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

Efficient and Secure Resource Allocation in Mobile Edge Computing Enabled Wireless Networks

To support emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles and smart homes and to build an intelligent society, the next-generation internet of things (IoT) is calling for up to 50 billion devices connected world wide. Massive devices connection, explosive data circulation, and colossal data processing demand are driving both the industry and academia to explore new solutions. Uploading this vast amount of data to the cloud center for processing will significantly increase the load on backbone networks and cause relatively long latency to time-sensitive applications. A practical solution is to deploy the computing resource closer to end-users to process the distributed data. Hence, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) emerged as a promising solution to providing high-speed data processing service with low latency. However, the implementation of MEC networks is handicapped by various challenges. For one thing, to serve massive IoT devices, dense deployment of edge servers will consume much more energy. For another, uploading sensitive user data through a wireless link intro-duces potential risks, especially for those size-limited IoT devices that cannot implement complicated encryption techniques. This dissertation investigates problems related to Energy Efficiency (EE) and Physical Layer Security (PLS) in MEC-enabled IoT networks and how Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), prediction-based server coordination, and Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) can be used to mitigate them. Employing a new spectrum access method can help achieve greater speed with less power consumption, therefore increasing system EE. We first investigated NOMA-assisted MEC networks and verified that the EE performance could be significantly improved. Idle servers can consume unnecessary power. Proactive server coordination can help relieve the tension of increased energy consumption in MEC systems. Our next step was to employ advanced machine learning algorithms to predict data workload at the server end and adaptively adjust the system configuration over time, thus reducing the accumulated system cost. We then introduced the PLS to our system and investigated the long-term secure EE performance of the MEC-enabled IoT network with NOMA assistance. It has shown that NOMA can improve both EE and PLS for the network. Finally, we switch from the single antenna scenario to a multiple-input single-output (MISO) system to exploit space diversity and beam forming techniques in mmWave communication. IRS can be used simultaneously to help relieve the pathloss and reconfigure multi-path links. In the final part, we first investigated the secure EE performance of IRS-assisted MISO networks and introduced a friendly jammer to block the eavesdroppers and improve the PLS rate. We then combined the IRS with the NOMA in the MEC network and showed that the IRS can further enhance the system EE

A comprehensive survey of V2X cybersecurity mechanisms and future research paths

Recent advancements in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication have notably improved existing transport systems by enabling increased connectivity and driving autonomy levels. The remarkable benefits of V2X connectivity come inadvertently with challenges which involve security vulnerabilities and breaches. Addressing security concerns is essential for seamless and safe operation of mission-critical V2X use cases. This paper surveys current literature on V2X security and provides a systematic and comprehensive review of the most relevant security enhancements to date. An in-depth classification of V2X attacks is first performed according to key security and privacy requirements. Our methodology resumes with a taxonomy of security mechanisms based on their proactive/reactive defensive approach, which helps identify strengths and limitations of state-of-the-art countermeasures for V2X attacks. In addition, this paper delves into the potential of emerging security approaches leveraging artificial intelligence tools to meet security objectives. Promising data-driven solutions tailored to tackle security, privacy and trust issues are thoroughly discussed along with new threat vectors introduced inevitably by these enablers. The lessons learned from the detailed review of existing works are also compiled and highlighted. We conclude this survey with a structured synthesis of open challenges and future research directions to foster contributions in this prominent field.This work is supported by the H2020-INSPIRE-5Gplus project (under Grant agreement No. 871808), the ”Ministerio de Asuntos Económicos y Transformacion Digital” and the European Union-NextGenerationEU in the frameworks of the ”Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia” and of the ”Mecanismo de Recuperación y Resiliencia” under references TSI-063000-2021-39/40/41, and the CHIST-ERA-17-BDSI-003 FIREMAN project funded by the Spanish National Foundation (Grant PCI2019-103780).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Comprehensive Overview on 5G-and-Beyond Networks with UAVs: From Communications to Sensing and Intelligence

Due to the advancements in cellular technologies and the dense deployment of cellular infrastructure, integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks is a promising solution to achieve safe UAV operation as well as enabling diversified applications with mission-specific payload data delivery. In particular, 5G networks need to support three typical usage scenarios, namely, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications (mMTC). On the one hand, UAVs can be leveraged as cost-effective aerial platforms to provide ground users with enhanced communication services by exploiting their high cruising altitude and controllable maneuverability in three-dimensional (3D) space. On the other hand, providing such communication services simultaneously for both UAV and ground users poses new challenges due to the need for ubiquitous 3D signal coverage as well as the strong air-ground network interference. Besides the requirement of high-performance wireless communications, the ability to support effective and efficient sensing as well as network intelligence is also essential for 5G-and-beyond 3D heterogeneous wireless networks with coexisting aerial and ground users. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the latest research efforts on integrating UAVs into cellular networks, with an emphasis on how to exploit advanced techniques (e.g., intelligent reflecting surface, short packet transmission, energy harvesting, joint communication and radar sensing, and edge intelligence) to meet the diversified service requirements of next-generation wireless systems. Moreover, we highlight important directions for further investigation in future work.Comment: Accepted by IEEE JSA

Novel Physical Layer Authentication Techniques for Secure Wireless Communications

Due to the open nature of radio propagation, information security in wireless communications has been facing more challenges compared to its counterpart in wired networks. Authentication, defined as an important aspect of information security, is the process of verifying the identity of transmitters to prevent against spoofing attacks. Traditionally, secure wireless communications is achieved by relying solely upon higher layer cryptographic mechanisms. However, cryptographic approaches based on complex mathematical calculations are inefficient and vulnerable to various types of attacks. Recently, researchers have shown that the unique properties of wireless channels can be exploited for authentication enhancement by providing additional security protection against spoofing attacks. Motivated by the vulnerability of existing higher-layer security techniques and the security advantages provided by exploring the physical link properties, five novel physical layer authentication techniques to enhance the security performance of wireless systems are proposed. The first technique exploits the inherent properties of CIR to achieve robust channel-based authentication. The second and third techniques utilize a long-range channel predictor and additional multipath delay characteristics, respectively, to enhance the CIR-based authentication. The fourth technique exploits the advantages of AF cooperative relaying to improve traditional channel-based authentication. The last technique employs an embedded confidential signaling link to secure the legitimate transmissions in OFDM systems

Cellular, Wide-Area, and Non-Terrestrial IoT: A Survey on 5G Advances and the Road Towards 6G

The next wave of wireless technologies is proliferating in connecting things among themselves as well as to humans. In the era of the Internet of things (IoT), billions of sensors, machines, vehicles, drones, and robots will be connected, making the world around us smarter. The IoT will encompass devices that must wirelessly communicate a diverse set of data gathered from the environment for myriad new applications. The ultimate goal is to extract insights from this data and develop solutions that improve quality of life and generate new revenue. Providing large-scale, long-lasting, reliable, and near real-time connectivity is the major challenge in enabling a smart connected world. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on existing and emerging communication solutions for serving IoT applications in the context of cellular, wide-area, as well as non-terrestrial networks. Specifically, wireless technology enhancements for providing IoT access in fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks, and communication networks over the unlicensed spectrum are presented. Aligned with the main key performance indicators of 5G and beyond 5G networks, we investigate solutions and standards that enable energy efficiency, reliability, low latency, and scalability (connection density) of current and future IoT networks. The solutions include grant-free access and channel coding for short-packet communications, non-orthogonal multiple access, and on-device intelligence. Further, a vision of new paradigm shifts in communication networks in the 2030s is provided, and the integration of the associated new technologies like artificial intelligence, non-terrestrial networks, and new spectra is elaborated. Finally, future research directions toward beyond 5G IoT networks are pointed out.Comment: Submitted for review to IEEE CS&