Confronting our ambitions with different fields of application

The long-term vision of Resilient Trust is to support SMEs activities, to securing their entire supply chain, in order to boost SMEs capabilities to develop secure and safe Cyber-Physical Systems. The partners of the microelectronics industry focus on creating integrity and identity in the lower levels of the chain for warranting RESILIENCE and TRUST.

In Resilient Trust, the hardware and software researches and developments are performed for four application cases, described below.

Use Cases

Use Case 1: Secured Multi-Standard IoT Communication

The STM32 Micro Controller Unit (MCU) is very popular with IoT applications. More than 2 billion chips have been sold in the last 5 years. Current versions of the STM32 can communicate using 2 different wireless communication standards Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee. Both are low data-rate standards operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM frequency band. In order to widen the use of the STM32 MCU to new IoT applications, it is necessary to add more wireless communication standards with higher data-rates.

Recently Seamless Waves proposed a new architecture based on a tunable RF Bandpass Sigma-Delta ADC. The advantage of this technique is that it combines the low power consumption of conventional RF transceivers with the flexibility of highly digitized architectures.

The ambition of this project is to design, fabricate and measure a chip containing a multi-standard transceiver suitable for the following standards: WiFi (2.4/5.0/6.0 GHz), UWB (3.5-8.0 GHz) and DECT NR+ (1.9 GHz) in addition to Bluetooth and Zigbee at 2.4 GHz.

Use Case 3: Drone detection, recognition and jamming

The mission of UC3 is twofold: First, to design intelligent jamming mechanisms that will counter drone attacks (e.g., at drone light shows) while limiting their impact on surrounding communications. To do this, it will be necessary to design detection and recognition functions to identify the type of drone or the type of communication protocol employed by the drone. Then, the generation of "intelligent" jamming signals so that their waveform adapts precisely to the communication pattern of the drone to be stopped, will be envisaged. Detection, recognition and jamming functions should be implemented based on new generation of components for which the European partners have control of the technology and production against piracy attacks i.e., cloning and reverse-engineering, hardware Trojan insertion, and side-channel attacks, i.e., fault injection attacks.

Another objective is to provide a list of electronic and processing brick functions which can be ensured by this new generation of IC in order to allow to redesign various fundamental equipment using only European components for the most important elements to guarantee European's strategic autonomy in the fields of security by proposing solutions against growing asymmetric threats.

Use Case 2: Ambient Intelligence in Office Spaces

The Crownstone is a smart home device that measures power usage, dims and switches devices, performs indoor localisation and communicates in a mesh network of IoT end devices. This product has been developed for personal use in homes. It is a perfect example of a device that could be used in numerous application environments by all kinds of users (use in an industry setting, private use at home, use in public spaces, etc.). With the rise of Industry 4.0 more and more devices such as the Crownstone will be used and connected to other IoT devices. This comes with cyber security risks which need to be addressed in order to guarantee a safe use of IoT devices.

The mission of this use case is thus to scale up and reinvent the Crownstone for large indoor spaces (e.g., offices, warehouses etc.), where over a hundred devices may be needed per location, and dozens of employees or unknown people may use the location. This change in setting brings new security requirements and threats. These threats will be faced by introducing new security features.

Use Case 4: Maritime IoT GNSS Galileo devices strengthening with AI-based RF analysis on terrestrial wireless communications

This UC originated from the ARGOS project which was funded within the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (former GSA). The subconsortium from Argos focused on the implementation of novel secure authentication, communication and localization solutions for vessels to reduce theft attempts through establishing a satellite-based localization and messaging warning system for areas without GPS. Further, the ARGOS board was designed to send and receive information like position, alarms, commands and so on via short-range communication systems such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and 4G LTE for long distance as well. Whereas the consortium was able to demonstrate strong authentication and encryption capabilities towards satellite communications, securing the IoT wireless communications was untouched within the project.

Therefore, the former ARGOS consortium joined the Resilient Trust forces to design efficient approaches for edge AI based cybersecurity monitoring against attacks through wireless channels. The methodology is based on Reliable AI for improving the robustness of cybersecurity methods against DOS/replay attacks (DOS and/or replay attacks will be chosen regarding the UC4 context and needs) and RF jamming.