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.
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.
As the latest evolving architecture of space networks, Internet of Satellites (IoSat) is regarded as a promising paradigm in the future beyond 5G and 6G wireless systems. However, due to the extremely large number of satellites and open links, it is challenging to ensure communication security in IoSat, especially for wiretap resisting. To the best of our knowledge, it is an entirely new problem to study the security issue in IoSat, since existing works concerning physical layer security (PLS) in satellite networks mainly focused on the space-to-terrestrial links. It is also noted that, we are the first to investigate PLS problem in IoSat. In light of this, we present in this paper an analytical model of PLS in IoSat where a terrestrial transmitter delivers its information to multi-satellite in the presence of eavesdroppers. By adopting the key parameters such as satellites' deployment density, minimum elevation angle, and orbit height, two major secrecy metric including average secrecy capacity and probability are derived and analyzed. As demonstrated by extensive numerical results, the presented theoretical framework can be utilized to efficiently evaluate the secrecy performance of IoSat, and guide the design and optimization for communication security in such systems.
Satellite communication has become essential for achieving seamless global connectivity in the 5 G and the future 6G networks. However, preventing eavesdropping attacks on data transmission remains a challenge due to the broadcasting nature of radio signals. Physical layer security (PLS) is a promising approach that can offer a lightweight solution suitable for satellites with hardware constraints such as limited computing and processing power. Recent studies considering PLS techniques have investigated secrecy performance in various satellite communication environments such as non-orthogonal multiple access but multi-satellite scheduling problems have been less highlighted. Particularly, in this paper, we investigate secrecy outage probability in low Earth orbit satellite networks by jointly considering multi-satellite scheduling for data and artificial noise transmissions against eavesdropping attacks. We propose a novel multi-satellite scheduling scheme and derive a closed-form of secrecy outage probability over Nakagami-mfading channels. We verify our analysis and evaluate our proposed scheme compared to several baseline schemes through extensive simulations.
In recent years, satellite communications have become the focus of research on space-air-ground-sea integrated wireless communication networks because of their wide coverage. Due to the broadcasting nature of satellite communications, the security of satellite systems has become a critical issue. In this paper, we study the secure transmission of satellite communications, focusing on the geostationary earth orbit (GEO) and low earth orbit (LEO) satellite scenarios, respectively. Because of the satellite's high mobility and long propagation delays, the transmitter side cannot obtain accurate channel state information (CSI). To this end, we establish the channel phase uncertainty model of GEO satellite users, the channel angle uncertainty model of LEO satellite users, and the norm-bounded model of eavesdroppers, respectively. Then, a corresponding robust secure transmission design is proposed. Since the resulting optimization problems are non-convex and challenging to handle, we propose an algorithm that transforms the original problem into a series of convex optimization subproblems and obtains the beamforming weight vectors through iterative calculation. Simulation results indicate that the security and robustness performance of the proposed algorithms are significantly improved compared with the conventional baselines.
With the expansion of human activities into the ocean, there is an urgent need for information transmission technology with higher data rates and more security. On the other hand, satellite communication plays an important role in the maritime area, but is also vulnerable to eavesdropping because of its broadcast nature. Therefore, in this study, the physical-layer security for a hybrid satellite and underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) system is considered. Specifically, a satellite source first broadcasts information to an overwater relay via an RF link, and then the relay converts the electrical signal to an optical one and transmits it to an underwater destination via a UWOC link, while an eavesdropper is overhearing this transmission. We derived the closed-form expressions for several system performance metrics, i.e., secrecy outage probability (SOP), and average secrecy capacity (ASC). Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations verify the accuracy of those results.
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.
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.