With the rapid deployment and wide use of mobile services and applications, more and more sensitive user information is being transmitted wirelessly. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions, they are exposed to all surrounding entities and thus vulnerable to eavesdropping. To counter this vulnerability, we propose a new physical-layer secure transmission scheme, called DDM-Sec, based on decomposed and distributed modulation (DDM). We show that a high-order modulation can be decomposed into multiple quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulations, each of which can be further represented by two mutually orthogonal binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulations. Therefore, traditional modulation can be realized by two cooperative transmitters (Txs), each generating a BPSK signal, in a distributed manner. The legitimate receiver (Rx) can decode the desired/intended information from the mixed two received BPSK signals while preventing the eavesdropper from accessing the legitimate user's information. DDM-Sec can effectively exploit the randomness of wireless channels to secure data transmission, enrich the spatial signatures of the legitimate user's transmission by employing two cooperative Txs, and then distribute the user's information to two transmissions so that none of the decomposed signals alone carry the legitimate user's full information. Moreover, due to random deployment of the two Txs and Rx, delay difference of the two transmissions is introduced. This can be further utilized to make eavesdropping difficult. Our theoretical analysis and simulation have shown that DDM-Sec can effectively prevent the eavesdropping, and hence guarantee the secrecy of the legitimate user's data transmission.
With the rapid deployment and wide use of mobile services and applications, more and more sensitive user information is being transmitted wirelessly. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions, they are exposed to all surrounding entities and thus vulnerable to eavesdropping. To counter this vulnerability, we propose a new physical-layer secure transmission scheme, called DDM-Sec, based on decomposed and distributed modulation (DDM). We show that a high-order modulation can be decomposed into multiple quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulations, each of which can be further represented by two mutually orthogonal binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulations. Therefore, traditional modulation can be realized by two cooperative transmitters (Txs), each generating a BPSK signal, in a distributed manner. The legitimate receiver (Rx) can decode the desired/intended information from the mixed two received BPSK signals while preventing the eavesdropper from accessing the legitimate user's information. DDM-Sec can effectively exploit the randomness of wireless channels to secure data transmission, enrich the spatial signatures of the legitimate user's transmission by employing two cooperative Txs, and then distribute the user's information to two transmissions so that none of the decomposed signals alone carry the legitimate user's full information. Moreover, due to random deployment of the two Txs and Rx, delay difference of the two transmissions is introduced. This can be further utilized to make eavesdropping difficult. Our theoretical analysis and simulation have shown that DDM-Sec can effectively prevent the eavesdropping, and hence guarantee the secrecy of the legitimate user's data transmission.
Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmissions, they are exposed to all surrounding entities and thus vulnerable to eavesdropping. To counter this vulnerability, we propose a new physical-layer secure transmission scheme, called DDM-Sec, based on decomposed and distributed modulation (DDM). DDM-Sec realizes traditional QPSK modulation by using two cooperative transmitters (Txs), each generating a BPSK signal, in a distributed manner. The legitimate receiver (Rx) can decode the desired/intended information from the mixed received signal while preventing the eavesdropper from accessing the legitimate user's information. DDM-Sec can effectively exploit the randomness of wireless channels to encrypt data transmission, enrich the spatial signatures of the legitimate transmission by employing two cooperative Txs. Moreover, DDM-Sec distributes user's information to two transmissions so that none of the decomposed signals alone carry the legitimate user's full information. Our theoretical analysis, hardware experiment, and simulation have shown that DDM-Sec can effectively prevent the eavesdropping, and hence guarantee the secrecy of the legitimate user's data transmission.
Cooperative communications is obviously an evolution in wireless networks due to its noticeable advantages such as increasing the coverage as well as combating fading and shadowing effects. However, the broadcast characteristic of a wireless medium which is exploited in cooperative communications leads to a variety of security vulnerabilities. As cooperative communication networks are globally expanded, they expose to security attacks and threats more than ever. Primarily, researchers have focused on upper layers of network architectures to meet the requirements for secure cooperative transmission while the upper-layer security solutions are incapable of combating a number of security threats, e.g., jamming attacks. To address this issue, physical-layer security has been recommended as a complementary solution in the literature. In this thesis, physical layer attacks of the cooperative communication systems are studied, and corresponding security techniques including cooperative jamming, beamforming and diversity approaches are investigated. In addition, a novel security solution for a two-hop decode-and-forward relaying system is presented where the transmitters insert a random phase shift to the modulated data of each hop. The random phase shift is created based on a shared secret among communicating entities. Thus, the injected phase shift confuses the eavesdropper and secrecy capacity improves. Furthermore, a cooperative jamming strategy for multi-hop decode-and-forward relaying systems is presented where multiple non-colluding illegitimate nodes can overhear the communication. The jamming signal is created by the transmitter of each hop while being sent with the primary signal. The jamming signal is known at the intended receiver as it is according to a secret common knowledge between the communicating entities. Hence, artificial noise misleads the eavesdroppers, and decreases their signal-to-noise-ratio. As a result, secrecy capacity of the system is improved. Finally, power allocation among friendly jamming and main signal is proposed to ensure that suggested scheme enhances secrecy.
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.
Due to the broadcast nature of wireless communications, users’ data transmitted wirelessly is susceptible to security/privacy threats. Meanwhile, as a result of the limitation of spectrum resources, massive wireless connections will incur serious interference, which may damage the efficiency of data transmission. Therefore, improving both efficiency and secrecy of data transmission is of research significance. In this paper, we propose a wireless transmission scheme by taking both Secure Communication (SC) and Interference Management (IM) into account, namely SCIM. With this scheme, an SCIM signal is generated by the legitimate transmitter (Tx) and sent along with the desired signal, so that the SCIM signal can interact with and suppress the environmental interference at the legitimate receiver (Rx). Meanwhile, the SCIM signal may interfere with the eavesdropper in the coverage of legitimate transmission so as to deteriorate the eavesdropping performance. Therefore, the secrecy of desired transmission is improved. In this way, both the transmission efficiency and privacy are enhanced. Then, by taking various transmission preferences into account, we develop different implementations of SCIM, including Interference Suppression First SCIM (ISF-SCIM), Data Transmission First SCIM (DTF-SCIM), Anti-Eavesdropping First SCIM (AEF-SCIM), and Secrecy Rate Maximization SCIM (SRM-SCIM). Our in-depth simulation results have shown the proposed methods to effectively improve the efficiency and secrecy of the legitimate transmission.
Addressing the problem of wireless physical layer security transmission for finite alphabet input systems,a spatial modulation secure transmission method is proposed.On the basis of information theory,the method utilizes the receive antenna indices of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system to bear information,and randomizes the eavesdropper’s equivalent channel by switching the receive antennas,which can guarantee physical layer security transmission.First,the different receiving performances of the legitimate user and eavesdropper are analyzed in the spatial modulation secure transmission system.Second,the mutual information and secrecy mutual information of the transmission system are calculated,and two sufficient conditions that ensure positive secrecy mutual information are pointed out.Finally,an estimation algorithm of mutual information is provided.Moreover,the symmetry of finite alphabet set is exploited to decrease the computational complexity.Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation results verify the availability of the security transmission method.
Improving confidentiality is a main concern in most wireless transmission systems. Traditionally, confidentiality is guaranteed by means of encryption, where transmitted data are encrypted prior to transmission and only the intended receiver(s) can decrypt them. However, encryption/decryption process involves high complexity and heavy signaling in the key distribution/agreement protocols. Thus, aiming toward overcoming complexity, physical-layer security has been proposed as a promising candidate to improve confidentiality against eavesdroppers by exploiting physical-layer techniques. In this paper, we propose a physical-layer security scheme that adapts the modulation type based on the channel phase in order to secure the transmitted data. Moreover, the phase of the transmitted signal is adjusted in order to improve the immunity against eavesdroppers. The proposed scheme has been designed to achieve high robustness against channel estimation errors. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated through analysis and simulations in order to demonstrate the significant improvement in the confidentiality.