Mobile content distribution (MCD) is an important emerging application in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Its high and stable data rate requirement puts significant stress on the severely bandwidth-limited and highly mobile VANETs. Symbol level network coding (SLNC) provides better error-resilience and in turn higher spatial reusability for wireless transmission.

It thus is a promising approach for the very bandwidth-hungry MCD networks. This project focuses on two main fundamental problems related to exploiting SLNC for MCD in VANETs. First, a theoretic study on the network capacity and performance bounds achievable by SLNC in mobile wireless networks is carried out. A new model is proposed to characterize the SLNC operation in a flow network setting. Key factors that impact the achievable throughput are identified. Methods to derive accumulated throughput for a mobile receiver following certain mobility pattern are investigated. The second research focus is on the design of distributed and localized algorithms and protocols for MCD networks using SLNC. A suite of new network protocols for SLNC-based MCD network are proposed in order to maximize the throughput of the MCD network.

• Wang, Qian and Ren, Kui and Li, Guangcheng and Xia, Chenbo and Chen, Xiaobing and Wang, Zhibo and Zou, Qin "Walls Have Ears! Opportunistically Communicating Secret Messages Over the Wiretap Channel: from Theory to Practice", Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'15), 2015 [cite]

• S. Chen and M. Li and K. Ren and X. Fu and C. Qiao "Rise of the Indoor Crowd: Reconstruction of Building Interior View via Mobile Crowdsourcing", Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2015), 2015 The 13th ACM Conference on , 2015 [cite]

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• Wang, Qian and Zhou, Man and Ren, Kui and Lei, Tao and Li, Jikun and Wang, Zhibo "Rain Bar: Robust Application-Driven Visual Communication Using Color Barcodes", Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2015 IEEE 35th International Conference on, 2015[cite]

• Pan, Xian and Ling, Zhen and Pingley, Aniket and Yu, Wei and Zhang, Nan and Ren, Kui and Fu, Xinwen "Password Extraction via Reconstructed Wireless Mouse Trajectory",Dependable and Secure Computing, IEEE Transactions on, 2015[cite]

• Qin, Zhan and Yan, Jingbo and Ren, Kui and Chen, Chang Wen and Wang, Cong "Towards efficient privacy-preserving image feature extraction in cloud computing", Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 2014 [cite| [slides]

• Sun, Qihang and Wang, Qian and Ren, Kui and Jia, Xiaohua "Fair Pricing in the Sky: Truthful Frequency Allocation with Dynamic Spectrum Supply", Network Protocols (ICNP), 2014 IEEE 22nd International Conference on, 2014[cite]

• Yue, Qinggang and Ling, Zhen and Fu, Xinwen and Liu, Benyuan and Ren, Kui and Zhao, Wei "Blind Recognition of Touched Keys on Mobile Devices",Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'14), 2014[cite]

• Ren, K. and Wang, Q. and Ma, D. and Jia, X. "Securing emerging short range wireless communications: the state of the art", Wireless Communications, IEEE, 2014[cite]

• Q. Wang and K. Xu and K. Ren, "Cooperative Secret Key Generation from Phase Estimation in Narrowband Fading Channels", IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2012 [cite]

• R. Zhang and Y. Zhang and K. Ren, "$DP^2AC$: distributed privacy-preserving access control in sensor networks", IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2012 [cite]

• K. Ren and Q. Wang, "Opportunistic spectrum access: from stochastic channels to non-stochastic channels", Wireless Communications, IEEE, 2013 [cite]

• B. Zhang and Z. Qin and J. Wang and K. Ren and C. Wang and D. Ma, "PriWhisper: Enabling Keyless Secure Acoustic Communication for Smartphones.", IEEE Internet of Things, 2014 [cite]

• K. Ren and Q. Wang and D. Ma and X. Jia, "Securing emerging short range wireless communications: the state of the art", Wireless Communications, IEEE, 2014 [cite]

• Q. Sun and Q. Wang and K. Ren and X. Jia, "Fair Pricing in the Sky: Truthful Frequency Allocation with Dynamic Spectrum Supply", Network Protocols (ICNP), 2014 IEEE 22nd International Conference on, 2014 [cite]