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IEEE photonics journal

A Physical-Layer Secure Coding Scheme for Indoor Visible Light Communication Based on Polar Codes

Zhen Che, Junbin Fang, Zoe L. Jiang, Jin Li, Shancheng Zhao, Yongchun Zhong, Zhe Chen

Published Sep 12, 2018• 36 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Visible light communication (VLC) can provide short-range optical wireless communication together with illumination using LED lightings. Since VLC channel is an open wireless channel, physical-layer security is desirable in order to hide secret information from unauthorized receivers, without reliance on upper-layer cryptographic techniques. In this paper, a secure coding scheme based on polar codes is proposed to simultaneously achieve physical-layer security and transmission reliability for indoor VLC systems under Wyner's wiretap model. An indoor VLC degraded wiretap channel model and an indoor VLC undegraded wiretap model are analyzed to estimate the corresponding secrecy capacity with typical indoor VLC scenarios considering the requirements of illumination and reliable transmission. Then, a physical-layer secure coding scheme and an enhanced scheme are designed to provide securely reliable communication without sacrificing the illumination functionality. Numerical results show that for VLC degraded wiretap channel, the proposed coding scheme can reduce the bit error rate (BER) of main channel to nearly 0 and increase that of wiretap channel to 0.5. Therefore, the mutual information between the sender and the eavesdropper and the BER of the legitimate receiver are both decreased to nearly 0. Both the security and reliability of VLC are guaranteed by the proposed coding scheme. And the practical secrecy rate reaches 85.96% at some positions when codeword length is 2 048 bits. Furthermore, an enhanced coding scheme with a feedback channel is proposed to handle the case that the wiretap channel is not degraded with respect to the main channel. With the feedback channel, the wiretap channel can be equivalently degraded and the security can be increased gradually with the increment of the degradation level of the wiretap channel. Meanwhile, the secrecy capacities can be asymptotically achieved for indoor VLC systems.

DOI
10.1109/jphot.2018.2869931

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Visible light communication (VLC) can provide short-range optical wireless communication together with illumination using LED lightings. Since VLC channel is an open wireless channel, physical-layer security is desirable in order to hide secret information from unauthorized receivers, without reliance on upper-layer cryptographic techniques. In this paper, a secure coding scheme based on polar codes is proposed to simultaneously achieve physical-layer security and transmission reliability for indoor VLC systems under Wyner's wiretap model. An indoor VLC degraded wiretap channel model and an indoor VLC undegraded wiretap model are analyzed to estimate the corresponding secrecy capacity with typical indoor VLC scenarios considering the requirements of illumination and reliable transmission. Then, a physical-layer secure coding scheme and an enhanced scheme are designed to provide securely reliable communication without sacrificing the illumination functionality. Numerical results show that for VLC degraded wiretap channel, the proposed coding scheme can reduce the bit error rate (BER) of main channel to nearly 0 and increase that of wiretap channel to 0.5. Therefore, the mutual information between the sender and the eavesdropper and the BER of the legitimate receiver are both decreased to nearly 0. Both the security and reliability of VLC are guaranteed by the proposed coding scheme. And the practical secrecy rate reaches 85.96% at some positions when codeword length is 2 048 bits. Furthermore, an enhanced coding scheme with a feedback channel is proposed to handle the case that the wiretap channel is not degraded with respect to the main channel. With the feedback channel, the wiretap channel can be equivalently degraded and the security can be increased gradually with the increment of the degradation level of the wiretap channel. Meanwhile, the secrecy capacities can be asymptotically achieved for indoor VLC systems.
Physical-layer security is desirable for visible light communication (VLC) in order to hide information from unauthorized receivers, without reliance on upper-layer encryption. In this paper, we propose a physical-layer secure coding scheme based on polar codes to achieve secrecy capacity of indoor VLC under Wyner's wiretap model. Compared with the beamforming approach requiring multiple-input, single-output (MISO) VLC, the proposed scheme can obtain security and reliability simultaneously for indoor single-input, single-output (SISO) VLC with binary-input discrete memoryless channels (BDMCs). Numerical results show that when the wiretap channel is degraded with respect to the main channel, the secrecy capacity can be asymptotically achieved to transmit the secret information.
Visible light communication (VLC) with physical-layer security can provide information-theoretic security for the optical wireless channel based on the characteristics of the channel instead of encryption algorithms and secret keys at application layer. Since precise location information of communication parties is crucial for estimating channel states and designing secure communication schemes, this paper proposes an integrated visible light communication and positioning system which provides triple functionalities of high-accuracy indoor positioning, physical-layer secure visible light communication, and flicker mitigation illumination. A heterogeneous signal hybrid line coding scheme is proposed for the transmitter to converge the high-speed communication data signals and the low-speed positioning data signals, and a hybrid heterogeneous signal extraction scheme is proposed for the receiver to separate the hybrid heterogeneous signals with a high-bandwidth photodetector and a low-pass complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor. Based on the positioning information and the communication scheme, a polar codes-based forward error correction coding scheme is designed to achieve physical-layer security and transmission reliability simultaneously. Numerical results show that the proposed system can reach a secrecy code rate of 0.76 for a single-input single-output indoor VLC channel and a transmission efficiency of 0.38 without perceivable flicker. Experimental results show that the proposed system can achieve an average positioning accuracy of 3.35 cm and decrease the bit error rate of a legitimate receiver to a near error-free level (lower than 10 −7 ) while keeping the bit error rate of an eavesdropper at 0.4887 (nearly 0.5) with a transmission data rate of 1 Mbps, resulting in near-zero suppression of the eavesdropped information and a high secrecy capacity of 0.9994.
This paper considers secure transmission over the visible light communication (VLC) channel by the means of physical-layer security techniques. In particular, we consider achievable secrecy rates of the multiple-input, single-output (MISO) wiretap VLC channel. The VLC channel is modeled as a deterministic and real-valued Gaussian channel subject to amplitude constraints. We utilize null-steering and artificial noise strategies to achieve positive secrecy rates when the eavesdropper's channel state information (CSI) is perfectly known and entirely unknown to the transmitter, respectively. In both scenarios, the legitimate receiver's CSI is available to the transmitter. We numerically evaluate achievable secrecy rates under typical VLC scenarios and show that simple precoding techniques can significantly improve the confidentiality of VLC links.
Visible light communication (VLC) is a burgeoning field in wireless communications as it considers illumination and communication simultaneously. The broadcast nature of VLC makes it necessary to consider the security of underlying transmissions. A physical-layer security (PLS) scheme by introducing jamming LEDs is considered in this paper. The secrecy rate of an indoor VLC system with multiple LEDs, one legitimate receiver, and multiple eavesdroppers is investigated. Three distributions of input signal are assumed, i.e., truncated generalized normal distribution (TGN), uniform distribution, and exponential distribution. The results show that jamming can improve the secrecy performance efficiently. This paper also demonstrates that when the numbers of LEDs transmitting information-bearing signal and jamming signal are equal, the average secrecy rate can be maximized.
This paper considers improving the confidentiality of visible light communication (VLC) links within the framework of physical-layer security. We study a VLC scenario with one transmitter, one legitimate receiver, and one eavesdropper. The transmitter has multiple light sources, while the legitimate and unauthorized receivers have a single photodetector, each. We characterize secrecy rates achievable via transmit beamforming over the multiple-input, single-output (MISO) VLC wiretap channel. For VLC systems, intensity modulation (IM) via light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is the most practical transmission scheme. Because of the limited dynamic range of typical LEDs, the modulating signal must satisfy certain amplitude constraints. Hence, we begin with deriving lower and upper bounds on the secrecy capacity of the scalar Gaussian wiretap channel subject to amplitude constraints. Then, we utilize beamforming to obtain a closed-form secrecy rate expression for the MISO wiretap channel. Finally, we propose a robust beamforming scheme to consider the scenario wherein information about the eavesdropper's channel is imperfect due to location uncertainty. A typical application of the proposed scheme is to secure the communication link when the eavesdropper is expected to exist within a specified area. The performance is measured in terms of the worst-case secrecy rate guaranteed under all admissible realizations of the eavesdropper's channel.
Summary Visible light communication (VLC) is considered to be a great replacement or complement to existing radio frequency networks to provide the future fifth‐generation (5G) wireless technology with higher data rates for indoor connectivity, which alleviates the traffic demand. Therefore, many issues emerged regarding the security in 5G networks as human safety is at risk. This work presents a comprehensive study on the physical‐layer security (PLS) and solutions in 5G networks, specifically, the security of VLC technology as one of the core PLS solutions for 5G future wireless networks. Furthermore, VLC threats and PLS solutions are extensively investigated. Based on our study, we propose a new indoor VLC secure model to enhance the secrecy performance in VLC networks using a combination of multiple PLS techniques to achieve this aim as beamforming, secure communication zones, and friendly jamming. The simulation results with respect to the received optical power and signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) prove that the proposed indoor VLC model can improve the secrecy performance. As the user's SNR exceeded 100 dB and optical received power reached 15 mW, the malicious user's SNR barely reached 30 dB with a 4‐μW received power outside the target zone increasing his interference level. Finally, future research directions in VLC security are outlined to encourage future research.