Rampart Communications

Rampart Communications, Inc. is a wireless technology company offering a fundamental innovation in secure wireless communications. The company says its patented Unitary Braid Division Multiplexing (UBDM) suite provides the first secure-by-default wireless modulation enabling secure wireless communications from satellites to smartphones.

Rampart Communications overview video

UBDM is a digital modulation designed to diminish the total attack surface of networks by blocking the wireless link. Digital modulation involves the conversion of complex baseband I/Q symbols into different complex baseband points and passing them by an analog front end through which they are filtered, upconverted, and transmitted. UBDM operates at the OSI physical layer, encrypting transmitted information by taking symbols as input and producing different symbols as output. As a result, traffic is indecipherable by unintended recipients and cannot be interfered with or modified.

The figure above portrays an ordinary digital block of a transmitter. UBDM functions as a connector between the mapper and the FFT (fast Fourier transform) or carrier upconvert, as exampled on the diagram below.

Rampart Communications claims that UBDM protection prevents unauthorized accessors from decoding a single byte of data or metadata, averting information gathering attempts or degradation-of-service attacks (a type of DoS attack). The system favors attack prevention as opposed to intrusion detection and reaction, and is designed to eliminate the wireless coverage area as an attack surface. As a result, increase in connectivity does not result in risk increase.

• Compatibility: UBDM is compatible with all modern wireless protocols, such as 802.11, 5G/NR, 4G/LTE, Zigbee, satellite, etc. and functions independently of higher layer structures in the network.

• Stability: UBDM has no hidden requirements such as filtering, wideband front ends, or precise timing, which benefits device stability and synchronization.

• Anti-Jam: By making features in the target signal indistinguishable from noise, UBDM protects against modern smart jamming technology.
• Noise-smoothing: Filtering is simplified and the cost of analog hardware is reduced as the UBDM receiver transforms all noise (von Mises/Tikhonov distributions, phase noise, etc.) to Gaussian.

• PAPR reduction: UBDM can be optimized to improve the Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio (PAPR) for low power applications, including OFDM systems.

• Quantum-proof key exchange: The UBDM suite features a cryptographically-secure key exchange based on the system's core algorithm.
• 3rd-party verification: ISE, an independent security consultancy, has concluded that UBDM “is resilient against known cryptographic and information theoretic attacks”, and “significantly increases and expands the security over existing schemes, protecting both user and control data, and eliminating the attack surface of the wireless link.”
• UBDM satisfies the criterion of Kerckhoffs' principle (also known as Kerckhoffs’ law or Shannon’s maxim), which states that the security of a cryptosystem must lie exclusively in its key. Everything else, including the algorithm, should be considered public knowledge and not bear upon the system’s security.

Rampart provides direct integration support services. Hardware architecture, upper-layer protocols, and network topology of the subject system must first be assessed; however, the company claims that the integration process is relatively uncomplicated. The most straightforward way of integrating UBDM is through SDR (software-defined radio) platforms. Rampart Communications’ SDR build is a C++11 library linked to the C++ standard library and coded according to the SEI CERT C++ Coding Standard.

Rampart states that the UBDM security solution is suitable for military and commercial satellite applications, where it can prevent command injection, denial or degradation of control, geolocation of end users, and more.