| Invited Talk

Name of the Speaker: Mr. Milind Kumar Vaddiraju
Guide: Dr Radhakrishna Ganti
Online meeting link: ESB-244 (Seminar Hall)
Date/Time: 6th December 2022, 2:00 PM
Title: Trust-free service measurement and payments for decentralized cellular networks

Abstract

Decentralized cellular networks where infrastructure ownership is distributed between several independent entities have emerged to increase overall network accessibility. In this setting, users can connect to any nearby, untrusted base station with no prior subscription to the operator. This talk will introduce Proof of Service as a method to address the primary challenges of ensuring reliable and trustworthy performance in this setting. Proof of Service redesigns the OCS to implement its escrow and charging functionalities separately using smart contracts and state channels respectively. An integral part of our design is the verification of delivered service to ensure that the user only pays commensurately. To do this, we introduce the notion of two-sided measurements where both the users and the providers independently assess the cellular service delivered. A key challenge is ensuring that these measurements reliably result in agreement. Our preliminary findings show that reconciling measurements from different layers of the cellular stack to arrive at a diverse set of matching observations is challenging but not impossible. Finally, this will be followed by a discussion of our ongoing implementation using Magma. This work is being done in collaboration with Witness Chain.

Bio : Milind Kumar Vaddiraju is a second year PhD student in the ECE department at UIUC advised by Prof. Pramod Viswanath. He received his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 2020. His current research focuses on decentralizing wireless technology and involves designing and evaluating new architectures that enable the organic growth of a network by individual entities in a trust-free setting. Before pursuing this direction of work, he spent two years at the Indigenous 5G Testbed at IIT Madras. He is a recipient of the ECE Distinguished Research Fellowship, James M. Henderson Fellowship and the Dilip and Sandhya Sarwate Fellowship at UIUC. More details can be found at www.milindkumarv.com