Joint Scheme for Physical Layer Error Correction and Security

Abstract

We present a joint scheme that combines both error correction and security at the physical layer. In conventional communication systems, error correction is carried out at the physical layer while data security is performed at an upper layer. As a result, these steps are done as separate steps. However there has been a lot of interest in providing security at the physical layer. As a result, as opposed to the conventional system, we present a scheme that combines error correction and data security as one unit so that both encryption and encoding could be carried out at the physical layer. Hence, in this paper, we present an Error Correction-Based Cipher (ECBC) that combines error correction and encryption/decryption in a single step. Encrypting and encoding or decoding and decrypting in a single step will lead to a faster and more efficient implementation. One of the challenges of using previous joint schemes in a communications channel is that there is a tradeoff between data reliability and security. However, in ECBC, there is no tradeoff between reliability and security. Errors introduced at the transmitter for randomization are removed at the receiver. Hence ECBC can utilize its full capacity to correct channel errors. We show the result of randomization test on ECBC and its security against conventional attacks. We also present the nonpipelined and pipelined hardware architecture of ECBC, and the result of the FPGA implementation of the ECBC encryption. We also compare these results with non-ECBC schemes.

Physical layer encryption scheme using finite‐length polar codes

“…This physical layer encryption scheme provides the conditional security even if the eavesdropper channel is the same or better than the main channel. Several physical layer encryption schemes were proposed in which cryptography and channel coding are combined in a single step [9][10][11][12][13][14]. It is shown that these schemes are capable of providing data reliability, secrecy and integrity.…”

“…In this section, we discuss the advantages of the proposed scheme compared with the previously proposed physical layer encryption schemes [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] in terms of computational complexity, key size and security.…”

“…It is shown [9][10][11][12][13][14] that combining error correction and encryption leads to a reduction in complexity compared with physical layer encryption schemes in which cryptography and channel coding are separated functions [3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

“…(c) The security of the several physical layer encryption schemes [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] is based on the traditional cryptographic algorithms. In such schemes, several iterations of the round function are needed for transforming a plaintext block to a ciphertext block.…”

“…(iii) Security: The proposed scheme has the following advantages in terms of security compared with the other physical layer encryption schemes: (a) The security of several physical layer encryption schemes [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] is based on the traditional cryptographic algorithms or the physical effect of channel noise. Such schemes, depending on the traditional cryptographic schemes used in their structures, may not be secure against the attacks performed by quantum computers [26].…”