Trusted Location Based Services

Principal Investigator: Prof. Thomas Engel
Funding source(s): Telindus, AFR/FNR
Researcher(s): Yves Neisius, Thomas Scherer Telindus

The Objective of this work will be the integration of privately owned access points into a managed wireless outdoor mesh network. Community features like incentive schemes shall be added to the network to allow an extension of the network in terms of coverage by reusing existing infrastructure. The managed outdoor network supports passive localisation. That is, the wireless mesh access points are able to locate the position of a signal emitting device. This location is assumed as trustworthy as the wireless infrastructure is controlled and managed by a single trustworthy entity. This can not be assumed anymore if privately owned access points are added to the network, as then private people’s access points are involved into the location determination process. They may manipulate the signalling or just try to replace their node. The contribution of this work will be to re-establish the trustworthiness of this localization service, while supporting the integration of 3rd party access points. The project will build upon an existing mesh network. Real world estimates are done to measure a private user’s potential impact on the localization process and how this can be detected, and to what extend it can be detected and potentially masqueraded, e.g. by using information from nearby nodes or by involving other sources for location information.