Securing Wireless Signals using Artificial Phase Noise

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of artificial phase noise on security of wireless signals. We consider a system with a legitimate transmitter and a legitimate receiver, where an eavesdropper is also present and able to listen to the transmitted signals due to the broadcast nature of the wireless signals. In this work, we incorporate a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) and a look-up-table (LUT) into the legitimate transmitter and receiver to generate the artificial phase noise at the transmitter and then to correct it at the receiver. In addition, the system is implemented on the hardware using software-defined radio (SDR). Moreover, we evaluate the system's performance of the legitimate receiver with the eavesdropper at different artificial phase noise and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The results show that the legitimate receiver's error performance is not affected with artificial phase noise provided it is compensated correctly. On the other hand, the error performance of the eavesdropper degrades significantly particularly when the artificial phase noise increases beyond 45°.