A Survey of Physical Layer Security Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Challenges Ahead

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 towards 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, etc. 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.Comment: To appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication

Distributed Full-duplex via Wireless Side Channels: Bounds and Protocols

In this paper, we study a three-node full-duplex network, where a base station is engaged in simultaneous up- and downlink communication in the same frequency band with two half-duplex mobile nodes. To reduce the impact of inter- node interference between the two mobile nodes on the system capacity, we study how an orthogonal side-channel between the two mobile nodes can be leveraged to achieve full-duplex-like multiplexing gains. We propose and characterize the achievable rates of four distributed full-duplex schemes, labeled bin-and- cancel, compress-and-cancel, estimate-and-cancel and decode- and-cancel. Of the four, bin-and-cancel is shown to achieve within 1 bit/s/Hz of the capacity region for all values of channel parameters. In contrast, the other three schemes achieve the near-optimal performance only in certain regimes of channel values. Asymptotic multiplexing gains of all proposed schemes are derived to show that the side-channel is extremely effective in regimes where inter-node interference has the highest impact.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, August 201

Achieving Covert Wireless Communications Using a Full-Duplex Receiver

Covert communications hide the transmission of a message from a watchful adversary while ensuring a certain decoding performance at the receiver. In this work, a wireless communication system under fading channels is considered where covertness is achieved by using a full-duplex (FD) receiver. More precisely, the receiver of covert information generates artificial noise with a varying power causing uncertainty at the adversary, Willie, regarding the statistics of the received signals. Given that Willie's optimal detector is a threshold test on the received power, we derive a closed-form expression for the optimal detection performance of Willie averaged over the fading channel realizations. Furthermore, we provide guidelines for the optimal choice of artificial noise power range, and the optimal transmission probability of covert information to maximize the detection errors at Willie. Our analysis shows that the transmission of artificial noise, although causes self-interference, provides the opportunity of achieving covertness but its transmit power levels need to be managed carefully. We also demonstrate that the prior transmission probability of 0.5 is not always the best choice for achieving the maximum possible covertness, when the covert transmission probability and artificial noise power can be jointly optimized.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Joint Design of Multi-Tap Analog Cancellation and Digital Beamforming for Reduced Complexity Full Duplex MIMO Systems

Incorporating full duplex operation in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems provides the potential of boosting throughput performance. However, the hardware complexity of the analog self-interference canceller scales with the number of transmit and receive antennas, thus exploiting the benefits of analog cancellation becomes impractical for full duplex MIMO transceivers. In this paper, we present a novel architecture for the analog canceller comprising of reduced number of taps (tap refers to a line of fixed delay and variable phase shifter and attenuator) and simple multiplexers for efficient signal routing among the transmit and receive radio frequency chains. In contrast to the available analog cancellation architectures, the values for each tap and the configuration of the multiplexers are jointly designed with the digital beamforming filters according to certain performance objectives. Focusing on a narrowband flat fading channel model as an example, we present a general optimization framework for the joint design of analog cancellation and digital beamforming. We also detail a particular optimization objective together with its derived solution for the latter architectural components. Representative computer simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed low complexity full duplex MIMO system over lately available ones.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, IEEE ICC 201