Techniques for Enhanced Physical-Layer Security

TL;DR

This paper explores information-theoretic security in wireless networks, introducing techniques like sectorized transmission and eavesdropper neutralization to significantly improve secure connectivity within the intrinsically secure communications graph framework.

Contribution

It proposes and characterizes two novel techniques—sectorized transmission and eavesdropper neutralization—for enhancing secure connectivity in large-scale wireless networks.

Findings

Sectorized transmission dramatically increases secure links.

Eavesdropper neutralization improves overall network security.

Techniques significantly enhance the connectivity of the iS-graph.

Abstract

Information-theoretic security--widely accepted as the strictest notion of security--relies on channel coding techniques that exploit the inherent randomness of propagation channels to strengthen the security of communications systems. Within this paradigm, we explore strategies to improve secure connectivity in a wireless network. We first consider the intrinsically secure communications graph (iS-graph), a convenient representation of the links that can be established with information-theoretic security on a large-scale network. We then propose and characterize two techniques--sectorized transmission and eavesdropper neutralization--which are shown to dramatically enhance the connectivity of the iS-graph.