A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Secrecy Rate Region Enhancement in Multiple Access Wiretap Channel, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2022, nr 2

It is commonly known that physical layer security is achieved with a trade-off in terms of the achievable rate. Hence, security constraints generate rate losses in wiretap channels. To mitigate such rate losses in multi-user channels, we propose a coding/decoding scheme for multi-user multiple access wiretap channel (MAC-WT), where previously transmitted messages are used as a secret key to enhance the secrecy rates of the transmitting users, until the usual Shannon capacity region of a multiple access channel (MAC) is achieved without the secrecy constraint. With this coding scheme, all messages transmitted in the recent past are secure with respect to all the information of the eavesdropper till now. To achieve this goal, we introduce secret key buffers at both the users and the legitimate receiver. Finally, we consider a fading MAC-WT and show that with this coding/decoding scheme, we can achieve the capacity region of a fading MAC channel (in the ergodic sense)

Wireless Network Intrinsic Secrecy

Wireless secrecy is essential for communication confidentiality, health privacy, public safety, information superiority, and economic advantage in the modern information society. Contemporary security systems are based on cryptographic primitives and can be complemented by techniques that exploit the intrinsic properties of a wireless environment. This paper develops a foundation for design and analysis of wireless networks with secrecy provided by intrinsic properties such as node spatial distribution, wireless propagation medium, and aggregate network interference. We further propose strategies that mitigate eavesdropping capabilities, and we quantify their benefits in terms of network secrecy metrics. This research provides insights into the essence of wireless network intrinsic secrecy and offers a new perspective on the role of network interference in communication confidentiality.Marie Curie International Fellowship (Grant 2010-272923)Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (Project CONCERTO Grant 288502)Copernicus FellowshipNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant CCF-1116501)United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-11-1-0397)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologie

Security-reliability tradeoff analysis of artificial noise aided two-way opportunistic relay selection

In this paper, we investigate the physical-layer security of cooperative communications relying on multiple twoway relays using the decode-and-forward (DF) protocol in the presence of an eavesdropper, where the eavesdropper appears to tap the transmissions of both the source and of the relay. The design-tradeoff to be resolved is that the throughput is improved by invoking two-way relaying, but the secrecy of wireless transmissions may be degraded, since the eavesdropper may overhear the signals transmitted by both the source and relay nodes. We conceive an artificial noise aided two-way opportunistic relay selection (ANaTWORS) scheme for enhancing the security of the pair of source nodes communicating with the assistance of multiple two-way relays. Furthermore, we analyze both the outage probability and intercept probability of the proposed ANaTWORS scheme, where the security and reliability are characterized in terms of the intercept probability and the security outage probability. For comparison, we also provide the security-reliability tradeoff (SRT) analysis of both the traditional direct transmission and of the one-way relaying schemes. It is shown that the proposed ANaTWORS scheme outperforms both the conventional direct transmission and the one-way relay methods in terms of its SRTs. More specifically, in the low main-userto- eavesdropper ratio (MUER) region, the proposed ANaTWORS scheme is capable of guaranteeing secure transmissions, whereas no SRT gain is achieved by the conventional one-way relaying. In fact, the one-way relaying scheme may even be inferior to the traditional direct transmission scheme in terms of its SRT

Wireless transmission protocols using relays for broadcast and information exchange channels

Relays have been used to overcome existing network performance bottlenecks in meeting the growing demand for large bandwidth and high quality of service (QoS) in wireless networks. This thesis proposes several wireless transmission protocols using relays in practical multi-user broadcast and information exchange channels. The main theme is to demonstrate that efficient use of relays provides an additional dimension to improve reliability, throughput, power efficiency and secrecy. First, a spectrally efficient cooperative transmission protocol is proposed for the multiple-input and singleoutput (MISO) broadcast channel to improve the reliability of wireless transmission. The proposed protocol mitigates co-channel interference and provides another dimension to improve the diversity gain. Analytical and simulation results show that outage probability and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff of the proposed cooperative protocol outperforms the non-cooperative scheme. Second, a two-way relaying protocol is proposed for the multi-pair, two-way relaying channel to improve the throughput and reliability. The proposed protocol enables both the users and the relay to participate in interference cancellation. Several beamforming schemes are proposed for the multi-antenna relay. Analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol delivers significant improvements in ergodic capacity, outage probability and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff if compared to existing schemes. Third, a joint beamforming and power management scheme is proposed for multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) two-way relaying channel to improve the sum-rate. Network power allocation and power control optimisation problems are formulated and solved using convex optimisation techniques. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme delivers better sum-rate or consumes lower power when compared to existing schemes. Fourth, two-way secrecy schemes which combine one-time pad and wiretap coding are proposed for the scalar broadcast channel to improve secrecy rate. The proposed schemes utilise the channel reciprocity and employ relays to forward secret messages. Analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed schemes are able to achieve positive secrecy rates even when the number of users is large. All of these new wireless transmission protocols help to realise better throughput, reliability, power efficiency and secrecy for wireless broadcast and information exchange channels through the efficient use of relays

A Critical Review of Physical Layer Security in Wireless Networking

Wireless networking has kept evolving with additional features and increasing capacity. Meanwhile, inherent characteristics of wireless networking make it more vulnerable than wired networks. In this thesis we present an extensive and comprehensive review of physical layer security in wireless networking. Different from cryptography, physical layer security, emerging from the information theoretic assessment of secrecy, could leverage the properties of wireless channel for security purpose, by either enabling secret communication without the need of keys, or facilitating the key agreement process. Hence we categorize existing literature into two main branches, namely keyless security and key-based security. We elaborate the evolution of this area from the early theoretic works on the wiretap channel, to its generalizations to more complicated scenarios including multiple-user, multiple-access and multiple-antenna systems, and introduce not only theoretical results but practical implementations. We critically and systematically examine the existing knowledge by analyzing the fundamental mechanics for each approach. Hence we are able to highlight advantages and limitations of proposed techniques, as well their interrelations, and bring insights into future developments of this area

Interference as an Issue and a Resource in Wireless Networks

This dissertation will be focused on the phenomenon of interference in wireless net- works. On one hand, interference will be viewed as a negative factor that one should mitigate in order to improve the performance of a wireless network in terms of achiev- able rate, and on the other hand as an asset to increase the performance of a network in terms of security. The problems that will be investigated are, first, the character- isation of the performance of a communication network modelled as an interference channel (IC) when interference alignment (IA) is used to mitigate the interference with imperfect knowledge of the channel state, second, the characterisation of the secrecy in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) framework where some devices may use artificial noise to generate interference to potential eavesdroppers. Different scenarios will be studied in the case where interference is unwanted; the first one is when the channel error is bounded. A lower bound on the capacity achievable in this case is provided and a new performance metric namely the saturating SNR is derived. The derived lower bound is studied with respect to some parameters of the estimation strategy when using Least-Square estimation to estimate the channel ma- trices. The second scenario deals with unbounded Gaussian estimation errors, here the statistical distribution of the achievable rate is given along with a new performance metric called outage probability that simplifies the study of the IC with IA under im- perfect CSI. The results are used to optimise the network parameters and extend the analysis further to the case of cellular networks. In the wanted interference situation, the secrecy of the worst-case communication is studied and the conditions for secrecy are provided. Furthermore the average number of secure links achievable in the network is studied according to a theoretical model that is developed for the IoT case

2022, nr 2, JTIT

kwartalni

Optimising multiple antenna techniques for physical layer security

Wireless communications offer data transmission services anywhere and anytime, but with the inevitable cost of introducing major security vulnerabilities. Indeed, an eavesdropper can overhear a message conveyed over the open insecure wireless media putting at risk the confidentiality of the wireless users. Currently, the way to partially prevent eavesdropping attacks is by ciphering the information between the authorised parties through complex cryptographic algorithms. Cryptography operates in the upper layers of the communication model, bit it does not address the security problem where the attack is suffered: at the transmission level. In this context, physical layer security has emerged as a promising framework to prevent eavesdropping attacks at the transmission level. Physical layer security is based on information-theoretic concepts and exploits the randomness and the uniqueness of the wireless channel. In this context, this thesis presents signal processing techniques to secure wireless networks at the physical layer by optimising the use of multiple-antennas. A masked transmission strategy is used to steer the confidential information towards the intended receiver, and, at the same time, broadcast an interfering signal to confuse unknown eavesdroppers. This thesis considers practical issues in multiple-antenna networks such as limited transmission resources and the lack of accurate information between the authorised transmission parties. The worst-case for the security, that occurs when a powerful eavesdropper takes advantage of any opportunity to put at risk the transmission confidentiality, is addressed. The techniques introduced improve the security by offering efficient and innovative transmission solutions to lock the communication at the physical layer. Notably, these transmission mechanisms strike a balance between confidentiality and quality to satisfy the practical requirements of modern wireless networks