What Physical Layer Security Can Do for 6G Security

Abstract

While existing security protocols were designed with a focus on the core network, the enhancement of the security of the B5G access network becomes of critical importance. Despite the strengthening of 5G security protocols with respect to LTE, there are still open issues that have not been fully addressed. This work is articulated around the premise that rethinking the security design bottom up, starting at the physical layer, is not only viable in 6G but importantly, arises as an efficient way to overcome security hurdles in novel use cases, notably massive machine type communications (mMTC), ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) and autonomous cyberphysical systems. Unlike existing review papers that treat physical layer security orthogonally to cryptography, we will try to provide a few insights of underlying connections. Discussing many practical issues, we will present a comprehensive review of the state-of the-art in i) secret key generation from shared randomness, ii) the wiretap channels and fundamental limits, iii) authentication of devices using physical unclonable functions (PUFs), localization and multi-factor authentication, and, iv) jamming attacks at the physical layer. We finally conclude with the proposers' aspirations for the 6G security landscape, in the hyper-connectivity and semantic communications era.

Simultaneous Transmitting and Reflecting-Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface in 6G: Design Guidelines and Future Perspectives

“…PLS methods may be ineffective in unfavorable propagation conditions because they rely on noise and fading variations in wireless channels. Security can be enhanced in 6G-IoT networks with dynamically controlled channels provided by RIS [10]. For example, an RIS can completely exploit PLS advantages caused by channel propagation characteristics, spatial diversity, beamforming, and cooperative communications.…”

Deep Q-Learning-Based Buffer-Aided Relay Selection for Reliable and Secure Communications in Two-Hop Wireless Relay Networks

“…In recent years, a new method called physical-layer security (PLS), which has low computational complexity, has been proposed and is used to aid cryptography in achieving secure communications in wireless networks with low computing capability. The principle of PLS is based on information theory, and uses the randomness of noise and wireless channels to achieve secure communications [ 7 ]. Compared with the cryptography method, PLS has a lower network resource overhead and computational complexity [ 8 ].…”

Channel Prediction-Based Security Authentication for Artificial Intelligence of Things

“…Furthermore, the complexity of devices and environments exposes IoT networks to malicious attacks that exploit security vulnerabilities [ 12 ]. Due to the large number of IoT sensor nodes and the openness of wireless networks, attackers can eavesdrop on communications, modify transmitted messages, and even send false data [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. For instance, in unsupervised industrial IoT networks [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], clone node attacks can occur, where adversaries hijack control devices and deploy cloned nodes, leading to significant security risks by collecting sensitive information.…”

“…The AIoT network needs to verify the legitimacy of wireless sensors during the initial joining process of communication nodes. The increasing complexity of standard encryption methods has motivated the study of physical layer authentication techniques.Several security technologies have been proposed for IoT networks [ 13 ]. For instance, physical unclonable functions (PUF) and wireless fingerprinting (WF) have shown promise in improving authentication in challenging scenarios.…”