Physical layer security in wireless networks: a tutorial

TLDR

Wireless networking is vital for civil and military uses, yet securing data against jamming and eavesdropping at the physical layer remains a major challenge. This article offers a tutorial on several prevalent methods to enhance security at the physical layer in wireless networks. We classify these methods into five categories, comparing their secret channel capacities and computational complexities, and illustrate their security requirements with examples.

Abstract

Wireless networking plays an extremely important role in civil and military applications. However, security of information transfer via wireless networks remains a challenging issue. It is critical to ensure that confidential data are accessible only to the intended users rather than intruders. Jamming and eavesdropping are two primary attacks at the physical layer of a wireless network. This article offers a tutorial on several prevalent methods to enhance security at the physical layer in wireless networks. We classify these methods based on their characteristic features into five categories, each of which is discussed in terms of two metrics. First, we compare their secret channel capacities, and then we show their computational complexities in exhaustive key search. Finally, we illustrate their security requirements via some examples with respect to these two metrics.