Communication Security at the Physical Layer

Wireless and wired communication security at the physical layer has recently received too much attention and interest from both academia and industry due to its undeniable potential to radically replace the sleazy, breakable and hackable cryptography-based approaches, which entail many hurdles and practical issues, especially for future distributed wireless infrastructures (e.g., blockchain networks) and low complexity devices (e.g., IoT). The basic idea of Wireless security at the Physical layer concept is to exploit the characteristics of natural and artificial communication channels (wireless and wired medium) and their impairments including noise, fading, interference, dispersion, diversity, etc. in order to ensure the ability of the intended device to successfully perform data decoding while preventing non-intended devices (eavesdroppers) from doing so. Thus, the main design goal of the wireless physical layer security (PLS) concept is to increase the performance difference between the link of the legitimate receiving device and that of the malicious device (eavesdropper) by using well-designed physical layer transmission techniques and methods.

This book is meant for students (master and Ph.D.), working professionals, researchers, engineers, practitioners, and instructors who are interested in learning about Communication Security at the Physical Layer: its Principles, Techniques, and Metrics.