Physical Layer Security in Military Communications

Military communications need to be secure in harsh operational conditions under constant enemy attacks and attempts to eavesdrop, jam, or decrypt the communications. Physical layer security (PLS) can be used in conjunction with traditional cryptographic techniques to ensure an additional layer of security for military communications. In this article, PLS techniques at different levels of military communications, from communications at the military section level to the battalion or command center level, are discussed and analyzed. The presented solutions were tailored to the challenges faced in each scenario, leading to good performance. Additional challenges are also discussed, and suitable solutions are outlined.

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Physical Layer Security in Military Communications

Research Anthology on Military and Defense Applications, Utilization, Education, and Ethics ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-9029-4.ch021 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 384-398

Author(s):

Elias Yaacoub

Keyword(s):

Physical Layer Security ◽

Physical Layer ◽

Operational Conditions ◽

Additional Layer ◽

Military Communications ◽

Cryptographic Techniques ◽

The Military ◽

Different Levels ◽

Command Center ◽

Section Level

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An overview of generic tools for information-theoretic secrecy performance analysis over wiretap fading channels

EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking ◽

10.1186/s13638-021-02065-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Long Kong ◽

Yun Ai ◽

Lei Lei ◽

Georges Kaddoum ◽

Symeon Chatzinotas ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Fading Channels ◽

Physical Layer Security ◽

Large Scale ◽

Performance Metrics ◽

Physical Layer ◽

Small Scale ◽

Secrecy Outage Probability ◽

Secrecy Capacity ◽

Ongoing Research ◽

Cryptographic Techniques

AbstractPhysical layer security (PLS) has been proposed to afford an extra layer of security on top of the conventional cryptographic techniques. Unlike the conventional complexity-based cryptographic techniques at the upper layers, physical layer security exploits the characteristics of wireless channels, e.g., fading, noise, interference, etc., to enhance wireless security. It is proved that secure transmission can benefit from fading channels. Accordingly, numerous researchers have explored what fading can offer for physical layer security, especially the investigation of physical layer security over wiretap fading channels. Therefore, this paper aims at reviewing the existing and ongoing research works on this topic. More specifically, we present a classification of research works in terms of the four categories of fading models: (i) small-scale, (ii) large-scale, (iii) composite, and (iv) cascaded. To elaborate these fading models with a generic and flexible tool, three promising candidates, including the mixture gamma (MG), mixture of Gaussian (MoG), and Fox’s H-function distributions, are comprehensively examined and compared. Their advantages and limitations are further demonstrated via security performance metrics, which are designed as vivid indicators to measure how perfect secrecy is ensured. Two clusters of secrecy metrics, namely (i) secrecy outage probability (SOP), and the lower bound of SOP; and (ii) the probability of nonzero secrecy capacity (PNZ), the intercept probability, average secrecy capacity (ASC), and ergodic secrecy capacity, are displayed and, respectively, deployed in passive and active eavesdropping scenarios. Apart from those, revisiting the secrecy enhancement techniques based on Wyner’s wiretap model, the on-off transmission scheme, jamming approach, antenna selection, and security region are discussed.

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