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Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2022) | Viewed by 12637

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Roland Gautier

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Guest Editor

Lab-STICC, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, 29238 Brest Cedex 3, France
Interests: signal processing and digital communications
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Gilles Burel

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Guest Editor

Lab-STICC, CNRS, University of Brest, UMR 6285, F-29200 Brest, France
Interests: signal processing for digital communications; compressed sampling; quantum communications

Dr. Anthony Fiche

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Guest Editor

Lab-STICC, CNRS, University of Brest, UMR 6285, F-29200 Brest, France
Interests: signal processing for digital communications; compressed sampling; full-duplex communications

Dr. Telex Magloire N. Ngatched

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, NL A2H 5G4, Canada
Interests: 5G-enabling technologies; cooperative/relay communications; cognitive radio networks; physical-layer security; MIMO communications; wireless ad hoc and sensor networks; channel coding and information theory; visible light and power-line communications; optical communications for OTN; underwater communications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to provide a view of recent research on physical-layer security and integrity techniques for communications. The security and integrity of transmissions are a major concern for future technologies. To date, information security has generally been assigned to the cryptographic layer, thus involving a high computational cost, and consequently a relatively high power consumption. Furthermore, the emergence of new wireless technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), 5G tactile Internet, massive MIMO, cognitive radio, smart satellite systems, etc. makes current encryption-based methods unsuitable. Physical-layer security is an alternative solution to these problems. The basic idea of this security is to exploit the characteristics of the transmission channel and its impairments to design efficient secure transmission strategies, such that the information from the source to the intended receiver are kept confidential.

Active researchers in physical-layer security and integrity for wireless communications are highly encouraged to submit their recent original works and results to this Special Issue. The covered topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Secure communications for IoT, 5G and Beyond, and space;
Secure advanced spatial diversity techniques;
Secure resource allocation;
Quantum communications and channel coding;
Advanced coding and modulation;
MIMO, massive MIMO, beamforming and time reversal;
Full-duplex transmission;
Front-end radio and test bed;
Spectrum sensing and cognitive radio;
Jamming resistant communications;
Green communications;
Secure transmissions for video surveillance and domotics;
Secrecy coding;
Secret key generation.

Dr. Roland Gautier
Prof. Dr. Gilles Burel
Dr. Anthony Fiche
Dr. Telex Magloire N. Ngatched
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 1725 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Widely-Linear Digital Self-Interference Cancellation in Full-Duplex USRP Transceiver

by Cristina Despina-Stoian, Roua Youssef, Angela Digulescu, Emanuel Radoi, Roland Gautier and Alexandru Serbanescu

Sensors 2022, 22(24), 9607; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22249607 - 08 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1395

Abstract

Full-duplex (FD) communication systems allow for increased spectral efficiency but require effective self-interference cancellation (SIC) techniques to enable the proper reception of the signal of interest. The underlying idea of digital SIC is to estimate the self-interference (SI) channel based on the received signal and the known transmitted waveform. This is a challenging task since the SI channel involves, especially for mass-market FD transceivers, many nonlinear distortions produced by the impairments of the analog components from the receiving and transmitting chains. Hence, this paper first analyzes the power of the SI components under practical conditions and focuses on the most significant one, which is proven to be produced by the I/Q mixer imbalance. Then, a widely-linear digital SIC approach is adopted, which simultaneously deals with the direct SI and its image component caused by the I/Q imbalance. Finally, the performances achieved by linear and widely-linear SIC approaches are evaluated and compared using an experimental FD platform relying on software-defined radio technology and GNU Radio. Moreover, the considered experimental framework allows us to set different image rejection ratios for the transmission path I/Q mixer and to study its influence on the SIC capability of the discussed approaches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications)

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27 pages, 1061 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Novel Scheme for Discrete and Secure LoRa Communications

by Clément Demeslay, Roland Gautier, Philippe Rostaing, Gilles Burel and Anthony Fiche

Sensors 2022, 22(20), 7947; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22207947 - 18 Oct 2022

Viewed by 1439

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new LoRa transceiver scheme to ensure discrete communications secure from potential eavesdroppers by leveraging a simple and elegant spread spectrum philosophy. The scheme modifies both preamble and payload waveforms by adapting a current state-of-the-art LoRa synchronization front-end. This scheme can also be seen as a self-jamming approach. Furthermore, we introduce a new payload demodulation method that avoids the adverse effects of the traditional cross-correlation solution that would otherwise be used. Our simulation results show that the self-jamming scheme exhibits very good symbol error rate (SER) performance with a loss of just 0.5 dB for a frequency spread factor of up to 10. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications)

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18 pages, 1054 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Drone Detection and Classification Using Physical-Layer Protocol Statistical Fingerprint

by Louis Morge-Rollet, Denis Le Jeune, Frédéric Le Roy, Charles Canaff and Roland Gautier

Sensors 2022, 22(17), 6701; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22176701 - 05 Sep 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2962

Abstract

We propose a novel approach for drone detection and classification based on RF communication link analysis. Our approach analyses large signal record including several packets and can be decomposed of two successive steps: signal detection and drone classification. On one hand, the signal detection step is based on Power Spectral Entropy (PSE), a measure of the energy distribution uniformity in the frequency domain. It consists of detecting a structured signal such as a communication signal with a lower PSE than a noise one. On the other hand, the classification step is based on a so-called physical-layer protocol statistical fingerprint (PLSPF). This method extracts the packets at the physical layer using hysteresis thresholding, then computes statistical features for classification based on extracted packets. It consists of performing traffic analysis of communication link between the drone and its controller. Conversely to classic drone traffic analysis working at data link layer (or at upper layers), it performs traffic analysis directly from the corresponding I/Q signal, i.e., at the physical layer. The approach shows interesting properties such as scale invariance, frequency invariance, and noise robustness. Furthermore, the classification method allows us to distinguish WiFi drones from other WiFi devices due to underlying requirement of drone communications such as good reactivity in control. Finally, we propose different experiments to highlight theses properties and performances. The physical-layer protocol statistical fingerprint exploiting communication specificities could also be used in addition of RF fingerprinting method to perform authentication of devices at the physical-layer. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications)

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20 pages, 700 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Hiding Messages in Secure Connection Transmissions with Full-Duplex Overt Receiver

by Lap Luat Nguyen, Tien-Tung Nguyen, Anthony Fiche, Roland Gautier and Hien Q. Ta

Sensors 2022, 22(15), 5812; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22155812 - 03 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1286

Abstract

This paper considers hiding messages in overt transmissions with a full-duplex receiver, which emits artificial noise to secure its transmission connection while a transmitter opportunistically sends a covert message to a covert user. The warden’s uncertainties in decoding the overt message and artificial-noise-received power are exploited to hide messages. Then, the covert throughput accompanied with the warden’s average detection error probability are determined. The results show that increasing the transmit power of artificial noise or improving secure connection at the overt user will improve the covert performance. The results also show that the covert performance is improved when the self-interference cancellation is improved at the full-duplex receiver or when the warden is located close to the full-duplex receiver, indicating the positive impact of the overt performance on the covert performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications)

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24 pages, 1029 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Secrecy Coding Analysis of Short-Packet Full-Duplex Transmissions with Joint Iterative Channel Estimation and Decoding Processes

by Bao Quoc Vuong, Roland Gautier, Anthony Fiche, Mélanie Marazin and Cristina Despina-Stoian

Sensors 2022, 22(14), 5257; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22145257 - 14 Jul 2022

Viewed by 1276

Abstract

This paper studies the secrecy coding analysis achieved by the self-jamming technique in the presence of an eavesdropper by considering a short-packet Full-Duplex (FD) transmission developed based on iterative blind or semi-blind channel estimation and advanced decoding algorithms. Indeed, the legitimate receiver and eavesdropper can simultaneously receive the intended signal from the transmitter and broadcast a self-jamming or jamming signal to the others. Unlike other conventional techniques without feedback, the blind or semi-blind algorithm applied at the legitimate receiver can simultaneously estimate, firstly, the Self-Interference (SI) channel to cancel the SI component and, secondly, estimate the propagation channel, then decode the intended messages by using 5G Quasi-Cyclic Low-Density Parity Check (QC-LDPC) codes. Taking into account the passive eavesdropper case, the blind channel estimation with a feedback scheme is applied, where the temporary estimation of the intended channel and the decoded message are fed back to improve both the channel estimation and the decoding processes. Only the blind algorithm needs to be implemented in the case of a passive eavesdropper because it achieves sufficient performances and does not require adding pilot symbols as the semi-blind algorithm. In the case of an active eavesdropper, based on its robustness in the low region of the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), the semi-blind algorithm is considered by trading four pilot symbols and only requiring the feedback for channel estimation processes in order to overcome the increase in noise in the legitimate receiver. The results show that the blind or semi-blind algorithms outperform the conventional algorithm in terms of Mean Square Error (MSE), Bit Error Rate (BER) and security gap (

S_{g}

). In addition, it has been shown that the blind or semi-blind algorithms are less sensitive to high SI and self-jamming interference power levels imposed by secured FD transmission than the conventional algorithms without feedback. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications)

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23 pages, 3834 KiB

Open AccessArticle

RF eigenfingerprints, an Efficient RF Fingerprinting Method in IoT Context

by Louis Morge-Rollet, Frédéric Le Roy, Denis Le Jeune, Charles Canaff and Roland Gautier

Sensors 2022, 22(11), 4291; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22114291 - 05 Jun 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2176

Abstract

In IoT networks, authentication of nodes is primordial and RF fingerprinting is one of the candidates as a non-cryptographic method. RF fingerprinting is a physical-layer security method consisting of authenticated wireless devices using their components’ impairments. In this paper, we propose the RF eigenfingerprints method, inspired by face recognition works called eigenfaces. Our method automatically learns important features using singular value decomposition (SVD), selects important ones using Ljung–Box test, and performs authentication based on a statistical model. We also propose simulation, real-world experiment, and FPGA implementation to highlight the performance of the method. Particularly, we propose a novel RF fingerprinting impairments model for simulation. The end of the paper is dedicated to a discussion about good properties of RF fingerprinting in IoT context, giving our method as an example. Indeed, RF eigenfingerprint has interesting properties such as good scalability, low complexity, and high explainability, making it a good candidate for implementation in IoT context. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical-Layer Security for Wireless Communications)

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