Secure Communications in Millimeter Wave Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless networks with directional antennas, like millimeter wave (mmWave) networks, have enhanced security. For a large-scale mmWave ad hoc network in which eavesdroppers are randomly located, however, eavesdroppers can still intercept the confidential messages, since they may reside in the signal beam. This paper explores the potential of physical layer security in mmWave ad hoc networks. Specifically, we characterize the impact of mmWave channel characteristics, random blockages, and antenna gains on the secrecy performance. For the special case of uniform linear array (ULA), a tractable approach is proposed to evaluate the average achievable secrecy rate. We also characterize the impact of artificial noise in such networks. Our results reveal that in the low transmit powerregime, the use of low mmWave frequency achieves better secrecy performance, and when increasing transmit power, a transition from low mmWave frequency to high mmWave frequency is demanded for obtaining a higher secrecy rate. More antennas at the transmitting nodes are needed to decrease the antenna gain obtained by the eavesdroppers when using ULA. Eavesdroppers can intercept more information by using a wide beam pattern. Furthermore, the use of artificial noise may be ineffective for enhancing the secrecy rate.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

A Stochastic based Physical Layer Security in Cognitive Radio Networks: Cognitive Relay to Fusion Center

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are found to be, without difficulty wide-open to external malicious threats. Secure communication is an important prerequisite for forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) systems, and CRs are not exempt. A framework for developing the accomplishable benefits of physical layer security (PLS) in an amplify-andforward cooperative spectrum sensing (AF-CSS) in a cognitive radio network (CRN) using a stochastic geometry is proposed. In the CRN the spectrum sensing data from secondary users (SU) are collected by a fusion center (FC) with the assistance of access points (AP) as cognitive relays, and when malicious eavesdropping SU are listening. In this paper we focus on the secure transmission of active APs relaying their spectrum sensing data to the FC. Closed expressions for the average secrecy rate are presented. Analytical formulations and results substantiate our analysis and demonstrate that multiple antennas at the APs is capable of improving the security of an AF-CSSCRN. The obtained numerical results also show that increasing the number of FCs, leads to an increase in the secrecy rate between the AP and its correlated FC

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

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

Secrecy Enhancement in Cooperative Relaying Systems

Cooperative communications is obviously an evolution in wireless networks due to its noticeable advantages such as increasing the coverage as well as combating fading and shadowing effects. However, the broadcast characteristic of a wireless medium which is exploited in cooperative communications leads to a variety of security vulnerabilities. As cooperative communication networks are globally expanded, they expose to security attacks and threats more than ever. Primarily, researchers have focused on upper layers of network architectures to meet the requirements for secure cooperative transmission while the upper-layer security solutions are incapable of combating a number of security threats, e.g., jamming attacks. To address this issue, physical-layer security has been recommended as a complementary solution in the literature. In this thesis, physical layer attacks of the cooperative communication systems are studied, and corresponding security techniques including cooperative jamming, beamforming and diversity approaches are investigated. In addition, a novel security solution for a two-hop decode-and-forward relaying system is presented where the transmitters insert a random phase shift to the modulated data of each hop. The random phase shift is created based on a shared secret among communicating entities. Thus, the injected phase shift confuses the eavesdropper and secrecy capacity improves. Furthermore, a cooperative jamming strategy for multi-hop decode-and-forward relaying systems is presented where multiple non-colluding illegitimate nodes can overhear the communication. The jamming signal is created by the transmitter of each hop while being sent with the primary signal. The jamming signal is known at the intended receiver as it is according to a secret common knowledge between the communicating entities. Hence, artificial noise misleads the eavesdroppers, and decreases their signal-to-noise-ratio. As a result, secrecy capacity of the system is improved. Finally, power allocation among friendly jamming and main signal is proposed to ensure that suggested scheme enhances secrecy

Secure Communications in Millimeter Wave Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless networks with directional antennas, like millimeter wave (mmWave) networks, have enhanced security. For a large-scale mmWave ad hoc network in which eavesdroppers are randomly located, however, eavesdroppers can still intercept the confidential messages, since they may reside in the signal beam. This paper explores the potential of physical layer security in mmWave ad hoc networks. Specifically, we characterize the impact of mmWave channel characteristics, random blockages, and antenna gains on the secrecy performance. For the special case of uniform linear array (ULA), a tractable approach is proposed to evaluate the average achievable secrecy rate. We also characterize the impact of artificial noise in such networks. Our results reveal that in the low transmit power regime, the use of low mmWave frequency achieves better secrecy performance, and when increasing transmit power, a transition from low mmWave frequency to high mmWave frequency is demanded for obtaining a higher secrecy rate. More antennas at the transmitting nodes are needed to decrease the antenna gain obtained by the eavesdroppers when using ULA. Eavesdroppers can intercept more information by using a wide beam pattern. Furthermore, the use of artificial noise may be ineffective forenhancing the secrecy rate

Security for 5G Mobile Wireless Networks

The advanced features of 5G mobile wireless network systems yield new security requirements and challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on security of 5G wireless network systems compared to the traditional cellular networks. The paper starts with a review on 5G wireless networks particularities as well as on the new requirements and motivations of 5G wireless security. The potential attacks and security services with the consideration of new service requirements and new use cases in 5G wireless networks are then summarized. The recent development and the existing schemes for the 5G wireless security are presented based on the corresponding security services including authentication, availability, data confidentiality, key management and privacy. The paper further discusses the new security features involving different technologies applied to 5G such as heterogeneous networks, device-to-device communications, massive multiple-input multiple-output, software defined networks and Internet of Things. Motivated by these security research and development activities, we propose a new 5G wireless security architecture, based on which the analysis of identity management and flexible authentication is provided. As a case study, we explore a handover procedure as well as a signaling load scheme to show the advantage of the proposed security architecture. The challenges and future directions of 5G wireless security are finally summarized

Artificial-Noise-Aided Secure Multi-Antenna Transmission with Limited Feedback

We present an optimized secure multi-antenna transmission approach based on artificial-noise-aided beamforming, with limited feedback from a desired single-antenna receiver. To deal with beamformer quantization errors as well as unknown eavesdropper channel characteristics, our approach is aimed at maximizing throughput under dual performance constraints - a connection outage constraint on the desired communication channel and a secrecy outage constraint to guard against eavesdropping. We propose an adaptive transmission strategy that judiciously selects the wiretap coding parameters, as well as the power allocation between the artificial noise and the information signal. This optimized solution reveals several important differences with respect to solutions designed previously under the assumption of perfect feedback. We also investigate the problem of how to most efficiently utilize the feedback bits. The simulation results indicate that a good design strategy is to use approximately 20% of these bits to quantize the channel gain information, with the remainder to quantize the channel direction, and this allocation is largely insensitive to the secrecy outage constraint imposed. In addition, we find that 8 feedback bits per transmit antenna is sufficient to achieve approximately 90% of the throughput attainable with perfect feedback.Comment: to appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication