Project Will Harden 5G Wireless Communication Networks for Military Use with $5 Million From NSF
A new push to strengthen security of 5G wireless communications networks for use by the U.S. armed forces will be centered at the University of Kansas.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $5 million, Phase 2 Convergence Accelerator Track G grant to a research and development team based at KU. The project is led by principal investigator Taejoon Kim, KU associate professor of electrical engineering & computer science, under the aim of giving U.S. military personnel a secure way to share situational awareness via the same high-performance consumer 5G networks that cover the nation.
Today, however, these networks are vulnerable to adversaries and distrusted by the U.S. military, in part because they weren’t designed for many adversarial settings and electronic warfare scenarios common in military hardened networks. Additionally, much of the hardware behind 5G is manufactured overseas.