Physical layer security (PLS) has been extensively explored as an alternative to conventional cryptographic schemes for securing wireless links. Many studies have shown that the cooperation between the legitimate nodes of a network can significantly enhance their secret communications performance, relative to the noncooperative case. Motivated by the importance of this class of PLS systems, this paper provides a comprehensive survey of the recent works on cooperative relaying and jamming techniques for securing wireless transmissions against eavesdropping nodes, which attempt to intercept the transmissions. First, it provides a in-depth overview of various secure relaying strategies and schemes. Next, a review of recently proposed solutions for cooperative jamming techniques is provided with an emphasis on power allocation and beamforming techniques. Then, the latest developments in hybrid techniques, which use both cooperative relaying and jamming, are elaborated. Finally, several key challenges in the domain of cooperative security are presented along with an extensive discussion on the applications of cooperative security in key enablers for 5G communications, such as nonorthogonal multiple access, device-to-device communications, and massive multiple-input multiple-output systems.
Physical layer security (PLS) has been extensively explored as an alternative to conventional cryptographic schemes for securing wireless links. Many studies have shown that the cooperation between the legitimate nodes of a network can significantly enhance their secret communications performance, relative to the noncooperative case. Motivated by the importance of this class of PLS systems, this paper provides a comprehensive survey of the recent works on cooperative relaying and jamming techniques for securing wireless transmissions against eavesdropping nodes, which attempt to intercept the transmissions. First, it provides a in-depth overview of various secure relaying strategies and schemes. Next, a review of recently proposed solutions for cooperative jamming techniques is provided with an emphasis on power allocation and beamforming techniques. Then, the latest developments in hybrid techniques, which use both cooperative relaying and jamming, are elaborated. Finally, several key challenges in the domain of cooperative security are presented along with an extensive discussion on the applications of cooperative security in key enablers for 5G communications, such as nonorthogonal multiple access, device-to-device communications, and massive multiple-input multiple-output systems.
As an alternative to complex cryptographic techniques, PLS is emerging as a promising paradigm to protect wireless communication systems from eavesdropping attacks by exploiting the physical characteristics of the wireless channels. Among various PLS approaches, the one based on cooperative communication is favorable and has received a lot of interest from the research community. Although PLS schemes with half-duplex relays have been extensively researched, the issue of PLS in cooperative systems with full-duplex (FD) relays is far from being comprehensively understood. In this article, we first present the state of the art on PLS approaches proposed for FD cooperative systems. We then provide a case study in which a source-based jamming scheme is proposed to enhance the secrecy performance of a cooperative system with an untrusted FD relay. Finally, we outline several interesting yet challenging future research problems in this topic.
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.
The open nature of radio propagation enables ubiquitous wireless communication. This allows for seamless data transmission. However, unauthorized users may pose a threat to the security of the data being transmitted to authorized users. This gives rise to network vulnerabilities such as hacking, eavesdropping, and jamming of the transmitted information. Physical layer security (PLS) has been identified as one of the promising security approaches to safeguard the transmission from eavesdroppers in a wireless network. It is an alternative to the computationally demanding and complex cryptographic algorithms and techniques. PLS has continually received exponential research interest owing to the possibility of exploiting the characteristics of the wireless channel. One of the main characteristics includes the random nature of the transmission channel. The aforesaid nature makes it possible for confidential and authentic signal transmission between the sender and the receiver in the physical layer. We start by introducing the basic theories of PLS, including the wiretap channel, information-theoretic security, and a brief discussion of the cryptography security technique. Furthermore, an overview of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication is provided. The main focus of our review is based on the existing key-less PLS optimization techniques, their limitations, and challenges. The paper also looks into the promising key research areas in addressing these shortfalls. Lastly, a comprehensive overview of some of the recent PLS research in 5G and 6G technologies of wireless communication networks is provided.
Physical layer security (PLS) has emerged as a new concept and powerful alternative that can complement and may even replace encryption-based approaches, which entail many hurdles and practical problems for future wireless systems. The basic idea of PLS is to exploit the characteristics of the wireless channel and its impairments including noise, fading, interference, dispersion, diversity, etc. in order to ensure the ability of the intended user to successfully perform data decoding while preventing eavesdroppers from doing so. Thus, the main design goal of PLS is to increase the performance difference between the link of the legitimate receiver and that of the eavesdropper by using well-designed transmission schemes. In this survey, we propose a conceptual, generic, and expandable framework for classifying the existing PLS techniques against wireless passive eavesdropping. In this flexible framework, the security techniques that we comprehensively review in this treatise are divided into two primary approaches: signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio-based approach and complexity-based approach. The first approach is classified into three major categories: first, secrecy channel codes-based schemes; second, security techniques based on channel adaptation; third, schemes based on injecting interfering artificial (noise/jamming) signals along with the transmitted information signals. The second approach (complexity-based), which is associated with the mechanisms of extracting secret sequences from the shared channel, is classified into two main categories based on which layer the secret sequence obtained by channel quantization is applied on. The techniques belonging to each one of these categories are divided and classified into three main signal domains: time, frequency and space. For each one of these domains, several examples are given and illustrated along with the review of the state-of-the-art security advances in each domain. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of each approach alongside the lessons learned from existing research works are stated and discussed. The recent applications of PLS techniques to different emerging communication systems such as visible light communication, body area network, power line communication, Internet of Things, smart grid, mm-Wave, cognitive radio, vehicular ad-hoc network, unmanned aerial vehicle, ultra-wideband, device-to-device, radio-frequency identification, index modulation, and 5G non-orthogonal multiple access based-systems, are also reviewed and discussed. The paper is concluded with recommendations and future research directions for designing robust, efficient and strong security methods for current and future wireless systems.
Physical Layer Security (PLS) provides a promising complementary approach to cryptographic methods for protecting wireless communications from eavesdropping. This paper investigates secrecy enhancement through cooperative relaying and jamming in a wireless network with two legitimate users, one eavesdropper, and five potential relay nodes operating in amplify-and-forward mode. Three relay–jammer selection strategies are considered: random relay and jammer selection, best-SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) relay with random jammer selection, and best-SNR relay with a jammer chosen based on the strongest channel toward the eavesdropper. The secrecy performance of these strategies are evaluated in terms of secrecy rate and secrecy outage probability. The results demonstrate that intelligent relay and jammer selection can significantly improve PLS compared to random selection, highlighting the benefits of cooperation in secure wireless systems.
Cooperative communications is obviously an evolution in wireless networks due to its noticeable advantages such as increasing the coverage as well as combating fading and shadowing effects. However, the broadcast characteristic of a wireless medium which is exploited in cooperative communications leads to a variety of security vulnerabilities. As cooperative communication networks are globally expanded, they expose to security attacks and threats more than ever. Primarily, researchers have focused on upper layers of network architectures to meet the requirements for secure cooperative transmission while the upper-layer security solutions are incapable of combating a number of security threats, e.g., jamming attacks. To address this issue, physical-layer security has been recommended as a complementary solution in the literature. In this thesis, physical layer attacks of the cooperative communication systems are studied, and corresponding security techniques including cooperative jamming, beamforming and diversity approaches are investigated. In addition, a novel security solution for a two-hop decode-and-forward relaying system is presented where the transmitters insert a random phase shift to the modulated data of each hop. The random phase shift is created based on a shared secret among communicating entities. Thus, the injected phase shift confuses the eavesdropper and secrecy capacity improves. Furthermore, a cooperative jamming strategy for multi-hop decode-and-forward relaying systems is presented where multiple non-colluding illegitimate nodes can overhear the communication. The jamming signal is created by the transmitter of each hop while being sent with the primary signal. The jamming signal is known at the intended receiver as it is according to a secret common knowledge between the communicating entities. Hence, artificial noise misleads the eavesdroppers, and decreases their signal-to-noise-ratio. As a result, secrecy capacity of the system is improved. Finally, power allocation among friendly jamming and main signal is proposed to ensure that suggested scheme enhances secrecy.