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Security and Safety

Physical layer security techniques for data transmission for future wireless networks

Weiping Shi, Xinyi Jiang, Jinsong Hu, Abdeldime M. S. Abdelgader, Yin Teng, Yang Wang, Hangjia He, Rongen Dong, Feng Shu, Jiangzhou Wang

Published Jan 1, 2022• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The broadcast nature of wireless communication systems makes wireless transmission extremely susceptible to eavesdropping and even malicious interference. Physical layer security technology can effectively protect the private information sent by the transmitter from being listened to by illegal eavesdroppers, thus ensuring the privacy and security of communication between the transmitter and legitimate users. Thus, the main design goal of physical layer security is to increase the performance difference between the link of the legitimate receiver and that of the eavesdropper using well-designed transmission schemes. The development of mobile communication presents new challenges to physical layer security research. This paper provides a survey of the physical layer security research on various promising mobile technologies from secure key generation and keyless techniques, including secure key generation, directional modulation (DM), spatial modulation (SM), covert communication, and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided communication. Finally, the future topics and the unresolved technical challenges are presented in physical layer security for mobile communications.

DOI
10.1051/sands/2022007

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The broadcast nature of wireless communication systems makes wireless transmission extremely susceptible to eavesdropping and even malicious interference. Physical layer security technology can effectively protect the private information sent by the transmitter from being listened to by illegal eavesdroppers, thus ensuring the privacy and security of communication between the transmitter and legitimate users. Thus, the main design goal of physical layer security is to increase the performance difference between the link of the legitimate receiver and that of the eavesdropper using well-designed transmission schemes. The development of mobile communication presents new challenges to physical layer security research. This paper provides a survey of the physical layer security research on various promising mobile technologies from secure key generation and keyless techniques, including secure key generation, directional modulation (DM), spatial modulation (SM), covert communication, and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided communication. Finally, the future topics and the unresolved technical challenges are presented in physical layer security for mobile communications.
With the rapid development of mobile Internet technology and the continuous improvement of people's understanding of data security, the research on the secure transmission of information in wireless communication systems has received extensive attention. Using physical layer security technology to protect the information transmission security is not only beneficial to prevent illegal eavesdroppers from obtaining the transmitted information, but also greatly reduces the computational complexity caused by traditional encryption methods. Based on Shannon's communication theory and Wyner's wiretapping channel, this paper briefly introduces the physical layer transmission security technologies such as beamforming, artificial noise and cooperative communication, mainly analyzes massive MIMO antennas and intelligent reflecting surface, and makes a prospect summary. At the end of the paper, the open issues are identified as our future research directions.
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 which safeguards data confidentiality based on the information-theoretic approaches has received significant research interest recently. The key idea behind physical layer security is to utilize the intrinsic randomness of the transmission channel to guarantee the security in physical layer. The evolution toward 5G wireless communications poses new challenges for physical layer security research. This paper provides a latest survey of the physical layer security research on various promising 5G technologies, including physical layer security coding, massive multiple-input multiple-output, millimeter wave communications, heterogeneous networks, non-orthogonal multiple access, full duplex technology, and so on. Technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of physical layer security in 5G and beyond are discussed.
Physical layer covert communication is a crucial secure communication technology that enables a transmitter to convey information covertly to a recipient without being detected by adversaries. Unlike typical cryptography and physical layer security systems that concentrate on protecting the sent signal content, covert communications seek to conceal the existence of legitimate transmission. Thus, with beyond fifth-generation (B5G) wireless communications, covert communications can operate in tandem or as a supplement to conventional security techniques. We provide an extensive overview of the basic theories and several strategies in physical layer covert communications in this article. In particular, we go into great detail about the basic theories of physical layer covert communications, such as channel models, codes, secret keys, and covertness metrics, as well as various covert schemes in progressively more complicated scenarios, such as covert communications in single-antenna and multiantenna three-node systems and covert communications in jammer-and relay-aided systems. In addition, we identify the challenges and future directions for research on covert communications in B5G wireless networks.
Security is one of the key issues in wireless communication. It is critical to send confidential data to legitimate user rather than intruders in an open space. In recent years, physical layer security attracts much research interest. This article offers a tutorial on several new methods to ensure security at physical layer in wireless communication. The introduction includes several aspects, from the theoretical base of the physical layer security, secure code design, cooperative jamming, to secret key generation, and comparing of the different techniques. Finally we make a view on the future works in this area.
Information security is one of the most critical issues in wireless networks as the signals transmitted through wireless medium are more vulnerable for interception. Although the existing conventional security techniques are proven to be safe, the broadcast nature of wireless communications introduces different challenges in terms of key exchange and distributions. As a result, information theoretic physical layer security has been proposed to complement the conventional security techniques for enhancing security in wireless transmissions. On the other hand, the rapid growth of data rates introduces different challenges on power limited mobile devices in terms of energy requirements. Recently, research work on wireless power transfer claimed that it has been considered as a potential technique to extend the battery lifetime of wireless networks. However, the algorithms developed based on the conventional optimization approaches often require iterative techniques, which poses challenges for real-time processing. To meet the demanding requirements of future ultra-low latency and reliable networks, neural network (NN) based approach can be employed to determine the resource allocations in wireless communications. \n \nThis thesis developed different transmission strategies for secure transmission in wireless communications. Firstly, transmitter designs are focused in a multiple-input single-output simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system with unknown eavesdroppers. To improve the performance of physical layer security and the harvested energy, artificial noise is incorporated into the network to mask the secret information between the legitimate terminals. Then, different secrecy energy efficiency designs are considered for a MISO underlay cognitive radio network, in the presence of an energy harvesting receiver. In particular, these designs are developed with different channel state information assumptions at the transmitter. Finally, two different power allocation designs are investigated for a cognitive radio network to maximize the secrecy rate of the secondary receiver: conventional convex optimization framework and NN based algorithm.