Physical Layer Security: Authentication, Integrity and Confidentiality

TL;DR

This survey reviews physical layer security techniques that leverage wireless and hardware properties to achieve authentication, integrity, and confidentiality, emphasizing information-theoretic security and its potential for future 6G systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of PLS methods for authentication, integrity, and confidentiality, highlighting recent results and open challenges for 6G applications.

Findings

PLS offers information-theoretic security resistant to quantum attacks.

Node authentication and message integrity can be achieved through PLS techniques.

Presents open issues and future directions for PLS in sixth-generation wireless systems.

Abstract

The goal of physical layer security (PLS) is to make use of the properties of the physical layer, including the wireless communication medium and the transceiver hardware, to enable critical aspects of secure communications. In particular, PLS can be employed to provide i) node authentication, ii) message authentication, and, iii) message confidentiality. Unlike the corresponding classical cryptographic approaches which are all based on computational security, PLS's added strength is that it is based on information theoretic security, in which no limitation with respect to the opponent's computational power is assumed and is therefore inherently quantum resistant. In this survey, we review the aforementioned fundamental aspects of PLS, starting with node authentication, moving to the information theoretic characterization of message integrity, and finally, discussing message confidentiality both in the secret key generation from shared randomness and from the wiretap channel point of view. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive roadmap on important relevant results by the authors and other contributors and discuss open issues on the applicability of PLS in sixth generation systems.