Physical layer security (PLS) offers a unique approach to protecting information confidentiality against eavesdropping by malicious users. This paper studies a joint design of adaptive M−ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and precoding for performance improvement of PLS in visible light communications (VLC). It is known that higher-order modulation results in a better secrecy capacity at the expense of a higher bit-error rate (BER). On the other hand, a proper precoding design can also enhance secrecy performance. The proposed design, therefore, aims at the optimal PAM modulation order and precoder to maximize a utility function that takes into account the secrecy capacity and BERs of the legitimate user (Bob)’s and the eavesdropper (Eve)’s channel. Due to the lack of a closed-form expression for the utility function, a Q-learning-based design is proposed and evaluated. Compared to the non-adaptive approach under all different settings of Bob’s and Eve’s positions, simulation results verify that the proposed joint adaptive design achieves a good balance between the secrecy capacity and BER of Bob’s channel while maintaining a sufficiently high BER of Eve’s channel.
Physical layer security (PLS) offers a unique approach to protecting information confidentiality against eavesdropping by malicious users. This paper studies a joint design of adaptive M−ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and precoding for performance improvement of PLS in visible light communications (VLC). It is known that higher-order modulation results in a better secrecy capacity at the expense of a higher bit-error rate (BER). On the other hand, a proper precoding design can also enhance secrecy performance. The proposed design, therefore, aims at the optimal PAM modulation order and precoder to maximize a utility function that takes into account the secrecy capacity and BERs of the legitimate user (Bob)’s and the eavesdropper (Eve)’s channel. Due to the lack of a closed-form expression for the utility function, a Q-learning-based design is proposed and evaluated. Compared to the non-adaptive approach under all different settings of Bob’s and Eve’s positions, simulation results verify that the proposed joint adaptive design achieves a good balance between the secrecy capacity and BER of Bob’s channel while maintaining a sufficiently high BER of Eve’s channel.
There has been an increasing interest in physical layer security (PLS), which, compared with conventional cryptography, offers a unique approach to guaranteeing information confidentiality against eavesdroppers. In this paper, we study a joint design of adaptive M-ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and precoding, which aims to optimize wiretap visible-light channels’ secrecy capacity and bit error rate (BER) performances. The proposed design is motivated by higher-order modulation, which results in better secrecy capacity at the expense of a higher BER. On the other hand, a proper precoding design, which can manipulate the received signal quality at the legitimate user and the eavesdropper, can also enhance secrecy performance and influence the BER. A reward function that considers the secrecy capacity and the BERs of the legitimate user’s (Bob) and the eavesdropper’s (Eve) channels is introduced and maximized. Due to the non-linearity and complexity of the reward function, it is challenging to solve the optical design using classical optimization techniques. Therefore, reinforcement learning-based designs using Q-learning and Deep Q-learning are proposed to maximize the reward function. Simulation results verify that compared with the baseline designs, the proposed joint designs achieve better reward values while maintaining the BER of Bob’s channel (Eve’s channel) well below (above) the pre-FEC (forward error correction) BER threshold.
This paper studies a practical design of probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) for enhancing the performance of physical layer security in visible light communications (VLC). In particular, we consider a wiretap VLC channel employing a probabilistically shapedM-ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) constellation. Considering the requirements for reliability of the legitimate user’s channel, flickering-free transmission, and symmetric constellation distribution, the optimal constellation distributions to maximize modulation-constrained secrecy capacity or the bit error rate (BER) of eavesdropper’s channel are investigated for both scenarios of known and unknown eavesdropper’s channel state information (CSI). To formulate the constraint on the channel reliability, tractable closed-form expressions for the upper bound and approximate BER ofM-ary PAM under an arbitrary symbol probability are derived. The design problem is shown to be non-convex due to the non-convex BER constraint. By proving that the upper bound BER is a concave function of the constellation distribution, a suboptimal solution based on the convex-concave procedure (CCCP) is presented. Our findings reveal that while the uniform signaling can only satisfy the BER constraint when the optical power is beyond a certain value, the proposed PCS design works in the entire region of the optical power. Some insights into the optimal constellation distribution with respect to the emitted optical power are also discussed.
Optical wireless communications (OWC) and its potential to solve physical layer security (PLS) issues are becoming important research areas in 6G communications systems. In this paper, an overview of PLS in visible light communications (VLC), is presented. Then, two new PLS techniques based on generalized space shift keying (GSSK) modulation with spatial constellation design (SCD) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) cooperative relaying are introduced. In the first technique, the PLS of the system is enhanced by the appropriate selection of a precoding matrix for randomly activated light emitting diodes (LEDs). With the aid of a legitimate user's (Bob's) channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter (CSIT), the bit error ratio (BER) of Bob is minimized while the BER performance of the potential eavesdroppers (Eves) is significantly degraded. In the second technique, superposition coding with uniform signaling is used at the transmitter and relays. The design of secure beamforming vectors at the relay nodes along with NOMA techniques is used to enhance PLS in a VLC system. Insights gained from the improved security levels of the proposed techniques are used to discuss how PLS can be further improved in future generation communication systems by using VLC.
Visible light communication (VLC) is a new enabling communication technology that exploits illumination devices, mostly high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs), to establish high-speed short-range wireless communication links. VLC is a promising technology that has gained significant interest in the last decade due to its high data rates and low cost of deployment. Although VLC systems are less susceptible to eavesdropping than RF systems since light does not penetrate through walls, they become as vulnerable as their radio-frequency (RF) counterparts when their nodes are deployed in public areas and/or when there are large windows. Thus, security for VLC systems is as important as it is for RF systems. Security in wireless communication systems may be enhanced by introducing physical layer security (PLS) techniques. In fact, PLS has been applied to a wide range of RF applications in an effort to improve the overall security by complementing existing cryptography-based security techniques. The potential of PLS stems from its ability of leveraging features of the surrounding environments via sophisticated encoding techniques at the physical layer. Indeed, PLS schemes can be applied in the same spirit to VLC systems. \n \nThere exist many specificities that characterize VLC systems, leading to major differences compared to RF systems. Specifically, VLC channels are quasi-static and real valued channels, which seemingly simplify the application of PLS techniques. However, due to the limited dynamic range of the LEDs, VLC systems impose an amplitude constraint on the channel input, which makes unbounded inputs not admissible. As a result, the performance of PLS schemes must be revised in the VLC context due to its different operating constraints. \n \nWe propose in this thesis enhancing the secrecy performance of VLC systems through PLS techniques. Firstly, we consider the degraded single-input single-output (SISO) VLC system. We derive achievable secrecy rates using continuous and discrete input distributions and we demonstrate the substantial improvement in the secrecy performance by using discrete distributions. Secondly, we consider the multiple-input single-output (MISO) VLC systems. We consider at first the case of randomly located eavesdroppers, in which we develop an associated achievable secrecy rate and we develop a beamforming-based precoding scheme that enhances the secrecy performance of this class of systems. In the second part, we consider the multi-user (MU) MISO broadcast system with confidential messages and we develop linear precoding schemes that enhance typical secrecy performance measures, including the max-min fairness and the weighted fairness. Finally, we consider the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) VLC system. We derive achievable secrecy rates using continuous and discrete distributions and we develop linear precoding schemes that improve its secrecy performance.
Visible-light communication (VLC) is an enabling technology that exploits the lighting infrastructure to provide ubiquitous indoor broadband coverage via high-speed short-range wireless communication links. On the other hand, physical-layer security has the potential to supplement conventional encryption methods with an additional secrecy measure that is provably unbreakable regardless of the computational power of the eavesdropper. The lack of wave-guiding transmission media in VLC channels makes the communication link inherently susceptible to eavesdropping by unauthorized users existing in areas illuminated by the data transmitters. In this thesis, we study transmission techniques that enhance the secrecy of VLC links within the framework of physical-layer security. Due to linearity limitations of typical light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the VLC channel is more accurately modelled with amplitude constraints on the channel input, rather than the conventional average power constraint. Such amplitude constraints render the prevalent Gaussian input distribution infeasible for VLC channels, making it difficult to obtain closed-form secrecy capacity expressions. Thus, we begin with deriving lower bounds on the secrecy capacity of the Gaussian wiretap channel subject to amplitude constraints. We then consider the design of optimal beamformers for secrecy rate maximization in the multiple-input single-output (MISO) wiretap channel under amplitude constraints. We show that the design problem is nonconvex and difficult to solve, however it can be recast as a solvable quasiconvex line search problem. We also consider the design of robust beamformers for worst-case secrecy rate maximization when channel uncertainty is taken into account. Finally, we study the design of linear precoders for the two-user MISO broadcast channel with confidential messages. We consider not only amplitude constraints, but also total and per-antenna average power constraints. We formulate the design problem as a nonconvex weighted secrecy sum rate maximization problem, and provide an efficient search algorithm to obtain a solution for such a nonconvex problem. We extend our approach to handle uncertainty in channel information. The design techniques developed throughout the thesis provide valuable tools for tackling real-world problems in which channel uncertainty is almost always inevitable and amplitude constraints are often necessary to accurately model hardware limitations.
We consider the physical layer security (PLS) problem in multi-user non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) enabled multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) visible light communication systems intercepted by a passive eavesdropper (Eve). We propose a novel transmit precoding scheme based on receive spatial modulation (RSM) to degrade the signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR) of Eve by exploiting only the slow-fading characteristics of the visible light channel of the legitimate users (Bobs). The proposed PLS precoder is reinforced with secret parameter exchange with Bobs and a CSI acquisition model is proposed to reduce the PLS algorithm's computational load substantially at the transmitter. The closed-form expressions for the achievable secrecy rates and their upper and lower bounds are derived. Via Monte Carlo simulations, we confirm that Bobs can successfully decode their information in various user configurations while Eve's received SINR is significantly worsened by the jamming signal induced by the proposed precoder with secret key exchange. It is also shown that Eve's bit error rate (BER) is increased to the 0.5-level for almost any position in the considered indoor environment. Finally, we corroborate the derived secrecy expressions by computer simulations and show that the proposed scheme provides PLS for Bobs.