Physical Layer Service Integration in 5G: Potentials and Challenges

High transmission rate and secure communication have been identified as the key targets that need to be effectively addressed by fifth generation (5G) wireless systems. In this context, the concept of physical-layer security becomes attractive, as it can establish perfect security using only the characteristics of wireless medium. Nonetheless, to further increase the spectral efficiency, an emerging concept, termed physical-layer service integration (PHY-SI), has been recognized as an effective means. Its basic idea is to combine multiple coexisting services, i.e., multicast/broadcast service and confidential service, into one integral service for one-time transmission at the transmitter side. This article first provides a tutorial on typical PHY-SI models. Furthermore, we propose some state-of-the-art solutions to improve the overall performance of PHY-SI in certain important communication scenarios. In particular, we highlight the extension of several concepts borrowed from conventional single-service communications, such as artificial noise (AN), eigenmode transmission etc., to the scenario of PHY-SI. These techniques are shown to be effective in the design of reliable and robust PHY-SI schemes. Finally, several potential research directions are identified for future work.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Achievable Secrecy Rates of an Energy Harvesting Device with a Finite Battery

In this paper, we investigate the achievable secrecy rates in an Energy Harvesting communication system composed of one transmitter and multiple receivers. In particular, because of the energy constraints and the channel conditions, it is important to understand when a device should transmit or not and how much power should be used. We introduce the Optimal Secrecy Policy in several scenarios. We show that, if the receivers demand high secrecy rates, then it is not always possible to satisfy all their requests. Thus, we introduce a scheme that chooses which receivers should be discarded. Also, we study how the system is influenced by the Channel State Information and, in particular, how the knowledge of the eavesdropper's channel changes the achievable rates

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

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

Robust Secure Transmission in MISO Channels Based on Worst-Case Optimization

This paper studies robust transmission schemes for multiple-input single-output (MISO) wiretap channels. Both the cases of direct transmission and cooperative jamming with a helper are investigated with imperfect channel state information (CSI) for the eavesdropper links. Robust transmit covariance matrices are obtained based on worst-case secrecy rate maximization, under both individual and global power constraints. For the case of an individual power constraint, we show that the non-convex maximin optimization problem can be transformed into a quasiconvex problem that can be efficiently solved with existing methods. For a global power constraint, the joint optimization of the transmit covariance matrices and power allocation between the source and the helper is studied via geometric programming. We also study the robust wiretap transmission problem for the case with a quality-of-service constraint at the legitimate receiver. Numerical results show the advantage of the proposed robust design. In particular, for the global power constraint scenario, although cooperative jamming is not necessary for optimal transmission with perfect eavesdropper's CSI, we show that robust jamming support can increase the worst-case secrecy rate and lower the signal to interference-plus-noise ratio at Eve in the presence of channel mismatches between the transmitters and the eavesdropper.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure