Wireless communication networks and the need for security

Abstract

Wireless systems are becoming an increasingly important part of our daily lives. The proper operation of many crucial applications and use cases, including those in healthcare, finance, e-commerce, transportation, industrial automation, etc., depends on secure and reliable communication. Conventional cryptographic security mechanisms are widely used, but they are unable to scale with increasingly heterogeneous and decentralized networks. On the other hand, by utilizing the dynamic features of the wireless environment, physical layer security (PLS) offers a promising complementary solution to ensure the authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of legitimate communications. In this chapter, we first try to paint a picture of the next-generation networks before emphasizing the need for secure wireless transmission in future networks. Later, we highlight the limitations of cryptographic methods, and the ability of PLS to address them is provided. We conclude the chapter by briefly discussing a recently developed unified framework for PLS in future networks.