This paper for the first time investigate the security and reliability performance of ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) systems in the presence of randomly distributed eavesdroppers, where the impact of short blocklength codes and imperfect channel estimation are jointly considered. Based on the finite-blocklength information theory, we first derive a closed-form approximation of transmission error probability to describe the degree of reliability loss. Then, we also derive an asymptotic expression of intercept probability to characterize the security performance, where the impact of secrecy protected zone is also considered. Simulation and numerical results validate the accuracy of theoretical approximations, and illustrate the tradeoff between security and reliability. That is, the intercept probability of URLLC systems can be suppressed by loosening the reliability requirement, and vice versa. More importantly, the theoretical analysis and methodologies presented in this paper can offer some insights and design guidelines for supporting secure URLLC applications in the future 6G wireless networks.
This paper for the first time investigate the security and reliability performance of ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) systems in the presence of randomly distributed eavesdroppers, where the impact of short blocklength codes and imperfect channel estimation are jointly considered. Based on the finite-blocklength information theory, we first derive a closed-form approximation of transmission error probability to describe the degree of reliability loss. Then, we also derive an asymptotic expression of intercept probability to characterize the security performance, where the impact of secrecy protected zone is also considered. Simulation and numerical results validate the accuracy of theoretical approximations, and illustrate the tradeoff between security and reliability. That is, the intercept probability of URLLC systems can be suppressed by loosening the reliability requirement, and vice versa. More importantly, the theoretical analysis and methodologies presented in this paper can offer some insights and design guidelines for supporting secure URLLC applications in the future 6G wireless networks.
In this letter, we focus on the secrecy outage analysis of ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) systems in the presence of randomly located eavesdroppers and imperfect channel state information (CSI). To be specific, the secrecy outage probability (SOP) of pilot-assisted URLLC system is investigated, which is defined as the probability that either the reliability const-raint or the secrecy constraint cannot be satisfied when the packet is delivered with a target data rate and blocklength. In fact, the definition of SOP in URLLC scenarios with short-packet feature is evidently different from that in the infinite blocklength regime. Inspired by this, we first propose a novel analytical framework to approximate the SOP in a tractable manner. Then, the asymptotic behaviours of SOP in the high-SNR and large-antenna cases are also analyzed to gain a comprehensive insight. Numerical results illustrate how the SOP of our pilot-assisted URLLC system varies with specific transmission parameters.
In this article, we focus on the pilot-assisted transmission design for secure ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) systems, which has not yet been studied in the existing literatures. In each transmission period of this system, the multi-antenna controller sends confidential URLLC messages integrated with artificial noise (AN) to a single-antenna actuator for some mission-critical operations (e.g., remote control), and while an unknown number of passive eavesdroppers attempt to intercept this confidential message in a non-colluding manner. Since the conventional ergodic secrecy capacity is not accurate to describe the maximal achievable secrecy rate of URLLC with short blocklength coding, we establish the concept of achievable effective secrecy rate (AESR) to measure the secrecy performance of our URLLC system, which is defined as the average number of information bits can be transmitted per channel use under given reliability and information leakage constraints. Due to the exact expression of AESR has an intractable form, we derive a closed-form approximation on the AESR to simplify the calculation, via leveraging the Laplace approximation and Gaussian-Chebyshev quadrature method. Following by this approximation, we propose an efficient two-dimensional search algorithm to determine the optimal transmission parameters that maximize the AESR, i.e., the training pilot length and the power allocation ratio between confidential data signals and AN. Furthermore, the asymptotic performance of AESR in the high-SNR regime is also analyzed to gain more insights. Numerical results validate the accuracy of theoretical approximations presented in this paper, and illustrate how the particular system parameters impact the AESR of our considered URLLC system.
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the secrecy performance of short-packet transmissions in ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC). We consider the scenario where a multi-antenna source communicates with a single-antenna legitimate receiver requiring ultra-high reliability and low latency, in the presence of a single-antenna eavesdropper. In order to safeguard URLLC, the source transmits the artificial noise (AN) signal together with the confidential signal to confuse the eavesdropper. We adopt a lower bound on the maximal secrecy rate as the secrecy performance metric for short-packet transmissions in URLLC, which takes the target decoding error probabilities at the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper into account. Using this metric, we first derive a compact expression of the generalized secrecy outage probability (SOP). Then, we formally prove that the generalized SOP is a convex function with respect to the power allocation factor between the confidential signal and the AN signal. We further determine the optimal power allocation factor that minimizes the generalized SOP. The results presented in this work can be useful for designing new secure transmission schemes for URLLC.
Due to the openness nature of wireless medium, security issues have increasingly become a bottleneck that restricts the development of ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (uRLLCs). Physical layer security (PLS) technique has been proposed to fulfill the security and confidentiality of information transmission by exploiting the characteristics of the wireless channel, which caters to the features of uRLLC. Furthermore, PLS also shows great practicality in artificial intelligence field, especially in wireless intelligent networks. However, the previous works on the study of PLS ignored the significance of mobility and limited packet length constraint required by uRLLC for satisfying low latency, in this paper, we investigate the impact of mobility on the secrecy performance of uRLLC by using the Random WayPoint (RWP) model and the Random Direction (RD) model. Specifically, with the tools of stochastic geometry, to observe the impact of key system parameters on the secrecy performance, we establish the closed-form expression of connection outage probability, secrecy outage probability, and decoding error probability-based secrecy transmission capacity (DEP-STC). Furthermore, we derive the condition that achieves a positive DEP-STC under two moving models, which can offer the network designer some greatly significant insights into achieving perfect secrecy. Simulations validate our derived theoretical results, and indicate that RWP moving receiver can obtain a higher security level than RD moving one, while RWP eavesdropper can lead to a lower security.
Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) is an innovative service offered by fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems. URLLC enables various mission-critical applications by facilitating reliable and low-latency signal transmission. Apart from reliability and latency, ensuring the security of URLLC data transmission has been a prominent issue in recent years. URLLC uses finite blocklength signals to achieve the stringent reliability and latency requirement which eliminates the possibility of using conventional complex secret key-based cryptographic techniques. In this regard, lightweight security mechanisms like physical layer Security (PLS) have emerged as a powerful alternative to the complex cryptographic security techniques for URLLC by exploiting the randomness of the wireless channel. Therefore, this survey presents a comprehensive and in-depth review of the state-of-the-art PLS enhancements utilized to unleash secure URLLC in 5G and upcoming sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks. Moreover, the survey discusses the impact of system design parameters on the PLS of URLLC. It also incorporates a detailed overview of the recent advancements in ensuring PLS for mission-critical applications, URLLC enabling technologies, and Machine Learning (ML) based intelligent PLS schemes for URLLC. Then, for the first time, the survey introduces the extended service class of URLLC in 6G, i.e., Hyper Reliable Low Latency Communication (HRLLC), and provides an outlook on the future security aspects while identifying various promising new technologies that can provide secure HRLLC in 6G. Finally, the survey identifies several key challenges and highlights interesting future research directions while developing optimal PLS schemes for URLLC in 5G and HRLLC in future 6G wireless networks.
In applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), the use of short packets is expected to meet the stringent latency requirement in ultra-reliable low-latency communications; however, the incurred security issues and the impact of finite blocklength coding on the physical-layer security are not well understood. This paper investigates the performance of secure short-packet communications in a mission-critical IoT system with an external multi-antenna eavesdropper. An analytical framework is proposed to approximate the average achievable secrecy throughput of the system with finite blocklength coding. To gain more insight, a simple case with a single-antenna access point (AP) is considered first, in which the secrecy throughput is approximated in a closed form. Based on that result, the optimal blocklengths to maximize the secrecy throughput with and without the reliability and latency constraints, respectively, are derived. For the case with a multi-antenna AP, following the proposed analytical framework, closed-form approximations for the secrecy throughput are obtained under both beamforming and artificial-noise-aided transmission schemes. The numerical results verify the accuracy of the proposed approximations and illustrate the impact of the system parameters on the tradeoff between transmission latency and reliability under a secrecy constraint.