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Cryptography

Physical Layer Security Design for Polar Code Construction

Yao Zeng, Yuxi Tang, Luping Xiang

Published Jul 4, 2022• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In contrast to the network security that relies on upper-layer encryption for the confidentiality and authenticity of communications, physical layer security (PLS) exploits the uniqueness and randomness of the physical channel to encrypt information and enhance the security of the system. In this paper, we study the PLS of a polar-coded wireless communication system. To be more specific, we leverage the unique properties in polar code construction and propose a channel quality indicator (CQI)-based frozen-bit pattern generation scheme. The transmitter employs the Gaussian approximation algorithm to generate the corresponding frozen bit pattern according to the instantaneous CQI of the legitimate link. At the receiver, by leveraging the full channel reciprocity in the time-division duplex (TDD) mode, we can map the CQI to the corresponding frozen bit pattern and correctly decode the received bits. By contrast, the eavesdropper was unable to have the knowledge of the legal channel, and hence cannot determine the frozen bit pattern of the polar-coded bit sequence. Our simulation results demonstrate that by adopting the proposed PLS key generation scheme, Eve was hardly able to correctly decode a complete frame, leading to a high block error rate (BLER), while Bob was able to attain a 10−5 BLER.

DOI
10.3390/cryptography6030035

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IET Communications•Sep 10, 2015•17 citations
In contrast to the network security that relies on upper-layer encryption for the confidentiality and authenticity of communications, physical layer security (PLS) exploits the uniqueness and randomness of the physical channel to encrypt information and enhance the security of the system. In this paper, we study the PLS of a polar-coded wireless communication system. To be more specific, we leverage the unique properties in polar code construction and propose a channel quality indicator (CQI)-based frozen-bit pattern generation scheme. The transmitter employs the Gaussian approximation algorithm to generate the corresponding frozen bit pattern according to the instantaneous CQI of the legitimate link. At the receiver, by leveraging the full channel reciprocity in the time-division duplex (TDD) mode, we can map the CQI to the corresponding frozen bit pattern and correctly decode the received bits. By contrast, the eavesdropper was unable to have the knowledge of the legal channel, and hence cannot determine the frozen bit pattern of the polar-coded bit sequence. Our simulation results demonstrate that by adopting the proposed PLS key generation scheme, Eve was hardly able to correctly decode a complete frame, leading to a high block error rate (BLER), while Bob was able to attain a 10−5 BLER.
In this paper, a novel design named security-oriented polar coding (SOPC) is proposed to enhance the physical layer security (PLS), where the active pattern of frozen bits in a transmission is determined by random channel gain of the legitimate link. Since the channel gain value is not exchanged between the legitimate transmitter and the desired receiver, eavesdroppers cannot ascertain the frozen bit pattern engaged in the legitimate polar coding. When the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is low, eavesdroppers are unable to appropriately decode the confidential information delivered over the legitimate link. As the SNR increases, eavesdroppers may have chance to sort out the correct frozen bit pattern through a brute-force search. However, this chance is significantly reduced by our SOPC. We design the SOPC for both single-input-single-output single-antenna eavesdropper (SISOSE) and multiple-input-multiple-output multi-antenna eavesdropper (MIMOME) channels. Its PLS functioning is assessed in terms of the error rate difference between the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. Illustrative simulation results substantiate that the SOPC design guarantees degraded decoding performance at eavesdroppers, for both SISOSE and MIMOME channels, even in the presence of a powerful eavesdropper possessing infinite computational resources.
A novel Physical Layer Security (PLS) framework is conceived for enhancing the security of wireless communication systems by exploiting multi-domain polarization in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems. We design a sophisticated key generation scheme based on multi-domain polarization and the corresponding receivers. An in-depth analysis of the system’s secrecy rate is provided, demonstrating the confidentiality of our approach in the presence of eavesdroppers having strong computational capabilities. More explicitly, our simulation results and theoretical analysis corroborate the advantages of the proposed scheme in terms of its bit error rate (BER), block error rate (BLER), and maximum achievable secrecy rate. Our findings indicate that the innovative PLS framework effectively enhances the security and reliability of wireless communication systems. For example, in a4×44\times 44×4MIMO setup, the proposed PLS strategy exhibits an improvement of 2dB compared to conventional MIMO, systems at a BLER of2⋅10−52\cdot 10^{-5}2⋅10−5while the eavesdropper’s BLER reaches 1.
Abstract The existing physical layer security schemes, which are based on the key generation model and the wire-tap channel model, achieve security by utilizing channel reciprocity entropy and noise entropy, respectively. In contrast, we propose a novel secure transmission framework that combines noise entropy with reciprocity entropy, achieved by inserting reciprocity entropy into the frozen bits of polar codes. Note that in real-world scenarios, when eavesdroppers employ polynomial-time attacks, the bit error rate (BER) increases due to the introduction of computational entropy. To achieve indistinguishability security, we convert the practical physical layer security metric, BER, into the average min-entropy, a widely accepted concept in cryptography. The simulation results demonstrate that the eavesdropper’s BER can be significantly increased without compromising the communication performance of the legitimate receiver. Under concrete parameters we selected, when compared to the joint scheme of physical layer key generation and one time pad, the modular semantically-secure scheme based on the wire-tap channel model, and the simple channel entropy combination scheme, our scheme achieves a message rate approximately 1.2 times, 3.8 times, and 1.4 times better, respectively. Experimental testing validates the feasibility of our scheme.
In this paper, we consider a secure communication over the physical layer. The objective of the system is, at the physical layer security, the randomness of the channel and the polar coded aided artificial noise provide the security to the system without any secret key generation in higher layer encryption. Artificial noise will be injected at the last codeword of the confidential bits of polar codes in transmission block. Jamming position algorithm is used to initialize the position of artificial noise. The Bhattacharya parameter is used to select the position of jamming with regard to the reliability of the channel. The legitimate receiver has the knowledge of artificial noise and the confidential bit position, so it will eliminate the AN but Eve does not have the knowledge of jamming position so it cannot eliminate the AN. Simulation results show the performance of secrecy rate and the security gap of the system with the help of adding artificial noise at the last transmission block.
In this paper, a physical layer security scheme is proposed for index modulation aided orthogonal time frequency space (IM-OTFS) modulation systems working in Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode. In FDD systems, the channel reciprocity, which is the basic assumption for most physical layer security (PLS) techniques, is not applicable. To deal with the security challenge in FDD IM-OTFS systems, Chaos sequence is generated by exploiting the angular reciprocity of the legitimate link to construct the secure mapping rule between the information bits and the modulation symbols as well as the symbol indices. A PLS scheme based on the proposed secure mapping is introduced. The secrecy performance of the proposed PLS scheme is analyzed in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and the ergodic secrecy rate. Furthermore, a close-form approximated ergodic secrecy rate is derived to reduce the computational complexity. A truncation method is proposed to obtain robust secure transmissions when the angles of the uplink and downlink legitimate channels are estimated with errors. Simulation results show that the theoretical BER curve approaches the simulated BER curve closely for medium and high signal to noise ratio (SNR) regions, and the eavesdropper’s BER is always around 0.5 for all SNRs. The closed-form approximated ergodic secrecy rate fits the ergodic secrecy rate exactly in low and high SNR regions, and can work as a lower bound of the ergodic secrecy rate in medium SNR region. The secure mapping at the legitimate users is not affected by the angle estimation errors by using the truncation method, while the eavesdropper’s BER is influenced and the influence is analyzed.
In this study, by exploiting the properties of finite‐length polar codes, the authors introduce a physical layer encryption scheme to make secure (from a computational security perspective) and efficient communication between a sender (Alice) and a legitimate receiver (Bob) against both active and passive attacks, simultaneously. To prevent active attacks, two techniques are considered: (i) a novel method is introduced to keep the generator matrix of polar code secret from an active attacker (Oscar); (ii) a proper joint polar encoding/encryption algorithm based on the hidden generator matrix is introduced. Two additional strategies are considered against passive attacks: (i) a new method is introduced to partition the bit‐channels into good and bad bit‐channels and then the scrambled information bits are transmitted over those bit‐channels that are good for Bob but bad for a passive attacker (Eve); (ii) the secret key cryptography is implemented at the physical layer, such that Eve cannot decode the eavesdropped data without the knowledge of the secret key shared between the authorised parties. Besides, this study discusses efficiency analysis results consisting key size, error performance and computational complexity of the proposed scheme.