Physical Layer Security in Satellite Communication: State-of-the-art and Open Problems

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current state and open challenges of physical layer security in satellite communication, emphasizing its importance for protecting various satellite applications against attacks.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification of satellite applications and discusses how physical layer security can enhance their security, highlighting research gaps and future opportunities.

Findings

PLS can improve security in satellite-terrestrial and satellite IoT systems.

Open problems include designing efficient PLS techniques for inter-satellite links.

Identifies gaps and future research directions in satellite PLS.

Abstract

Satellite communications emerged as a promising extension to terrestrial networks in future 6G network research due to their extensive coverage in remote areas and ability to support the increasing traffic rate and heterogeneous networks. Like other wireless communication technologies, satellite signals are transmitted in a shared medium, making them vulnerable to attacks, such as eavesdropping, jamming, and spoofing. A good candidate to overcome these issues is physical layer security (PLS), which utilizes physical layer characteristics to provide security, especially due to its suitability for resource-limited devices such as satellites and IoT devices. In this paper, we provide a thorough and up-to-date review of PLS solutions for securing satellite communication. We classify main satellite applications into five domains, namely: Satellite-terrestrial, satellite-based IoT, Satellite navigation systems, FSO-based, and inter-satellite. In each domain, we discuss and investigate how PLS can be used to improve the system's overall security, preserve some desirable security properties and resist popular attacks. Finally, we highlight a few gaps in the related literature and discuss open research problems and opportunities for leveraging PLS in satellite communication.