Ultimate Secrecy in Wireless Communications

Şennur Ulukuş, Ersen Ekrem

Ersen Ekrem, Şennur Ulukuş

Dennis Goeckel, Azadeh Sheikholeslami, Çağatay Çapar

A guarantee of everlasting secrecy is of great interest in modern communication systems. Information-theoretic secrecy is a promising method for providing such and has been widely considered. However, the adoption of information-theoretic security has been hampered by the difficulty of guaranteeing the necessary conditions for secrecy to be realized in a wireless communications environment, where the adversary might have a significant (and likely unknown) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) advantage over the intended recipient. Thus, whereas the wireless communications environment provides opportunities to gain an advantage over the adversary, as has been considered widely in the literature, it is that same environment that challenges its ultimate utility. We review pertinent past and emerging work to address these challenges and provide perspectives on future directions in the field.

Rahul Maurya, Puspraj Singh Chauhan, Vimal Bhatia +1 more

Abstract Physical layer security is a feasible solution to improve wireless communication secrecy against eavesdropping threats. Within this framework, this work examines the secrecy performance of a wireless link subjected to eavesdropping over generalized composite fading environments, specifically using the α-η-µ/Lognormal and α-κ-µ/Lognormal distributions. Closed-form results are derived for key secrecy performance metrics, including the average secrecy capacity (ASC), a lower bound on the secrecy outage probability SOPL, and the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC). Additionally, asymptotic analyses of ASC, SOPL, and SPSC are presented in the high-SNR regime to yield simplified insights into system behavior. The analysis accommodates arbitrary and independent fading conditions for the main and eavesdropper channels, thereby enabling a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of various channel parameters. Ultimately, all analytical outcomes are corroborated using comprehensive Monte Carlo simulations, affirming their precision and relevance.

Y.-W. Peter Hong, Pang-Chang Lan, C.‐C. Jay Kuo

Etienne Perron, Suhas N. Diggavi, Emre Telatar

Given that wireless communication occurs in a shared and inherently broadcast medium, the transmissions are vulnerable to undesired eavesdropping. This occurs even when a point-to-point communication is sought, and hence a fundamental question is whether we can utilize the wireless channel properties to establish secrecy. In this paper we consider secret communication between two special nodes ("source" and "destination") in a wireless network with authenticated relays: the message communicated to the destination is to be kept information-theoretically (unconditionally) secret from any eavesdropper within a class. Since the transmissions are broadcast and interfere with each other, complex signal interactions occur. We develop cooperative schemes which utilize these interactions in wireless communication over networks with arbitrary topology, and give provable unconditional secrecy guarantees.