Secure Mobile Video
Research
Pervasive Computing and Smart Spaces promise a future wherein the user experiences personalized service and ubiquity in computation. Among the many problems facing current pervasive computing research are the issues of secure user identification and secure user mobility support for services. Specifically, we desire an infrastructure that can support mutual authentication between the user and the computing device, and also provide seamless support of computation and service as the user moves from location to location. We would also like the solution to be location aware so as to automatically discover computing devices and service providers in the vicinity of the user. We have proposed two solutions to solve these problems.
- We have designed and implemented a security badge-activated application-level handoff protocol, called Mobile ID protocol, to implement user mobility support for multimedia streaming applications. The protocol has a location-aware system to detect user movement on the client side, a Mobility database to store all the interrupted sessions on the server side, and Mobile ID client/server-side manager pair which coordinates the events on either side working closely with location-aware system, Mobility database, and video client/server pair to carry out the "user-oriented" streaming application we now have. The user is authenticated using AirID security badges. The protocol is implemented at the application level.
- We have also designed and implemented an architecture to support User Identification and User Mobility using heterogeneous handheld wireless devices. This architecture is secure, scalable, QoS-aware and is implemented as a layered protocol stack. Each user has a personal handheld device which stores the identification certificate of the user used for mutual authentication with the service providers and computing devices. The handheld device also stores the state of the service or computation which is used for user mobility support. The Quality of Service is provided by varying the level of security in the system for better performance. Our solution includes a location system for automatically detecting new computing devices based on the location of the user. Such an architecture can be used by any application desiring seamless mobility support. We have specifically demonstrated the system for a video on demand application wherein the user desires to have seamless mobility support for watching a video as he/she moves from location to location.
Overall, we have provided novel architectures and mechanisms for secure user identification and secure user mobility support to applications and thus have a contribution to the pervasive computing research.
Publications
- Bo Zou, Mobile ID Protocol: a Badge-Activated Application Level Handoff of a Multimedia Streaming to Support User Mobility , Masters Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 2000.
- Vanish Talwar, A QoS Aware Secure Architecture For Supporting User Identification and User Mobility , Masters Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 2001.