Dr. Asanka P. Sayakkara
PhD (UCD, Dublin), B.Sc. (Hons) (Colombo), SMIEEE
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Signal Insights Research Lab

The objective of the Signal Insights Research Lab is to explore the potential of exploiting various kinds of signals originating from various sources — be it human-made equipment or biological — for the purpose of information extraction from a distance and surveillance. The research scope of the Signal Insights Research Lab spans across a very wide arena from electromagnetic side-channel analysis of computers to passive acoustic monitoring of living things, such as elephants.

The lab consists of various hardware equipment that can be used in research. For example, we have oscilloscopes, function generators, logic analysers, and various other equipment that can be used to take measurements and monitor hardware devices. We have a fabrication desk where soldering and constructing hardware components is possible. Furthermore, we have a large collection of embedded devices, wireless treansceivers, and modules for our research work. The following are some of the ongoing research work being carried out at the lab:

1. Electromagnetic Side-Channel Analysis

Computing devices are generating electromagnetic (EM) radiation due to their internal opertations, such as the CPU executing instructions and handling data. These radiation are well-known to be leaking information about the internal operations of the device. The field of research that exploits these unintended radiation from computers for the purpose of extracting data is called Electromagnetic Side-Channel Analysis (EM-SCA). We can extract various internal operational detais of a target device through EM-SCA techniques.

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2. Electromagnetic Covert Channels

The unintended EM radiation of computers are not only leaking information about their internal operations. There is a possibility to exploit these radiation to make deliberate transmissions of information wirelessly to an intended receiver. The EM Covert Channel research area is all about how to purposefully generate EM radiation from computing hardware and modulate data into it. The radiation from the computer hardware acts as the carrier wave for our data. Our current focus is on how to build such EM covert channels using the radiation caused by Ethernet cables.

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3. Radio Tomographic Imaging

Radio waves are attenuating with distance from its transmitter. However, having various obstacles in the middle of line-of-sight propagation path of of a radio wave can cause even further attenuation of signal strength. Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is a measure of the signal strength at the receiver. Additionally, bouncing off obstacles can cause variations to the signal's phase as well, which can be measured using Channel State Information (CSI) parameter at the receiver. The field of Radio Tomographic Imaging (RTI) is exploring the possibility of using signal strength attenuation and phase variations due to obstacles as a way to identify, geographically map, and even track the movements of obstacles. These obstacles can be humans or various other physical things.

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4. Passive Acoustic Monitoring

Wild animals are making various acoustic vocalisations. Among various animals, elephants are very important species in Sri Lanka who are well-known to generate low-frequency acoustic, i.e., infrasonic, vocalisations for their communication. Unlike the usual human audible frequencies, infrasonics are traveling long distances unobstructed by trees and other objects on the terrain. Due to this reason, infrasonic vocalisations of elephants can be used to monitor their presense and bahaviour from a safe distance. In the field of Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), our work is on building low-cost hardware equipment that can capture infrasonics to support scientist working on elephant conservation and bahavioural studies.

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5. Molecular Communications

Traditionally, data communication relies on electromagnetic waves, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Cellular Networks, etc. However, under certain application requirements, electromagnetic waves are not the ideal medium for data communication. Instead, research community is actively searching for alternative data communication technologies. Molecular Communication (MC) is such a novel approach where chemical molecules that propagate through the atmosphere (either guided or unguided) are used to carry data bits. When building MCs, various chemical compounds, such as alcohols, can be used. In this research direction, we are interested in implementing MCs to achieve covert and secure communictions for specialised application scenarios.

6. Other Interested Research Areas

Like to do research with me?

I am always open for supervising and collaborating with others in research work. If you are interested in any of my research work, or think you've got some research idea that I might like, please feel free to contact me. If you are a student who is interested in doing research with me, I would like to suggest you building certain skills as early as possible that will later be very useful in succeeding in research. With that foundation you can go a long way. Later, depending on the exact research project that you will be working on, you may need to build additional skills, such as:

Cheers!

© copyright Asanka Sayakkara (2023)