Dissertation Information

Committee

Professor Arthur "Barney" Maccabe is my advisor and chair of the committee. Other committee members from UNM are Bernard M. E. Moret and Paul Helman, the outside member is Larry Early from LANL.

Abstract

Sensors have been developed for a broad range of applications, e.g., treaty verification, automation and control, military applications, etc. The design of an embedded sensor includes a microcomputer, a sensing element, and a transmission device. Security analysis for the microcomputer and transmission components has been studied and methodologies to ensure their secure operation have been developed and reported in the literature. This research will investigate an open problem concerning sensors: Can verifying authorities of an array of unattended remote sensors detect anomalous behavior? Sensor array trustworthiness is dependent on security (secure operation and output transmission) and integrity (sensor input signal authentication and validation) and defines its utility. This research will result in the development of a theory/model to better understand the susceptibility of a sensor array to anomalous activity and thus, the trustworthiness of a sensor array.

Thesis Statement (Barney requires this.)

It is possible to design a highly trustworthy remote unattended redundant sensor array.

Proposal

I have successfully defended my dissertation proposal. The proposal is on-line (most current version) and an earlier version is available as a Los Alamos National Laboratory Technical Report LA-UR-98-4331 (minor modifications from on-line version).