Rand-OFDM: A Secured Wireless Signal

TL;DR

Rand-OFDM introduces a secure waveform modification for wireless signals, ensuring only intended receivers can recover the original signal properties, thus enhancing physical layer security without significant performance loss.

Contribution

The paper proposes Rand-OFDM, a novel waveform secured with a shared secret key that obfuscates signal properties and enables only the intended receiver to recover the original signal.

Findings

Performance comparable to legacy OFDM with 1-4dB SNR penalty

Effective in wideband signals and over-the-air scenarios

Remains unrecognized by adversaries even at high SNR

Abstract

Wireless communication has been a broadcast system since its inception, which violates security and privacy issues at the physical layer between the intended transmit and receive pairs. As we move towards advanced spectrum sharing methodologies involving billions of devices connected over wireless networks, it is essential to secure the wireless signal such that only the intended receiver can realize the properties of the signal. In this paper, we propose Rand-OFDM, a new waveform, secured with a shared secret key, where the signal properties can be recovered only at the expected receiver. We achieve the signal level security by modifying the OFDM signal in time-domain, thus erasing the OFDM properties and in turn obfuscating the signal properties to an eavesdropper. We introduce a key-based secured training signal for channel estimation, which can be used only at the intended receiver with prior knowledge of the key. As a final step for the recovery of the signal, we use a clustering-based technique to correct the phase of the received signal. Our cryptanalysis shows that Rand-OFDM is especially useful in future wideband signals. Extensive simulation and over-the-air experiments show that the performance of Rand-OFDM is comparable to legacy OFDM and SNR penalty due to the secured waveform varies between 1-4dB. In all these scenarios, Rand-OFDM remains unrecognized by the adversary even at the highest possible SNR.