Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for Physical Layer Security in 6G-IoT: Designs, Issues, and Advances

Sixth-generation (6G) networks pose substantial security risks because confidential information is transmitted over wireless channels with a broadcast nature, and various attack vectors emerge. Physical layer security (PLS) exploits the dynamic characteristics of wireless environments to provide secure communications, while reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) can facilitate PLS by controlling wireless transmissions. With RIS-aided PLS, a lightweight security solution can be designed for low-end Internet of Things (IoT) devices, depending on the design scenario and communication objective. This article discusses RIS-aided PLS designs for 6G-IoT networks against eavesdropping and jamming attacks. The theoretical background and literature review of RIS-aided PLS are discussed, and design solutions related to resource allocation, beamforming, artificial noise, and cooperative communication are presented. We provide simulation results to show the effectiveness of RIS in terms of PLS. In addition, we examine the research issues and possible solutions for RIS modeling, channel modeling and estimation, optimization, and machine learning. Finally, we discuss recent advances, including STAR-RIS and malicious RIS.Comment: Accepted for IEEE Internet of Things Journa

The Role of Physical Layer Security in Satellite-Based Networks

In the coming years, 6G will revolutionize the world with a large amount of bandwidth, high data rates, and extensive coverage in remote and rural areas. These goals can only be achieved by integrating terrestrial networks with non-terrestrial networks. On the other hand, these advancements are raising more concerns than other wireless links about malicious attacks on satellite-terrestrial links due to their openness. Over the years, physical layer security (PLS) has emerged as a good candidate to deal with security threats by exploring the randomness of wireless channels. In this direction, this paper reviews how PLS methods are implemented in satellite communications. Firstly, we discuss the ongoing research on satellite-based networks by highlighting the key points in the literature. Then, we revisit the research activities on PLS in satellite-based networks by categorizing the different system architectures. Finally, we highlight research directions and opportunities to leverage the PLS in future satellite-based networks

A Survey on Security and Privacy of 5G Technologies: Potential Solutions, Recent Advancements, and Future Directions

Security has become the primary concern in many telecommunications industries today as risks can have high consequences. Especially, as the core and enable technologies will be associated with 5G network, the confidential information will move at all layers in future wireless systems. Several incidents revealed that the hazard encountered by an infected wireless network, not only affects the security and privacy concerns, but also impedes the complex dynamics of the communications ecosystem. Consequently, the complexity and strength of security attacks have increased in the recent past making the detection or prevention of sabotage a global challenge. From the security and privacy perspectives, this paper presents a comprehensive detail on the core and enabling technologies, which are used to build the 5G security model; network softwarization security, PHY (Physical) layer security and 5G privacy concerns, among others. Additionally, the paper includes discussion on security monitoring and management of 5G networks. This paper also evaluates the related security measures and standards of core 5G technologies by resorting to different standardization bodies and provide a brief overview of 5G standardization security forces. Furthermore, the key projects of international significance, in line with the security concerns of 5G and beyond are also presented. Finally, a future directions and open challenges section has included to encourage future research.European CommissionNational Research Tomsk Polytechnic UniversityUpdate citation details during checkdate report - A

Performance analysis of multi-antenna wireless systems

In this thesis we apply results from multivariate probability, random matrix theory (RMT) and free probability theory (FPT) to analyse the theoretical performance limits of future-generation wireless communication systems which implement multiple-antenna technologies. Motivated by the capacity targets for fifth generation wireless communications, our work focuses on quantifying the performance of these systems in terms of several relevant metrics, including ergodic rate and capacity, secrecy rate and capacity, asymptotic capacity, outage probability, secrecy outage probability and diversity order. Initially, we investigate the secrecy performance of a wirelessly powered, wiretap channel which incorporates a relatively small number of transmit antennas in a multiple-input single-output scenario. We consider two different transmission protocols which utilise physical layer security. Using traditional multivariate probability techniques we compute closed-form expressions for the outage probability and secrecy outage probability of the system under both protocols, based on the statistical properties of the channel. We use these expressions to compute approximations of the connection outage probability, secrecy outage probability and diversity orders in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime which enables us to find candidates for the optimal time-switching ratio and power allocation coefficients. We show that it is possible to achieve a positive secrecy throughput, even in the case where the destination is further away from the source than the eavesdropper, for both protocols and compare their relative merits. We then progress to considering small-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, which can be modelled as random matrices. We consider a relay system that enables communication between a remote source and destination in the presence of an eavesdropper and describe a decode-and-forward (DF) protocol which uses physical layer security techniques. A new result on the joint probability density function of the largest eigenvalues of the channel matrix is derived using results from RMT. The result enables us to compute the legitimate outage probability and diversity order of the proposed protocol and to quantify the effect of increasing the number of relays and antennas of the system. Next, we consider much larger-scale massive MIMO arrays, for which analysis using finite results becomes impractical. First we investigate the ergodic capacity of a massive MIMO, non-orthogonal multiple access system with unlimited numbers of antennas. Employing asymptotic results from RMT, we provide closed-form solutions for the asymptotic capacities of this scenario. This enables us to derive the optimal power allocation coefficients for the system. We demonstrate that our approach has low computational complexity and provides results much closer to optimality when compared with existing, suboptimal methods, particularly for the case where nodes are equipped with very large antenna arrays. Finally, we analyse the ergodic capacity of a single-hop, massive MIMO, multi-relay system having more complex properties, by applying results in FPT. Our method allows for an arbitrary number of relays, arbitrarily large antenna arrays and also asymmetric characteristics between channels, which is a situation that cannot typically be analysed using traditional RMT methods. We compute the asymptotic capacity across the system for the case when the relays employ a DF protocol and no direct link exists between the endpoints. We are able to calculate the overall capacity, to a high degree of accuracy, for systems incorporating channels greater than $128\times 128$ in dimension for which existing methods fail due to excessive computational demands. Finally, the comparative computational complexities of the methods are analysed and we see the advantages of applying the FPT method