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Entropy

Implications of Coding Layers on Physical-Layer Security: A Secrecy Benefit Approach

Willie K. Harrison, Elise Beard, Scott Dye, Erin Holmes, Kaela Nelson, Marco A. C. Gomes, João P. Vilela

Published Aug 1, 2019• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this work, we consider the pros and cons of using various layers of keyless coding to achieve secure and reliable communication over the Gaussian wiretap channel. We define a new approach to information theoretic security, called practical secrecy and the secrecy benefit, to be used over real-world channels and finite blocklength instantiations of coding layers, and use this new approach to show the fundamental reliability and security implications of several coding mechanisms that have traditionally been used for physical-layer security. We perform a systematic/structured analysis of the effect of error-control coding, scrambling, interleaving, and coset coding, as coding layers of a secrecy system. Using this new approach, scrambling and interleaving are shown to be of no effect in increasing information theoretic security, even when measuring the effect at the output of the eavesdropper's decoder. Error control coding is shown to present a trade-off between secrecy and reliability that is dictated by the chosen code and the signal-to-noise ratios at the legitimate and eavesdropping receivers. Finally, the benefits of secrecy coding are highlighted, and it is shown how one can shape the secrecy benefit according to system specifications using combinations of different layers of coding to achieve both reliable and secure throughput.

DOI
10.3390/e21080755

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International Conference on Communications•May 1, 2019•1 citation
In this work, we consider the pros and cons of using various layers of keyless coding to achieve secure and reliable communication over the Gaussian wiretap channel. We define a new approach to information theoretic security, called practical secrecy and the secrecy benefit, to be used over real-world channels and finite blocklength instantiations of coding layers, and use this new approach to show the fundamental reliability and security implications of several coding mechanisms that have traditionally been used for physical-layer security. We perform a systematic/structured analysis of the effect of error-control coding, scrambling, interleaving, and coset coding, as coding layers of a secrecy system. Using this new approach, scrambling and interleaving are shown to be of no effect in increasing information theoretic security, even when measuring the effect at the output of the eavesdropper's decoder. Error control coding is shown to present a trade-off between secrecy and reliability that is dictated by the chosen code and the signal-to-noise ratios at the legitimate and eavesdropping receivers. Finally, the benefits of secrecy coding are highlighted, and it is shown how one can shape the secrecy benefit according to system specifications using combinations of different layers of coding to achieve both reliable and secure throughput.
In this paper, we provide secrecy metrics applicable to physical-layer coding techniques with finite blocklengths over Gaussian and fading wiretap channel models and analyze their secrecy performance over several cases of concatenated code designs. Our metrics go beyond some of the known practical secrecy measures, such as bit error rate and security gap, so as to make lower bound probabilistic guarantees on error rates over short blocklengths both preceding and following a secrecy decoder. Our techniques are especially useful in cases where application of traditional information-theoretic security measures is either impractical or simply not yet understood. The metrics can aid both practical system analysis, including cryptanalysis, and practical system design when concatenated codes are used for physical-layer security. Furthermore, these new measures fill a void in the current landscape of practical security measures for physical-layer security coding and may assist in the wide-scale adoption of physical-layer techniques for security in real-world systems. We also show how the new metrics provide techniques for reducing realistic channel models to simpler discrete memoryless wiretap channel equivalents over which existing secrecy code designs may achieve information-theoretic security.
The fast development of wireless networks, which are intrinsically exposed to eavesdropping, has created a growing concern for confidentiality. While classical cryptographic schemes require a key provided by the end-user, physical-layer security leverages the randomness of the physical communication medium as a source of secrecy. The main benefit of physical-layer security techniques is their relatively low cost and their ability to combine with any existing security mechanisms. This dissertation provides an analysis including the theoretical study of the two-way wiretap channel to obtain a better insight into how to design coding mechanisms, practical tests with experimental systems, and the design of actual codes. From a theoretical standpoint, the study confirms the benefits of combining several multi-user coding techniques including cooperative jamming, coded cooperative jamming and secret key generation. For these different mechanisms, the trade-off between reliability, secrecy and communication rate is clarified under a stringent strong secrecy metric. Regarding the design of practical codes, spatially coupled LDPC codes, which were originally designed for reliability, are modified to develop a coded cooperative jamming code. Finally, a proof-of-principle practical wireless system is provided to show how to implement a secret key generation system on experimental programmable radios. This testbed is then used to assess the realistic performance of such systems in terms of reliability, secrecy and rate.
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed today and the networks are used in many applications which require that the data transmitted be secure. Due to the open nature of wireless systems, it is important to have a fundamental understanding of coding schemes that allow for simultaneously secure and reliable transmission. The information theoretic approach is able to give us this fundamental insight into the nature of the coding schemes required for security. The security issue is approached by focusing on the confidentiality of message transmission and reception at the physical layer. The goal is to design coding and signal processing schemes that provide security, in the information theoretic sense. In so doing, we are able to prove the simultaneously secure and reliable transmission rates for different network building blocks. The multi-receiver broadcast channel is an important network building block, where the rate region for the channel without security constraints is still unknown. In the thesis this channel is investigated with security constraints, and the secure and reliable rates are derived for the proposed coding scheme using a random coding argument. Cooperative relaying is next applied to the wiretap channel, the fundamental physical layer model for the communication security problem, and signal processing techniques are used to show that the secure rate can be improved in situations where the secure rate was small due to the eavesdropper enjoying a more favorable channel condition compared to the legitimate receiver. Finally, structured lattice codes are used in the wiretap channel instead of unstructured random codes, used in the vast majority of the work so far. We show that lattice coding and decoding can achieve the secrecy rate of the Gaussian wiretap channel; this is an important step towards realizing practical, explicit codes for the wiretap channel.
The renewed interest for physical-layer security techniques has put forward a new role for error-control codes. In addition to ensuring reliability, carefully designed codes have been shown to provide a level of information-theoretic secrecy, by which the amount of information leaked to an adversary may be controlled. The ability to achieve information-theoretic secrecy relies on the study of alternative coding mechanisms, such as channel resolvability and privacy amplification, in which error-control codes are exploited as a means to shape the distribution of stochastic processes. This use of error-control codes, which goes much beyond that of correcting errors, creates numerous new design challenges. The objective of this paper is threefold. First, the paper aims at providing system engineers with explicit tools to build simple secrecy codes in order to stimulate interest and foster their integration in communication system prototypes. Second, it aims at providing coding and information theorists with a synthetic overview of the theoretical concepts and techniques for secrecy. Finally, it aims at highlighting the open challenges and opportunities faced for the integration of these codes in practical systems.
This paper studies physical-layer security over slow fading channels, considering the impact of finite-blocklength secrecy coding. A comprehensive analysis and optimization framework is established to investigate the secrecy throughput (ST) of a legitimate user pair coexisting with an eavesdropper. Specifically, we devise both adaptive and non-adaptive optimization schemes to maximize the ST, where we derive optimal parameters including the transmission policy, blocklength, and code rates based on the instantaneous and statistical channel state information of the legitimate pair, respectively. Various important insights are provided. In particular, 1) increasing blocklength improves both reliability and secrecy with our transmission policy; 2) ST monotonically increases with blocklength; 3) ST initially increases and then decreases with secrecy rate, and there exists a critical secrecy rate that maximizes the ST. Numerical results are presented to verify theoretical findings.
We propose a coding methodology for physical layer security with adaptive characteristics, whereby adaptive we mean that the system must be tunable to different operational points/signal-to-noise ratio levels of both the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. Based on interleaving and scrambling as techniques that shuffle the original message before transmission, we consider puncturing over an interleaving/scrambling key and/or over the message as a mechanism to provide the required adaptability to channel conditions. The proposed techniques have shown suitable adaptability to different channel quality levels of the legitimate receiver and eavesdropper, while still guaranteeing the desired reliability for the legitimate receiver and secrecy against the eavesdropper.