NSF Convergence Accelerator Track G: SONIC: Securely Operate through 5G Networks with Informed Control

With its strong academia-industry-government partnerships, the SONIC team is well positioned to convert diverse research outcomes into practical solutions to support DoD’s goal of securely operating through 5G networks. The success of the project will not only directly benefit DoD and other government agencies, thereby enhancing national security, but will also produce broader societal impacts.

The proposed convergence research, with its particular emphasis on a number of emerging technologies, will enable 5G/NextG networks to securely support diverse applications in various industrial sectors. The participating organizations are actively involved in various industry initiatives; this puts the team in a strong position to influence standards development and contribute to 5G/NextG and other emerging technologies.

In a nutshell, the proposed convergence research will help advance the US as a leader in current, emerging and future wireless systems. In a larger scientific and broader societal context, the proposed research will accelerate the development of new services and applications over 5G/NextG networks, many yet to be imagined, that will bring enormous benefits to society.

The project will develop an approach that aims to Securely Operate through 5G Networks with Informed Control (SONIC). The underlying principle to SONIC is to use intelligence to secure all operational aspects of operating through a 5G network. SONIC aims to gracefully adapt to operational mechanisms that might be available in different operating environments.

For example, intelligence in a non-cooperative setting will enable a limited action/response space, whereas the same intelligence in a cooperative network with open RAN capabilities will enable a broader range of actions. Similarly, the SONIC solution space involves a range of technical risks, i.e., from well established technologies (e.g., inverse-multiplexing multiple mobile network operators, e-SIMs), to emerging 5G abstractions (e.g., network slices), to relatively immature beyond-5G approaches (e.g., open RAN abstractions).

The SONIC team brings a range of expertise, including mobile networking, Open RAN, spectrum management, wireless communication, networking economics and policy, network protocols and security, network measurement, data mining and machine learning. In addition the SONIC team involves a broad range of organizations, including academia, a mobile network operator, a small business, a technology company/defense contractor, and a government agency.

The primary security concerns the project addresses are threats to the performance, availability and robustness of 5G networks. Specifically, with SONIC, intelligence related to the state of the network, external threats to the network or operational/situational awareness, drive the selection of networks or network options (for non-cooperative network), or interactions with the network (for cooperative networks), to ensure the best performance, availability and robustness of operating through the available networks and environment.

The project addresses the zero trust goal in securely operating through 5G networks by advancing and incorporating novel architectural, structural and mechanistic solutions to add security and enhance availability and resilience. Instead of looking for point solutions to enable zero trust, SONIC provides a powerful, flexible and intelligent framework for securely operating through 5G networks to support DoD missions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.