Research

Research focus

Securing machines that move, and deciding where their computation should run.

UAV / drone technology

Secure communications in UAVs, authentication protocols, and long-range communication for drones.

  • Drone Remote ID authentication compliant with ASTM standards
  • Public-key infrastructure for broadcast Remote ID
  • Optimal placement of ground observers for continuous drone monitoring

Fog / edge computing

Making distributed computation feasible on constrained, mobile infrastructure.

  • Edge intelligence and programmable edge networks
  • Computation offloading on resource-constrained devices
  • Verifiable computation and mobility-aware task migration

Long-range, scalable IoT

Long-range and scalable Internet of Things networks using Wi-Fi HaLow.

  • IEEE 802.11ah PHY and MAC features for next-generation IoT
  • Scalable architectures for thousands of stations per access point
  • Internet-of-Drones architectures over sub-1 GHz links

My research at C2PS focused on the design and implementation of lightweight and context-aware authentication protocols for drone Remote ID, addressing critical security challenges in compliance with ASTM standards for UAV airspace. I am also working on context-aware drone Remote ID authentication and optimised observer placement for securing the airspace for drones. For more details about these projects, please visit the Secure UTM Systems Lab.

Positions

Research experience

Jun 2024 –Sep 2025

Postdoctoral Researcher

Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Project: Zero trust-based secure, resilient and autonomous system for drone–UTM interaction (ZT-UTM).
Supervisor: Dr. Abdulhadi Shoufan.

Research contributions
  • Designing Remote ID modules for drones.
  • Design of lightweight authentication protocols compliant with ASTM standards for drone remote identification.
  • Optimal placement of ground observers for continuous drone detection and monitoring.

Nov 2023 –Apr 2024

Visiting Researcher

Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Research lab: Secure UTM Systems Lab.
Supervisor: Dr. Abdulhadi Shoufan.

Worked on secure unmanned traffic management (UTM) systems, drone authentication, remote identification and secure airspace management technologies.

Sep 2019 –Oct 2023

Junior Research Fellow (JRF)

Indian Institute of Information Technology Guwahati, India

Research lab: Design Innovation Centre (DIC) Lab.
Supervisors: Dr. Rakesh Matam and Prof. Ferdous Ahmed Barbhuiya.

Conducted Ph.D. research in IoT, fog computing, edge computing, IEEE 802.11ah networks, task offloading frameworks and drone communication systems.

See the resulting publications

In progress

Ongoing research & manuscripts under review

Work that has not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed venue. Titles may change before publication.

Under review

VerEdge: A Non-interactive Verifiable and Secure System for Edge Computing

Mehbub Alam, Shyamal Ghosh, Ferdous Ahmed Barbhuiya and Rakesh Matam

Under review

A Deep Neural Network with Improved Adaptive Learning Rate Decay for Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease Classification

Ruhul Amin Hazarika, Nurzaman Ahmed, Kumar Sekhar Roy and Mehbub Alam

Ongoing

RID-Spotter: Placement of Ground Observers for Continuous Detection of Drone's Remote Identification Messages

Mehbub Alam, Mithun Mukherjee and Abdulhadi Shoufan

Ongoing

Frontiers of Foundation Models: Bridging Domain Gaps with Large Language Models Through Practical Use Cases — A Comprehensive Review

Mehbub Alam, Mohammad Owais, Baharul Islam, Nasim Ahmed and Irfan Hussain

Earlier work

Academic projects & training

Projects and training undertaken during my undergraduate and postgraduate studies.

  • Design, Analysis and Implementation of ID-Based Short Signature Scheme

    2018 · North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong

    Related research work: ID-SS: A New Identity-Based Short Signature Scheme.

  • Design, Analysis and Implementation of Pure Short Signature Schemes using Bilinear Pairing

    2015 · North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong

  • Comparative Analysis of Elliptic Curve Cryptography with RSA

    2014

  • Industrial Training, Doordarshan Kendra, Guwahati

    2014

Laboratory

Research lab

InSys — Intelligent and Secure Systems Research Lab is a student-driven academic initiative focused on research, experimentation and structured learning in cybersecurity and core computer science domains.

Visit the lab site
Logo of the InSys Intelligent and Secure Systems Research Lab