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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

5G Securely Energized and Resilient: (5G-SER) (Final Report)

NREL's work on 5G integration with physical power systems (versus simulated systems demonstrated in task 3) under 5G-Securely Energized and Resilient (5G-SER) achieved a major milestone in with the completion of Task 4 activities. After many months (6+) of planning and development along with scaling challenges along the way, a full 5G end-to-end network with physical hardware components (physical inverter, physical power panel, physical battery, etc.) was deployed in a containerized environment. In parallel, a distributed controls architecture for a microgrid powering 5G resources was also successfully modified from its previous instantiation for a simulated environment to work with these physical components. These accomplishments set the stage to use newly setup 5G technology with physical microgrid components to test the feasibility of 5G wireless with physical systems to enable resilient communications between controls and distributed solar and storage resources while exploring ways to configure 5G components to survive power disturbances. The results detailed in the report below show that even utilizing physical components, 5G wireless systems were able to provide resilient results that were similar to the results from the simulated environment Task 3).

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

5G Securely Energized and Resilient: Task 2 and 3 Progress Report

The 5G Securely Energized and Resilient project implemented at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense and is designed to demonstrate the successful deployment of 5G-6G (FutureG) technologies in the context of electrical microgrid scenarios. Through implementation of this project, cybersecurity researchers were able to design a platform to better understand the fundamental system architecture, limitations, and benefits of 5G systems supporting energy system requirements. Although the work for this project was developed in the context of “FutureG Advanced Component Development & Prototypes,” which is a U.S. Department of Defense effort to ensure communications system resilience in the context of military deployments, the results can also apply to communications for electrical grids in general. Several key points were established in Tasks 2 and 3 of this project that are further expanded on in the body of this document.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2023

5G Security and AI/ML

Invited talk to IEEE Communication Society's SIG for AI and Machine Learning in Security.

5G Security↗
DOE OSTI2024

Empowering Critical Infrastructure Communication with Secure 5G Private Networks

With the transformational New Radio- Unlicensed (NR-U), 5G network can be operated with unlicensed and shared spectrum. Private 5G networks without any licensed bands, which are both highly expensive and usually available to only large commercial wireless providers, can now be used for a whole range of new applications including smart factories, warehouses, connected cars and drones. 5G’s support of a) massive machine type communication (mMTC) for a large number of connected devices with b) ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) capability when needed, and c) up to 20 times higher data rate with enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) than previously available, enables new and powerful capabilities in a wireless network. While these capabilities are transformational, necessary security and reliability requirements have to be satisfied when used in critical infrastructure such as factories, power plants, water systems, ports, and other industrial facilities. 5G standards have introduced significant security improvement over 4G/LTE as well as mitigations for new attack surfaces created by changes in the 5G network. This talk will discuss these security improvements and whether they meet the security properties required for mission critical communication over wireless.

5G↗
DOE OSTI2023

Machine Learning 5G Attack Detection in Programmable Logic

Machine learning-assisted network security may significantly contribute to securing 5G components. However, machine learning network security inference speeds generally require tens to hundreds of milliseconds thereby introducing significant latency in 5G operations. The inference latency can be reduced by deploying the machine learning model to programmable logic in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) at the cost of a small loss in accuracy. In order to quantify this loss, as well as to establish baseline performance inference speeds for programmable logic implementations, this work explores an autoencoder and a ß-variational autoencoder deployed on two different FPGA evaluation boards and compares accuracy and performance against an NVIDIA A100 GPU implementation. A publicly available 5G dataset containing 10 types of attacks along with normal traffic is introduced as part of the evaluation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Distributed and Secure Spectrum Sharing for 5G and 6G Networks

Secure spectrum sharing or spectrum co-existence of multiple 5G networks and future 6G networks is a powerful enabler technology. The National Spectrum Strategy (NSS) published by the White House in November, 2023, and the subsequent NSS implementation plan led by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) is the driver of a national effort to enable co-existence of government incumbents and commercial networks in selected spectrum bands. Cellular networks such as 5G & 6G and non-cellular Wi-Fi 6E & 7 are the prominent wireless technologies considered for co-existence with incumbent wireless links. Security of the spectrum sharing solutions is a must to make this transformation of spectrum use possible, specially for mission critical communications. However, current spectrum sharing solutions rely on centralized data bases with inherent vulnerabilities. This paper focuses on secure spectrum sharing among multiple 5G networks using unlicensed and shared frequency bands. It presents an innovative AI/ML based distributed spectrum sharing approach that can be autonomously used by multiple networks. Each sharing network uses its own observation of the Radio Frequency (RF) environment, which consists of RF measurements reported from the 5G User Equipment (UE), to adjust the transmission power levels for secure co-existence. Data is presented to illustrate the superior performance of this solution compared to other spectrum sharing solutions where each network can utilize usage data of the other networks. Finally it discusses how this efficient spectrum sharing solution can evolve in the future for the 6G networks.

5G↗
DOE OSTI2023

Secure Roaming with 5G

This invited talk in the 2023 6th IEEE 5G Workshop on First Responder and Tactical Networks discusses security improvement introduced by the 3GPP standards to the 5G roaming capabilities over 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) standards.

5G↗
DOE OSTI2025

5G Communications in Nuclear: Potential Use Cases and Security Considerations

As fifth-generation (5G) communications continues to revolutionize the future of wireless technology, there is growing demand to utilize its benefits for critical infrastructures such as nuclear power plants (NPPs). In regard to achieving full automation and control in the operation of existing and future nuclear reactors, the unique capabilities of 5G can bring several potential advantages over other wireless technologies. However, a deep investigation is needed for the availability and security of 5G communications under various NPP operational scenarios. This article examines how 5G security capabilities can be architecturally deployed in nuclear applications so as to replace existing communication infrastructures. We discuss the current use of all wireless technologies in NPPs with their key features. Consequently, we investigated several NPP use cases in which 5G offers potential advantages but entails specific security considerations. The present article covers the characteristics of 5G communications, general challenges to its application in nuclear, and the security gaps that need to be addressed. We also highlight certain 5G security-by-design features that can help addressing current stringent NPP requirements. In addition, we discuss some future research direction that can facilitate the implementation of 5G in a nuclear facility. The findings presented herein can help foster 5G deployment in NPPs, thus enabling secured data transmission, cost savings, and increased operational efficiency with enhanced reliability.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Security and Privacy Issues in New 5G and 6G Capabilities

Slides for opening INL hosted panel on Security and Privacy Issues in New 5G and 6G Capabilities in the Security and Privacy of Next-Generation Networks (FutureG) Workshop co-located with NDSS Symposium 2025, San Diego, CA.

5G Security↗
DOE OSTI2024

Toward Wireless Smart Grid Communications: An Evaluation of Protocol Latencies in an Open-Source 5G Testbed

Fifth-generation networks promise wide availability of wireless communication with inherent security features. The 5G standards also outline access for different applications requiring low latency, machine-to-machine communication, or mobile broadband. These networks can be advantageous to numerous applications that require widespread and diverse communications. One such application is found in smart grids. Smart grid networks, and Operational Technology (OT) networks in general, utilize a variety of communication protocols for low-latency control, data monitoring, and reporting at every level. Transitioning these network communications from wired Wide Area Networks (WANs) to wireless communication through 5G can provide additional benefits to their security and network configurability. However, introducing these wireless capabilities may also result in a degradation of network latency. In this paper, we propose utilizing 5G for smart grid communications, and we evaluate the latency impacts of encapsulating GOOSE, Modbus, and DNP3 for transmission over a 5G network. The OpenAirInterface open-source library is utilized to deploy an in-lab 5G Core Network and gNB for testing with off-the-shelf User Equipment (UE). This creates an effective 5G test platform for experimenting with different OT protocols such as GOOSE. The results are validated by measuring two different Intelligent Electronic Devices’ contact closure times for each network configuration. These tests are also conducted for varying packet sizes in order to isolate different sources of network latency. Our study outlines the latency impact of communication over 5G for time-critical and non-critical applications regarding their transition toward private 5G-based OT network implementations. The conducted experiments illustrate that in the case of GOOSE packets, simple encapsulation may exceed the protocol’s time-critical nature, and, therefore, additional measures must be taken to ensure a viable transition of GOOSE to 5G services. However, non-critical applications are shown to be viable for migration to 5G.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Towards 5G-Enabled Operational Technology for Process Monitoring and Network Slicing

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are deployed to monitor physical processes in critical cyber-enabled services like power generation. However, CPS ecosystems are typically designed without robust security. While it is important to ensure optimal performance of the Operational Technology (OT) environments, security cannot be overlooked. To modernize traditional OT services, 5G technology is being integrated. 5G technology offers low latency and high availability, making it a suitable infrastructure for managing and monitoring physical processes. How-ever, integrating 5G mechanisms into large-scale OT networks introduces new implementation and performance challenges. Therefore, this paper presents a 5G-enabled CPS architecture (5G-CPS) that describes the necessary components, services, and communication protocols and conducts feasibility study to integrate 5G technology in industrial control system networks to understand the performance merits. The 5G-CPS architecture aims to minimize implementation and operational challenges associated with integrating 5G technology into constrained OT.

Aguayo, Jared M.↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Systematic Study to Determine 5G Baseline Performance for Scientific Computing

The fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks envisions achieving higher data rates, improved connectivity, reduced latency, and better quality of service (QoS) than the fourthgeneration (4G) cellular networks. Such improved performance can be utilized to address the challenges in applications such as electricity generation in power systems. The traditional power grids responsible for electricity generation suffer from drawbacks such as life-threatening blackout crises, and energy storage proliferation as they are not robust to extreme climatic conditions. A recent study proposed the idea of extending the capabilities of advanced wireless technologies such as the current 5G to develop a robust, energy-efficient, and secure smart grids. However there are two main challenges associated with the integration of power systems and wireless technologies. First, it is imperative to understand the architecture and the enabling technologies of 5G to ensure that the performance requirements of the smart grids are met. Second, an end-to-end testbed is required to determine if the performance requirements are met by estimating the 5G characteristics such as latency, and throughput. Our proposed alleviates the aforementioned concerns in the following manner. To begin with, a systematic study of the 5G architecture including both the StandAlone (SA) and Non-Standalone (NSA) operations is presented. Furthermore, a detailed survey of the possible 5G enabling technologies is elicited. In addition to these, an end-toend testbed that can estimate the 5G characteristics is explained in detail with appropriate preliminary results.

5G, 5G Communication↗
DOE OSTI2023

A 5G Enabled Adaptive Computing Workflow for Greener Power Grid

5G wireless technology can deliver higher data speeds, ultra low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to users. It brings additional power to help address the challenges brought by renewable integration and decarbonization. In this paper, a 5G enabled adaptive computing workflow tool has been presented that consists of various computing resources, such as 5G equipment, edge computing, cluster, Graphics processing unit (GPU) and cloud computing, with two examples showing technical feasibility for edge-grid-cloud interaction for real-time monitoring, security assessment, and forecasting. Benefiting from the high data transmission speed and massive connection capability of 5G, the workflow shows its potential to seamlessly integrate various applications at distributed and/or centralized locations to build more complex and powerful functions, with better flexibility.

5G technology, computational workflow, edge comput↗
DOE OSTI2024

Sentinel

Network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) are commonplace in network security but they frequently employ algorithms that are computational demanding requiring hardware and software with significant power requirements. Two examples of such resource-intensive algorithms used for network security are regular expression matching and broader signature pattern matching which are commonly used in deep packet inspection (DPI). Network security algorithms that have large power requirements may be a challenge for low-power internet-of-things (IoT) environments, which generally lack the power resources to implement complex security measures like computationally expensive DPI at the edge. Furthermore, IoT environments incorporating 5G standalone networks have network latency constraints beyond just power that make DPI at the edge even more difficult. Programmable logic is ideally suited for machine learning inference for DPI because of its deep instruction level parallelism and single-cycle memory access. Machine learning approaches for DPI have been explored before using the programmable logic of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) as a potential solution for NIDS approaches that would be power-suitable for IoT. However, those previous programmable logic NIDS approaches utilize either a supervised or unsupervised learning model. Sentinel utilizes the ensemble of these two machine learning approaches known as a semi-supervised approach which has shown promise in NIDS implementations. Sentinel provides a programmable logic implementation of a semi-supervised approach for DPI which operates at much lower power and latency than a GPU implementation with negligible loss of accuracy due to quantization through a logistic regressor.

Anderson, MatthewW [Idaho National Laboratory (INL↗
NASA NTRS2021

Secure and Safe Assured Autonomy (S2A2)

Aviation’s future will likely see the integration of a wide variety of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) systems including Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for cargo/delivery, personal air vehicles, and commercial Urban Air Mobility (UAM)vehicles. However, substantial challenges exist that could delay (and possibly prevent) these developments and thus research is needed in a variety of areas to leverage technologies in autonomy, Air Traffic Management (ATM), multi-redundant flight systems architectures, and advanced wireless connectivity like 5G to meet these challenges. The goal of this ULI project is to develop new technologies and innovative operational concepts which will ensure safe, secure and robust integration of autonomous vehicles into Advanced Air Mobility-tailored transportation infrastructure. All this must be done while maintaining inter-operability with current civil air transportation systems and associated safety standards. The project is organized into four Technical Challenges (TCs) areas designed to provide unique UAM solutions and a transition roadmap for industry and government to utilize research product output.

Koushik Datta↗