Due to the broadcast nature of radio propagation, the wireless air interface is open and accessible to both authorized and illegitimate users. This completely differs from a wired network, where communicating devices are physically connected through cables and a node without direct association is unable to access the network for illicit activities. The open communications environment makes wireless transmissions more vulnerable than wired communications to malicious attacks, including both the passive eavesdropping for data interception and the active jamming for disrupting legitimate transmissions. Therefore, this paper is motivated to examine the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state of the art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. Several physical-layer security techniques are reviewed and compared, including information-theoretic security, artificial-noise-aided security, security-oriented beamforming, diversity-assisted security, and physical-layer key generation approaches. Since a jammer emitting radio signals can readily interfere with the legitimate wireless users, we also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their countermeasures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer, and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.

/pdf/a-survey-on-wireless-security-technical-challenges-recent-3uamoalvot.pdf

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances, and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.

/pdf/a-survey-on-wireless-security-technical-challenges-recent-k705wofne7.pdf

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

A wireless LAN standard developed by IEEE committee P802.11 operates in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band. This band is a very hostile environment due to many unpredictable interference sources, such as microwave ovens, utilizing the same frequency bands. At the same time the allowed signal power density that can be used is limited in order to minimize the interference to other users in the same band. In order to avoid these interference and keep a low signal power density the standard supports both direct sequence (DS) and frequency hopping (FH) modulation for these applications. The new test beds for multimedia wireless (WLANs) also use FH modulation. We analyze the performance of a modification of the FH multiple frequency shift keying (MFSK) system that includes a multitone multiamplitude MFSK signal, designated as amMFSK modulation. In this case, in order to meet the transmitted power density limits imposed in the ISM band, the signal energy is split into m separate tones. This makes the system more vulnerable to noise and fading, but still the overall flow of useful information will be increased. The results demonstrate that under the large range of the signal, channel and interference parameters this system offers better performance.

Advanced frequency hopping modulation for spread spectrum WLAN

The invention provides an adaptive frequency hopping spread-spectrum (FHSS) transmission system and method, which efficiently utilizes available transmission bandwidth, whilst providing robustness to jamming techniques in wireless communication systems. The proposed technique operates by transmitting a wide-band signal over multiple, single-carrier, parallel transmission subbands, which may occupy non-contiguous frequency regions. The proposed scheme exhibits significant gain in error rate performance, as compared to a data rate equivalent single-subband system in the presence of signal jamming and/or interference without a reduction in the transmission data rate nor an increase in transmitter power. In addition, the proposed system and method are adaptive and enable more efficient use of the available bandwidth for communicating, thus increasing the overall bandwidth utilization of the system.

Frequency hopping communication system

In this paper, beam-domain (BD) anti-jamming transmission in a downlink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is investigated. A smart jammer with multiple antennas attempts to interfere with the signal reception of users with the desired energy efficiency (EE), whereas a base station (BS) tries to minimize the transmission cost while ensuring uninterrupted communication. A Bayesian Stackelberg game between the BS and jammer, where the jammer is the follower and the BS acts as the leader, is modeled. In the follower subgame, the optimal jamming precoding with a closed-form power solution is introduced. The optimal jamming power is proportional to the transmission power in the downlink, and thus, for the BS, the strategy of suppressing malicious attacks by increasing the transmission power fails. In the leader subgame, generalized zero-forcing (ZF), whose closed-form power solution constitutes the unique Stackelberg equilibrium (SE) with that of the jammer, is found to be the optimal anti-jamming precoding for robust transmission. The results show that there always exists a precoding solution for the BS that ensures reliable transmission when the SE is obtained. A proper increase in the minimum signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) threshold or the BD channel approximation error helps the BS save power during the resistance against the jammer. Then, a simplified power solution without the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of jamming channels is further introduced for practical implementation. Numerical results are provided to verify the proposed solutions.

Beam-Domain Anti-Jamming Transmission for Downlink Massive MIMO Systems: A Stackelberg Game Perspective

Frequency diversity for a phase-coherent frequency-hopping spread-spectrum system is proposed. The frequency band of the communicator is partitioned into L disjoint subbands on which L replicas of the communicator signal are simultaneously transmitted; each signal replica hops independently in its subband. Therefore, both phase continuity and coherent optimal combining of the received replicas are possible. Optimum diversity is thus at least 6 dB better than the conventional noncoherent FH-SS system. We show that a smart jammer should be present in all subbands. We also give a sufficient condition that forces the jammer to spread its interference signal on the whole communicator frequency band.

G.K. Kaleh

Papers

A diversity scheme for a phase-coherent frequency-hopping spread-spectrum system