Keynote talk #1: Trusted communications with physical layer security for 5G and beyond

Abstract

Mobile data traffic is growing daily and this presents a significant challenge as the broadcast nature of wireless channels makes it extremely vulnerable to security breaches. A recent report of NSF has estimated 78% of large organisation and 63% of small business are attacked annually, and these figures will continue to increase making the wireless security concerns worldwide. As a consequence, security and privacy is of utmost concern for future wireless technologies. However, securely transferring confidential information over a wireless network in the presence of eavesdroppers that may intercept the information exchange between legitimate terminals, still remains a challenging task. Although security was originally viewed as a high-layer problem to be solved using cryptographic methods, physical layer (PHY) security is now emerging as a promising new (additional) means of defense to realize wireless secrecy in communications. In wireless PHY security, the breakthrough idea is to exploit the characteristics of wireless channels such as fading or noise to transmit a message from the source to the intended receiver while trying to keep this message confidential from both passive and active eavesdroppers. Over the past few years, PHY security has been widely recognized as a key enabling technique for secure wireless communications in future networks because of its potential for addressing security in new networking paradigms, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), for which more traditional methods of security may be impractical. With the fast development of new technologies for wireless communications and networks, i.e., mm-wave communications, massive MIMO, device-to-device communications, energy harvesting communications, 5G networks is expected to be in place in the year 2020. However, these are still challenging demands, particularly in the face of 5G security. These are serious constraints in security which, unresolved, preclude the technological precursors to 5G and, implicitly, challenge the viability of 5G itself. This talk will address this problem, not only for 5G but also the beyond.