An Overview of Key Technologies in Physical Layer Security

Abstract

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.

Effect of Radio Channel and Antennas on Physical-Layer-Security Key Exchange

“…Considering the results in Figs. 6, we can state that not all the randomness features evaluated by the selected NIST tests are sensitive to the scenario. In the examined cases, the multipath richness of the 3GPP scenario significantly improves the test outcome only in the cases of the cumulative sum reverse/forward test (Figs.…”

“…Unlike classical cryptography, key-based PLS techniques relay on the inherent randomness of the wireless channel to generate encryption keys without requiring expensive computation [1]. This approach differs also from key-less PLS techniques, which for example exploit beam forming or artificial noise injection to degrade the signal in directions different from the one of intended communication [6] and that do not use the physical layer for key generation. In fact, a critical step in the majority of security systems is the establishment of authenticated keys, which is, for instance a central requirement for IoT security.…”

One Approach to Improving Smart Environment Communication via the Security Parameter

“…Recent advances in quantum computing pose a serious threat to the currently used cryptographic schemes with their unlimited computational capacity. Therefore, it is evident that the conventional methods of secure wireless communication are becoming less reliable (Sanenga et al, 2020). So far, all encryption algorithms have been broken-or eventually will be, and thus, communication could have been compromised or will be in the future.…”

Optical heterodyne AND operation as emulation of physical layer security at wireless communication

“…With the rapid spread of IoT devices and the introduction of 5G, the demand for wireless communication with high security as well as high data rate is increasing for Beyond 5G (6G) [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Among wireless communication security techniques, physical layer security, which can provide unbreakable, provable and quantifiable secrecy from an information-theoretical point of view, has drawn significant attention [6,7,8,9,10,11]. Two primary attacks at the physical layer of a wireless network are jamming and eavesdropping [12,13].…”