Mobile network security

The scope of this research covers security and privacy for 5G+ and 6G services that is aided by next generation AI and a network of networks comprising short range, wide area and satellite networks, including major verticals such as vehicle and transport communications (V2X) and 5G/6G-based 'internet of things'. The work covers scalable and light weight authentication and access control and uses techniques such as blockchain technology and quantum safe cryptography.

Topics we cover

Our work incorporates the following topics:

  • 5G, 5G+ and 6G communication network security (e.g. intrusion detection systems, multi-access edge computing and communications)
  • Light weight authentication and distributed trust management for intelligent transport systems (ITS) and connected autonomous vehicles (CAV) using certificateless and statistical methods and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) aided adaptive response
  • User and data privacy protection and use of identity hiding techniques such as pseudonyms and pseudonym management and distributed ledger technology for large scale systems
  • Identify threats and solutions to 5G, 5G+ and 6G technologies such as software defined networks (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV)
  • Adversarial machine learning in mobile data (e.g. adversarial ML, federated learning and reinforcement learning)
  • Multicast and broadcast security in relation to the 3GPP further evolved multimedia broadcast and multicast system (feMBMS). This includes large scale and dynamically changing multicast group (e.g. software updates and sports live and streaming events) and using multi-access edge computing (MEC) for security management
  • Time synchronisation is one of the major aims in 6G. As such, our research covers fast security synchronisation of distributed and heterogenous security/privacy systems (e.g. simultaneous attacks on several robots within one or more factories or simultaneous attacks on mobile operator networks within or across international borders).

Get in contact

If you are interested in this research or have a query then please contact the project lead.

Research projects

Start date: October 2019

End date: January 2023