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arXiv:2507.06500 · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials

A Survey on Artificial Noise for Physical Layer Security: Opportunities, Technologies, Guidelines, Advances, and Trends

Hong Niu, Yue Xiao, Xia Lei, Jiangong Chen, Zhihan Xiao, Mao Li, Chau Yuen

Published Sep 16, 2025• 50 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Due to the broadcast nature of wireless communications, physical-layer security has attracted increasing attention from both academia and industry. Artificial noise (AN), as one of the promising physical-layer security techniques, leverages the spatial degree-of-freedom of channels to effectively enhance the security of wireless communications. In contrast to other physical-layer security techniques, the key distinguishing feature of AN lies in its ability to generate specific interfering signals according to channel characteristics, thereby increasing the secrecy capacity by reducing the wiretap channel capacity without affecting the legitimate channel capacity. Hence, this paper provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of AN, including its evolution, modeling, background, applications, and future trends. Initially, we introduce the development, fundamentals, and technical background of AN. Subsequently, we review the current state of research across various AN-empowered scenarios and AN-combined technologies. Finally, we discuss open challenges and outline potential future directions for AN-aided wireless security.

DOI
10.1109/comst.2025.3610758

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Due to the broadcast nature of wireless communications, physical-layer security has attracted increasing attention from both academia and industry. Artificial noise (AN), as one of the promising physical-layer security techniques, leverages the spatial degree-of-freedom of channels to effectively enhance the security of wireless communications. In contrast to other physical-layer security techniques, the key distinguishing feature of AN lies in its ability to generate specific interfering signals according to channel characteristics, thereby increasing the secrecy capacity by reducing the wiretap channel capacity without affecting the legitimate channel capacity. Hence, this paper provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of AN, including its evolution, modeling, background, applications, and future trends. Initially, we introduce the development, fundamentals, and technical background of AN. Subsequently, we review the current state of research across various AN-empowered scenarios and AN-combined technologies. Finally, we discuss open challenges and outline potential future directions for AN-aided wireless security.
Physical layer security (PLS) has emerged as a promising approach to enhance the security of wireless communication systems. This paper provides a comprehensive review of PLS, including its basic concepts, key techniques, and recent developments. We begin by introducing the basic principles of PLS, including the concept of secrecy capacity and the key assumptions underlying PLS. We then discuss various techniques that have been proposed to enhance PLS, such as artificial noise, cooperative jamming, and beamforming. Next, we review recent research on PLS in different scenarios, including multi-user systems, cognitive radio networks, and wireless sensor networks. Finally, we conclude by discussing future research directions and open challenges in PLS.
Due to the malicious attacks in wireless networks, physical layer security has attracted increasing concerns from both academia and industry. The research on physical layer security mainly focuses either on the secrecy capacity/achievable secrecy rate/capacity-equivocation region from the perspective of information theory, or on the security designs from the viewpoints of optimization and signal processing. Because of its importance in security designs, the latter research direction is surveyed in a comprehensive way in this paper. The survey begins with typical wiretap channel models to cover common scenarios and systems. The topics on physical-layer security designs are then summarized from resource allocation, beamforming/precoding, and antenna/node selection and cooperation. Based on the aforementioned schemes, the performance metrics and fundamental optimization problems are discussed, which are generally adopted in security designs. Thereafter, the state of the art of optimization approaches on each research topic of physical layer security is reviewed from four categories of optimization problems, such as secrecy rate maximization, secrecy outrage probability minimization, power consumption minimization, and secure energy efficiency maximization. Furthermore, the impacts of channel state information on optimization and design are discussed. Finally, the survey concludes with the observations on potential future directions and open challenges.
Physical layer security is an emerging technique to improve the wireless communication security, which is widely regarded as a complement to cryptographic technologies. To design physical layer security techniques under practical scenarios, the uncertainty and imperfections in the channel knowledge need to be taken into consideration. This paper provides a survey of recent research and development in physical layer security considering the imperfect channel state information (CSI) at communication nodes. We first present an overview of the main information-theoretic measures of the secrecy performance with imperfect CSI. Then, we describe several signal processing enhancements in secure transmission designs, such as secure on-off transmission, beamforming with artificial noise, and secure communication assisted by relay nodes or in cognitive radio systems. The recent studies of physical layer security in large-scale decentralized wireless networks are also summarized. Finally, the open problems for the on-going and future research are discussed.
Physical layer security is an emerging technique to improve the wireless communication security, which is widely regarded as a complement to cryptographic technologies. To design physical layer security techniques under practical scenarios, the uncertainty and imperfections in the channel knowledge need to be taken into consideration. This paper provides a survey of recent research and development in physical layer security considering the imperfect channel state information (CSI) at communication nodes. We first present an overview of the main information-theoretic measures of the secrecy performance with imperfect CSI. Then, we describe several signal processing enhancements in secure transmission designs, such as secure on-off transmission, beamforming with artificial noise, and secure communication assisted by relay nodes or in cognitive radio systems. The recent studies of physical layer security in large-scale decentralized wireless networks are also summarized. Finally, the open problems for the on-going and future research are discussed.
The broadcast nature of wireless communication systems makes wireless transmission extremely susceptible to eavesdropping and even malicious interference. Physical layer security technology can effectively protect the private information sent by the transmitter from being listened to by illegal eavesdroppers, thus ensuring the privacy and security of communication between the transmitter and legitimate users. Thus, the main design goal of physical layer security is to increase the performance difference between the link of the legitimate receiver and that of the eavesdropper using well-designed transmission schemes. The development of mobile communication presents new challenges to physical layer security research. This paper provides a survey of the physical layer security research on various promising mobile technologies from secure key generation and keyless techniques, including secure key generation, directional modulation (DM), spatial modulation (SM), covert communication, and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided communication. Finally, the future topics and the unresolved technical challenges are presented in physical layer security for mobile communications.
As a complement to high-layer encryption techniques, physical layer security has been widely recognized as a promising way to enhance wireless security by exploiting the characteristics of wireless channels, including fading, noise, and interference. In order to enhance the received signal power at legitimate receivers and impair the received signal quality at eavesdroppers simultaneously, multiple-antenna techniques have been proposed for physical layer security to improve secrecy performance via exploiting spatial degrees of freedom. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on various multiple-antenna techniques in physical layer security, with an emphasis on transmit beamforming designs for multiple-antenna nodes. Specifically, we provide a detailed investigation on multiple-antenna techniques for guaranteeing secure communications in point-to-point systems, dual-hop relaying systems, multiuser systems, and heterogeneous networks. Finally, future research directions and challenges are identified.