Physical Layer Encryption for Wireless OFDM Communication Systems
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Physical Layer Encryption for Wireless OFDM Communication Systems Marko Jacovic1
· Kyle Juretus1 · Nagarajan Kandasamy1 · Ioannis Savidis1 · Kapil R. Dandekar1
Received: 7 November 2019 / Accepted: 19 May 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Our everyday lives are impacted by the widespread adoption of wireless communication systems integral to residential, industrial, and commercial settings. Devices must be secure and reliable to support the emergence of large scale heterogeneous networks. Higher layer encryption techniques such as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) are vulnerable to threats, including even the latest WPA3 release. Physical layer security leverages existing components of the physical or PHY layer to provide a low-complexity solution appropriate for wireless devices. This work presents a PHY layer encryption technique based on frequency induction for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals to increase security against eavesdroppers. The secure transceiver consists of a key to frequency shift mapper, encryption module, and modified synchronizer for decryption. The system has been implemented on a Virtex-7 FPGA. The additional hardware overhead incurred on the Virtex-7 for both the transmitter and the receiver is low. Both simulation and hardware evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed system is capable of providing secure communication from an eavesdropper with no decrease in performance as compared with the baseline case of a standard OFDM transceiver. The techniques developed in this paper provide greater security to OFDM-based wireless communication systems. Keywords Communication system security · OFDM · Physical layer · System implementation
1 Introduction Eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks are serious security threats in wireless communication. Encryption schemes at the software layer such as Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) have been previously compromised [1]. Although WPA3 is designed to be resistant to brute force attacks, the Dragonblood Attack exploited the vulnerabilities of WPA3 to dictionary, group downgrade, and side-channel attacks [2]. Further security methods must, therefore, be developed to protect communication systems. Physical layer security provides additional protection of wireless communication between devices. The security techniques implemented at the physical (PHY) layer are used to complement and strengthen security protocols at
Marko Jacovic
[email protected] 1
Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA
higher layers. PHY layer security consists of two primary components: key generation and encryption [3]. Secret keys are generated using properties of the wireless channel to help secure a communication link. Encryption in this context consists of encoding signals by introducing strategic modifications to stages within the transceiver pipeline to secure the communication channel. This work explores PHY layer encryption of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals, whi
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