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arXiv:1803.00884 · IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

Physical Layer Security for RF Satellite Channels in the Finite-Length Regime

M. A. Vázquez‐Castro, Masahito Hayashi

Published Sep 4, 2018• 31 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Secure communications are becoming increasingly relevant in the development of space technology. Well-established cryptographic technology is already in place and is expected to continue to be so. On the other hand, information theoretical security emerges as a post-quantum versatile candidate to complement overall security strength. In order to prove such potential, performance analysis methods are needed that consider realistic legitimate and eavesdropper system assumptions and non-asymptotic coding lengths. In this paper, we propose the design of secure radio frequency (RF) satellite links with realistic system assumptions. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we propose a wiretap channel model for the finite-length regime. The model includes a stochastic wiretap encoding method using existing practical linear error correcting codes and hash codes. Secrecy is provided with privacy amplification, for which the finite-length secrecy metric is given that upper bounds semantic secrecy. Second, we derive a novel RF (broadcast) satellite wiretap channel model that parameterizes the stochastic degraded channel around the legitimate channel, a necessary condition to enable secure communication. Finally, we show the design of a secure satellite physical layer and finite-length performance evaluation. In doing so, we define as sacrifice rate the fixed fraction of the overall coding rate budget for reliability that needs to be allocated to secrecy. Our methodology does not make use of channel side information of the eavesdropper, it only makes assumptions on Eve's noise power. We illustrate our proposed design method with numerical results using practical error correcting codes in current standards of satellite communication.

DOI
10.1109/tifs.2018.2868538

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Secure communications are becoming increasingly relevant in the development of space technology. Well-established cryptographic technology is already in place and is expected to continue to be so. On the other hand, information theoretical security emerges as a post-quantum versatile candidate to complement overall security strength. In order to prove such potential, performance analysis methods are needed that consider realistic legitimate and eavesdropper system assumptions and non-asymptotic coding lengths. In this paper, we propose the design of secure radio frequency (RF) satellite links with realistic system assumptions. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we propose a wiretap channel model for the finite-length regime. The model includes a stochastic wiretap encoding method using existing practical linear error correcting codes and hash codes. Secrecy is provided with privacy amplification, for which the finite-length secrecy metric is given that upper bounds semantic secrecy. Second, we derive a novel RF (broadcast) satellite wiretap channel model that parameterizes the stochastic degraded channel around the legitimate channel, a necessary condition to enable secure communication. Finally, we show the design of a secure satellite physical layer and finite-length performance evaluation. In doing so, we define as sacrifice rate the fixed fraction of the overall coding rate budget for reliability that needs to be allocated to secrecy. Our methodology does not make use of channel side information of the eavesdropper, it only makes assumptions on Eve's noise power. We illustrate our proposed design method with numerical results using practical error correcting codes in current standards of satellite communication.
Secrecy issues of free-space optical links realizing information theoretically secure communications and high transmission rates are discussed. We numerically study secrecy communication rates of optical wiretap channel based on on-off keying (OOK) modulation under typical conditions met in satellite-ground links. It is shown that, under reasonable degraded conditions on a wiretapper, information theoretically secure communications should be possible in a much wider distance range than a range limit of quantum key distribution, enabling secure optical links between geostationary Earth orbit satellites and ground stations with currently available technologies. We also provide the upper bounds on the decoding error probability and the leaked information to estimate a necessary code length for given required levels of performances. This result ensures that a reasonable length of wiretap channel code for our proposed scheme must exist.
This paper investigates the physical layer security (PLS) for the transmission of confidential information over satellite communication systems under unified framework. The generalized shadowed-Rician (SR) fading is utilized to model the satellite channel, and multiple legitimate users are served to cooperatively receive the broadcast signal with a cluster of unauthorized eavesdroppers. In particular, the channel estimation error (CEE) is considered for both the legitimate user and eavesdropping links. Based on the practical channel modeling, we derive the closed-form expressions for the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity (PSPSC), secrecy outage probability (SOP), and average secrecy capacity (ASC) of the considered satellite communication system in the presence of imperfect channel estimation (ICE), which can provide efficient methods to evaluate the impacts of various propagation parameters on the secrecy performance. In order to obtain further insights into the key parameters on the secrecy performance at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), the asymptotic expressions of the SOP and ASC are also derived. Monte Carlo simulation results are provided to verify the correctness of our performance analysis.
Shannon introduced the classic model of a cryptosystem in 1949, where Eve has access to an identical copy of the cyphertext that Alice sends to Bob. Shannon defined perfect secrecy to be the case when the mutual information between the plaintext and the cyphertext is zero. Perfect secrecy is motivated by error-free transmission and requires that Bob and Alice share a secret key. Wyner in 1975 and later I. Csiszar and J. Korner in 1978 modified the Shannon model assuming that the channels are noisy and proved that secrecy can be achieved without sharing a secret key. This model is called wiretap channel model and secrecy capacity is known when Eve's channel is noisier than Bob's channel. In this paper we review the concept of wiretap coding from the satellite channel viewpoint. We also review subsequently introduced stronger secrecy levels which can be numerically quantified and are keyless unconditionally secure under certain assumptions. We introduce the general construction of wiretap coding and analyse its applicability for a typical satellite channel. From our analysis we discuss the potential of keyless information theoretic physical layer security for satellite channels based on wiretap coding. We also identify system design implications for enabling simultaneous operation with additional information theoretic security protocols.
Satellite communication systems serve as an indispensable component of wireless heterogeneous networks in 5G era for providing various critical civil and military applications. However, due to the broadcast nature and full accessibility of wireless medium, serious security threats exist from such systems. As an effort to address this issue, this paper, for the first time, investigates the secure communication in a non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite system from a physical layer security perspective. Specifically, we focus on the downlink of an NGSO satellite which provides services to a fixed earth station and is wiretapped by a fixed eavesdropper. We first apply three types of orbiting models to characterize the movement state of the satellite. Based on the orbiting models, we then provide theoretical analysis for the secure communication performance of such a system. The expressions of two fundamental performance metrics, secrecy capacity and secrecy outage probability, are derived in a closed form for any system time. Finally, we conduct extensive simulations to validate our theoretical performance analysis and illustrate the security performance in a practical NGSO satellite communication system.
Transmissions over the wiretap channel have been studied for a long time from the information theory standpoint. This has allowed to assess the secrecy performance against eavesdropping while ensuring reliable transmission towards the legitimate receiver. However, most previous studies rely on a number of assumptions which are far from practical wireless communications, like infinite length codewords, random coding, discrete channels or continuous channels with Gaussian signaling. In this paper, we show how the level of security at the physical layer can be assessed from the information theoretic standpoint while taking into account the constraints of practical transmissions over realistic wireless wiretap channels, i.e., by considering practical codes with finite length, discrete modulation formats and continuous channels with fading. For this purpose, we consider the notion of mutual information security, which is provably equivalent to semantic security. Our target is to show that classical and already implemented coding and modulation schemes can be used to achieve some level of security at the physical layer, opposed to approaches resorting to completely new designs tailored to secure transmissions. To corroborate this thesis, we consider some coding and modulation schemes compliant with the IEEE 802.16e (WiMax) standard and show how they can be used to achieve some given security level.
In this paper we propose a two-way protocol of physical layer security using the method of privacy amplification against eavesdroppers. First we justify our proposed protocol by analyzing the physical layer security provided by the classic wiretap channel model (i.e. one-way protocol). In the Gaussian channels, the classic one-way protocol requires Eve's channel to be degraded w.r.t. Bob's channel. However, this channel degradation condition depends on Eve's location and whether Eve's receiving antenna is more powerful than Bob's. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a two-way protocol inspired in IEEE TIT (1993) that eliminates the channel degradation condition. In the proposed two-way protocol, on a first phase, via Gaussian channel, Bob sends randomness to Alice, which is partially leaked to Eve. Then, on a second phase, Alice transmits information to Bob over a public noiseless channel. We derive the secrecy capacity of the two-way protocol when the channel to Eve is also Gaussian. We show that the capacity of the two-way protocol is always positive. We present numerical values of the capacities illustrating the gains obtained by our proposed protocol. We apply our result to simple yet realistic models of satellite communication channels.