CAREER: Designing Domain Knowledge-Guided Learning Architectures towards Wireless Network Security: Enabling Effective and Efficient Attacks and Countermeasures

NSF Award Search · 01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $500,000 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Modern wireless networks have become increasingly complex and densely populated and can create a massive volume of operation data. As a result, extensive efforts from both academia and industry have focused on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in wireless network security related tasks such as (i) adversarial inference, (ii) adversarial generation, and (iii) data transformation. This project will focus on exploring new directions for incorporating additional domain knowledge to improve the efficiency of machine learning architecture design. The project's novelties are (i) investigating the wireless-domain knowledge used in mobile network design across different protocol layers and classifying this knowledge based on how it can be deterministically incorporated into learning model design; and (ii) designing specialized learning architectures that translate this domain knowledge into AI-friendly representations to improve both learning efficiency and performance. The project's broader significance and importance are advancing the state of the art in wireless network security, enhancing undergraduate student training opportunities, openly disseminating training materials, and carrying out outreach activities. This project targets three major categories of learning models: (i) typical centralized learning models, (ii) decentralized learning models, and (iii) large language models, and explores the incorporation of wireless-domain knowledge into each class to address di

Key facts

NSF award ID
2544044
Awardee
University of Oklahoma Norman Campus (OK)
SAM.gov UEI
EVTSTTLCEWS5
PI
Shangqing Zhao
Primary program
01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
SaTC: Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, AWR-Advanced Wireless Research, Artificial Intelligence (AI), CAREER-Faculty Erly Career Dev, Nat Security, Secure Border & Pub Safety, EXP PROG TO STIM COMP RES
Estimated total
$500,000
Funds obligated
$291,099
Transaction type
Continuing Grant
Period
10/01/2026 → 09/30/2031