A Survey of Physical Layer Security Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Challenges Ahead

TL;DR

This survey reviews physical layer security techniques tailored for 5G wireless networks, highlighting recent advancements, challenges, and future research directions in leveraging channel randomness for data confidentiality.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of physical layer security methods applied to various 5G technologies and discusses unresolved challenges and future trends.

Findings

Summarizes recent physical layer security techniques for 5G.

Identifies key technical challenges in 5G physical layer security.

Discusses future research directions and unresolved issues.

Abstract

Physical layer security which safeguards data confidentiality based on the information-theoretic approaches has received significant research interest recently. The key idea behind physical layer security is to utilize the intrinsic randomness of the transmission channel to guarantee the security in physical layer. The evolution towards 5G wireless communications poses new challenges for physical layer security research. This paper provides a latest survey of the physical layer security research on various promising 5G technologies, including physical layer security coding, massive multiple-input multiple-output, millimeter wave communications, heterogeneous networks, non-orthogonal multiple access, full duplex technology, etc. Technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of physical layer security in 5G and beyond are discussed.