Sanenga Abraham, Mapunda Galefang Allycan, Jacob Tshepiso Merapelo Ludo, Marata Leatile, Basutli Bokamoso, Chuma Joseph Monamati
Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunications Engineering, Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Palapye, Botswana.
Center for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, 90570 Oulu, Finland.
Entropy (Basel). 2020 Nov 6;22(11):1261. doi: 10.3390/e22111261.
The open nature of radio propagation enables ubiquitous wireless communication. This allows for seamless data transmission. However, unauthorized users may pose a threat to the security of the data being transmitted to authorized users. This gives rise to network vulnerabilities such as hacking, eavesdropping, and jamming of the transmitted information. Physical layer security (PLS) has been identified as one of the promising security approaches to safeguard the transmission from eavesdroppers in a wireless network. It is an alternative to the computationally demanding and complex cryptographic algorithms and techniques. PLS has continually received exponential research interest owing to the possibility of exploiting the characteristics of the wireless channel. One of the main characteristics includes the random nature of the transmission channel. The aforesaid nature makes it possible for confidential and authentic signal transmission between the sender and the receiver in the physical layer. We start by introducing the basic theories of PLS, including the wiretap channel, information-theoretic security, and a brief discussion of the cryptography security technique. Furthermore, an overview of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication is provided. The main focus of our review is based on the existing key-less PLS optimization techniques, their limitations, and challenges. The paper also looks into the promising key research areas in addressing these shortfalls. Lastly, a comprehensive overview of some of the recent PLS research in 5G and 6G technologies of wireless communication networks is provided.
无线电传播的开放性使得无线通信无处不在。这实现了无缝数据传输。然而，未经授权的用户可能会对传输给授权用户的数据安全构成威胁。这引发了诸如对传输信息的黑客攻击、窃听和干扰等网络漏洞。物理层安全（PLS）已被视为在无线网络中保护传输免受窃听者侵害的一种有前景的安全方法。它是计算要求高且复杂的加密算法和技术的替代方案。由于利用无线信道特性的可能性，PLS一直受到指数级的研究关注。主要特性之一包括传输信道的随机性。上述特性使得在物理层中发送方和接收方之间进行机密且可信的信号传输成为可能。我们首先介绍PLS的基本理论，包括窃听信道、信息论安全，并对密码学安全技术进行简要讨论。此外，还提供了多输入多输出（MIMO）通信的概述。我们综述的主要重点基于现有的无密钥PLS优化技术、它们的局限性和挑战。本文还探讨了在解决这些不足方面有前景的关键研究领域。最后，对无线通信网络的5G和6G技术中一些近期的PLS研究进行了全面概述。
