Workshop on Wireless Physical Layer Security

Wireless networks are becoming prolific, and the implication is that they create imprints on our environment-- new sources of information that can be examined to arrive at a variety of societal benefits and societal threats. The wireless medium allows for the creation of many new services, such location-based services as well as new forms of security services. On the other hand, it is now possible to examine the information traversing the wireless to infer information that might have previously been considered inaccessible. This talk will examine the broad implications associated with pervasive wireless connectivity, ranging from the new types of applications that can be created by tapping into the wireless fabric to new types of security and privacy threats unique to the wireless medium. After completing a high-level survey of such issues and opportunities, the talk will turn to a detailed examination of security solutions that may be devised at the physical layer. Such physical layer security activity has pulled from a broad variety of traditional research areas, ranging from traditional cryptographic security to information theoretic security, from theoretical efforts focused on understanding fundamental limits to systems efforts targeted at proving that the proposed theories can in fact be realized in real systems. The talk will examine how physical layer methods can be leveraged to develop authentication and confidentiality services. The talk will present some of the basic theories being used, as well as present systems-validation efforts that have been conducted. Lastly, we will comment on some of the potential weaknesses that exist in physical layer security and, by doing so, highlight directions for ongoing research.

Information theoretic approaches to security have been examined as a promising complement to current cryptographic techniques. Such information theoretic approaches establish reliable communication and data confidentiality directly at the physical layer of a communication network by taking the properties of the noisy channel into account leading to unconditional security regardless of the computational capabilities of eavesdroppers. The provision of accurate channel state information is a major challenge particularly in wireless communication systems, especially information about the channels to non-legitimate eavesdroppers. In addition, there might be malevolent adversaries who jam or influence the channel of the legitimate users. This talk surveys different models for secure communication under channel uncertainty and adversarial attacks and reviews the corresponding results.

Panelists: Merouane Debbah (Supelec, Huawei, France), Andreas Mueller (Bosch, Germany), Francois Delaveau (Thales, France)