Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

Blockchain-based distributive auction for relay-assisted secure communications

Physical layer security (PLS) is considered as a promising technique to prevent information eavesdropping in wireless systems. In this context, cooperative relaying has emerged as a robust solution for achieving PLS due to multipath diversity and relatively lower transmission power. However, relays or the relay operators in the practical environment are unwilling for service provisioning unless they are incentivized for their cost of services. Thus, it is required to jointly consider network economics and relay cooperation to improve system efficiency. In this paper, we consider the problem of joint network economics and PLS using cooperative relaying and jamming. Based on the double auction theory, we model the interaction between transmitters seeking for a particular level of secure transmission of information and relay operators for suitable relay and jammer assignment, in a multiple source-destination networks. In addition, theoretical analyses are presented to justify that the proposed auction mechanism satisfies the desirable economic properties of individual rationality, budget balance, and truthfulness. As the participants in the traditional centralized auction framework may take selfish actions or collude with each other, we propose a decentralized and trustless auction framework based on blockchain technology. In particular, we exploit the smart contract feature of blockchain to construct a completely autonomous framework, where all the participants are financially enforced by smart contract terms. The security properties of the proposed framework are also discussed

Physical layer security enhancement in multi-user multi-full-duplex-relay networks

We propose a novel joint user and full-duplex (FD) relay selection (JUFDRS) scheme to enhance physical layer security in a multi-user multi-relay network. In this scheme, the user and the FD decode-and-forward relay are selected such that the capacity of the end-to-end channel (i.e., the user-relaydestination channel) is maximized to ensure the highest quality of cooperative transmission. In order to fully examine the benefits of the JUFDRS scheme, we derive a new closed-form expression for the secrecy outage probability. We show that the JUFDRS scheme significantly outperforms the joint user and half-duplex relay selection (JUHDRS) scheme when the self-interference at the FD relay can be reasonably suppressed. This result indicates that adopting the FD technique at relays can effectively enhance the physical layer secrecy performance in the multi-user multirelay network.ARC Discovery Projects Grant DP150103905

Secrecy rate analysis of UAV-enabled mmWave networks using matern hardcore point processes

IEEE Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave (mmWave) band and takes into account unique features of air-toground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3D antenna gain in the air-toground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdroppers. Simulation results verify our analysis and demonstrate the impact of different system parameters on the achievable secrecy rate. It is also revealed that optimizing the density of jamming UAVs will significantly improve security of UAV-enabled networks

Secrecy Rate Analysis of UAV-Enabled mmWave Networks Using Matérn Hardcore Point Processes

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave band and takes into account unique features of air-to-ground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3-D antenna gain in the air-to-ground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdropper

Secrecy Rate Analysis of UAV-Enabled mmWave Networks Using Matern Hardcore Point Processes

Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave band and takes into account unique features of air-to-ground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3-D antenna gain in the air-to-ground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdroppers. Simulation results verify our analysis and demonstrate the impact of different system parameters on the achievable secrecy rate. It is also revealed that optimizing the density of jamming UAVs will significantly improve security of UAV-enabled networks

Relay assisted device-to-device communication with channel uncertainty

The gains of direct communication between user equipment in a network may not be fully realised due to the separation between the user equipment and due to the fading that the channel between these user equipment experiences. In order to fully realise the gains that direct (device-to-device) communication promises, idle user equipment can be exploited to serve as relays to enforce device-to-device communication. The availability of potential relay user equipment creates a problem: a way to select the relay user equipment. Moreover, unlike infrastructure relays, user equipment are carried around by people and these users are self-interested. Thus the problem of relay selection goes beyond choosing which device to assist in relayed communication but catering for user self-interest. Another problem in wireless communication is the unavailability of perfect channel state information. This reality creates uncertainty in the channel and so in designing selection algorithms, channel uncertainty awareness needs to be a consideration. Therefore the work in this thesis considers the design of relay user equipment selection algorithms that are not only device centric but that are relay user equipment centric. Furthermore, the designed algorithms are channel uncertainty aware. Firstly, a stable matching based relay user equipment selection algorithm is put forward for underlay device-to-device communication. A channel uncertainty aware approach is proposed to cater to imperfect channel state information at the devices. The algorithm is combined with a rate based mode selection algorithm. Next, to cater to the queue state at the relay user equipment, a cross-layer selection algorithm is proposed for a twoway decode and forward relay set up. The algorithm proposed employs deterministic uncertainty constraint in the interference channel, solving the selection algorithm in a heuristic fashion. Then a cluster head selection algorithm is proposed for device-to-device group communication constrained by channel uncertainty in the interference channel. The formulated rate maximization problem is solved for deterministic and probabilistic constraint scenarios, and the problem extended to a multiple-input single-out scenario for which robust beamforming was designed. Finally, relay utility and social distance based selection algorithms are proposed for full duplex decode and forward device-to-device communication set up. A worst-case approach is proposed for a full channel uncertainty scenario. The results from computer simulations indicate that the proposed algorithms offer spectral efficiency, fairness and energy efficiency gains. The results also showed clearly the deterioration in the performance of networks when perfect channel state information is assumed

Security-aware Cooperation in Dynamic Spectrum Access

We have witnessed a massive growth in wireless data, which almost doubles every year. The wireless data is expected to skyrocket further in the future due to the proliferation of devices and the emerging data-hungry applications. To accommodate the explosive growth in mobile traffic, a large amount of wireless spectrum is needed. With the limited spectrum resource, the current static spectrum allocation policy cannot serve well for future wireless systems. Moreover, it exacerbates the spectrum scarcity by resulting in severe spectrum underutilization. As a promising solution, dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is envisaged to increase spectrum efficiency by dynamic sharing all the spectrum. DSA can be enabled by cognitive radio technologies, which allow the unlicensed users (the secondary users, i.e., SUs) to dynamically access the unused spectrum (i.e., spectrum holes) owned by the licensed users (the primary users i.e., PUs). In order to identify the unused spectrum (spectrum holes), unlicensed users need to conduct spectrum sensing. While spectrum sensing might be inaccurate due to multipath fading and shadowing. To address this problem, user cooperation can be leveraged, with two main forms: cooperative spectrum sensing and cooperative cognitive radio networking (CCRN). For the former, SUs cooperate with each other in spectrum sensing to better detect the spectrum holes. For the latter, SUs cooperate with the PUs to gain access opportunities from the PUs by improving the transmission performance of the PUs. Whereas cooperation can also incur security issues, e.g., malicious users might participate into cooperation, corrupting or disrupting the communication of legitimate users, selfish users might refuse to contribute to cooperation for self-interests, etc. Those security issues are of great importance and need to be considered for cooperation in DSA. In this thesis, we study security-aware cooperation in DSA. First, we investigate cooperative spectrum sensing in multi-channel scenario such that a user can be scheduled for spectrum sensing and spectrum sharing. The cooperative framework can achieve a higher average throughput per user, which provides the incentive for selfish users to participate in cooperative spectrum sensing. Second, secure communication in CCRN is studied, where the SUs cooperate with the PU to enhance the latter’s communication security and then gain transmission opportunities. Partner selection, spectrum access time allocation, and power allocation are investigated. Third, we study risk aware cooperation based DSA for the multiple channel scenario, where multiple SUs cooperate with multiple PUs for spectrum access opportunities, considering the trustworthiness of SUs. Lastly, we propose an incentive mechanism to stimulate SUs to cooperate with PUs when they have no traffic. The cooperating SUs are motivated to cooperate with PUs to enhance the security of the PUs by accumulating credits and then consume the earned credits for spectrum trading when they have traffic in the future