Security and Resilience for Satellite Communications

Satellite Communications (SatComs) play a critical role in today's global telecommunication systems. They provide support for a myriad of applications including global positioning and navigation systems, weather forecasting, telecommunications, military operations, radio broadcasting, aeronautical and maritime tracking and communication among others. 

However, due to their complex nature, the harsh conditions observed in space and sometimes a lack of robust security considerations during design and deployment, SatComs ecosystems often present a wide attack surface.

Although many research efforts have focussed on the security of SatComs-based technologies, these systems still face a broad spectrum of cyber-physical threats including eavesdropping, tampering, jamming, spoofing, disruption and rerouting of satellite traffic. Therefore there is a need to better understand how we can protect existing satellite-based systems as well as future generation Satcoms. In fact, 6G and the overarching goal of global connectivity will significantly rely on sophisticated SatComs to reach remote areas, provide low-latency communications and enable advanced connectivity capabilities in combination with terrestrial networks.

The objective of the PhD project is to address security and resilience challenges faced by current and future SatComs-based technologies.  As a special class of cyber-physical system, modern SatComs security and resilience can harness unprecedented flexibility in the distributed control of electromagnetic radiation through, e.g. Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS). We propose a unique approach for strengthening the resilience of sense constellations and complex networks by merging physical and cyber levels. This is a unique oportunity to explore the synergies between the physical and cyber domains and investigate how we can leverage these interactions to increase the security and resilience of SatComs and future generation networks.

Further details on this PhD project can be found on our Security and Resilience for Satellite Communications guide. 

Open to any UK or international candidates.

Candidates with a keen interest in cyber security, networking, cyber-physical systems, mathematics, electromagnetic channel modelling, reconfigurable electromagnetics and/or space engineering will probably feel more comfortable with this project. Programming skills and/or experience with network and security tools are highly welcome.

Surrey Centre for Cyber Security