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Physical Layer Encryption for Wireless OFDM Communication Systems
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Physical Layer Encryption for Wireless OFDM Communication Systems

Marko Jacovic, Kyle Juretus, Nagarajan Kandasamy, Ioannis Savidis and Kapil R. Dandekar
Journal of Hardware and Systems Security, v 4(3)
2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41635-020-00097-8

Abstract

Article Circuits and Systems Computer Hardware Engineering Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet) Systems and Data Security
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.

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