Physical layer authentication scheme with channel based tag padding sequence

Abstract

This study proposes a novel physical layer authentication scheme, which uses the channel to generate a tagged signal and determine random partial padding. The scheme utilises the random wireless channel gain between communication entities to generate tag and decide a padding sequence for each symbol. Simulations for different padding percentages using the randomness provided by the channel are carried out to compare against a traditional full padding scheme, which shows improvement in error rate under the same security performance. The second layer of referee verification is introduced to increase the difficulty of compromising the authenticity of the scheme. A mathematical analysis is carried out to find an optimal size of selected time slots for the authentication scheme is also discussed.