Physical Layer based Message Authentication with Secure Channel Codes

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate physical (PHY) layer message authentication to combat adversaries with infinite computational capacity. Specifically, a PHY-layer authentication framework over a wiretap channel (W <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> ; W <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) is proposed to achieve information theoretic security with the same key. We develop a theorem to reveal the requirements/conditions for the authentication framework to be information-theoretic secure for authenticating a polynomial number of messages in terms of n. Based on this theorem, we design an authentication protocol that can guarantee the security requirements, and prove its authentication rate can approach infinity when n goes to infinity. Furthermore, we design and implement a feasible and efficient message authentication protocol over binary symmetric wiretap channel (BSWC) by using Linear Feedback Shifting Register based (LFSR-based) hash functions and strong secure polar code. Through extensive simulations, it is demonstrated that the proposed protocol can achieve high authentication rate, with low time cost and authentication error rate.