decentralized mapping methods.

References:

Supervisor: Philipp Weiß

Topic assigned