Enhancing Channel Shortening Based Physical Layer Security Using Coordinated Multipoint

Abstract

Wireless networks have become imperative in all areas of human life. As such, one of the most critical concerns in next-generation networks is ensuring the security and privacy of user data/communication. Cryptography has been conventionally used to tackle this, but it may not be scalable (in terms of key exchange and management) with the increasingly heterogeneous network deployments. Physical layer security (PLS) provides a promising alternative, but struggles when an attacker boasts a better wireless channel as compared to the legitimate user. This work leverages the coordinated multipoint concept and its distributed transmission points, in conjunction with channel shortening, to address this problem. Results show significant degradation of the bit-error-rate experienced at the eavesdropper as compared to state-of-the-art channel shortening-based PLS methods.