Third NYP Project Receives Prestigious NRF Grant

The project’s Principal Investigator Kan Siew Leong (left) and
Co-Principal Investigator Wayne Kan.

A novel method of protecting and routing information which passes through Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) in a speedy and ultra-secure manner has received recognition by the National Research Foundation (NRF).

This NYP project was one of the 16 projects to receive Proof of Concept (POC) grant during the 4th POC grant call. The project teams will each receive up to $250,000 to develop their inventions into prototypes, bringing them closer to commercialisation. NYP is the only polytechnic to be awarded the grant for the 4th POC grant call, which received 39 proposals from Singapore-based researchers. This is the third NYP project to receive this grant.

The NYP grant recipients are Principal Investigator Kan Siew Leong, Manager/Communications & Networks Group and Co-Principal Investigator Wayne Kan, Lecturer/ Communications & Networks Group from NYP’s School of Engineering (Electronics) [SEG(E)].

The project looks into MANET, a collaborative network formed spontaneously by mobile wireless devices without a fixed network infrastructure set-up. These mobile devices can communicate with each other directly and relay information among themselves. While there is great market potential for the use of MANET, the main problem with such a network is its lack of security and long latency (slowness in speed of data transmission.)

To solve this problem, NYP has developed a novel method to unify network security with the network traffic routing process. As a result, the information which passes through the devices is ultra-secure, faster and more efficient, as the level of security and routing of information is adaptive to the users’ application requirements. A patent has been filed for this method.

Said Siew Leong, “With the use of our novel method, the Next-Generation MANET will be ultra-secure and agile. With this method, solution developers, service providers and entrepreneurs can create and market innovative applications and products based on our next-generation MANET application development platform. The key benefits would be cheaper, faster and better solutions and innovations for businesses and customers.”

Siew Leong added, “It is a great privilege to be awarded this highly coveted research grant. The POC grant accelerates the push of innovations from academia to industry. This award will spur us on to create more commercially viable inventions and enterprising solutions that not only benefit society and industry but also create more opportunities to leverage the synergies between academia and industry in the development of critical expertise and manpower.”