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

Physical layer security in massive MIMO systems

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is one of the key technologies for the emerging fifth generation (5G) wireless networks, and has the potential to tremendously improve spectral and energy efficiency with low-cost implementations. While massive MIMO systems have drawn great attention from both academia and industry, few efforts have been made on how the richness of the spatial dimensions offered by massive MIMO affects wireless security. As security is crucial in all wireless systems due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, in this thesis, we study how massive MIMO technology can be used to guarantee communication security in the presence of a passive multi-antenna eavesdropper. Our proposed massive MIMO system model incorporates relevant design choices and constraints such as time-division duplex (TDD), uplink training, pilot contamination, low-complexity signal processing, and low-cost hardware components. The thesis consists of three main parts. We first consider physical layer security for a massive MIMO system employing simple artificial noise (AN)-aided matched-filter (MF) precoding at the base station (BS). For both cases of perfect training and pilot contamination, we derive a tight analytical lower bound for the achievable ergodic secrecy rate, and an upper bound for the secrecy outage probability. Both bounds are expressed in closed form, providing an explicit relationship between all system parameters, offering significant insights for system design. We then generalize the work by comparing different types of linear data and AN precoders in a secure massive MIMO network. The system performance, in terms of the achievable ergodic secrecy rate is obtained in closed form. In addition, we propose a novel low-complexity data and AN precoding strategy based on a matrix polynomial expansion. Finally, we consider a more realistic system model by taking into account non-ideal hardware components. Based on a general hardware impairment model, we derive a lower bound for the ergodic secrecy rate achieved by each user when AN-aided MF precoding is employed at the BS. By exploiting the derived analytical bound, we investigate the impact of various system parameters on the secrecy rate and optimize both the uplink training pilots and AN precoder to maximize the secrecy rate.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat