Exploiting interference for physical layer security in 5G networks [CI-PHY] (EPSRC-FNR)

Security and privacy have become a paramount concern in modern ICT, as threats from cybercrime are soaring. This year's global economic crime survey conducted by PwC reported that cybercrime has jumped from 4th to 2nd place among the most-reported types of economic crime. The severity of threat on the business, financial, infrastructure and other UK sectors makes all facets of security and risk management pertinent, and their importance cannot be overstated. Physical layer security (PS) provides an extra layer of security on top of the traditional cryptographic measures. It obstructs access to the wireless traffic itself, thus averting any higher layer attack. Encompassing a number of key technologies spanning secure beamforming, artificial noise design, network coding, cooperative jamming, graph theory, and directional modulation, PS is now commonly accepted as one of the most effective forms of security. While appealing as a theoretical concept, PS still faces a number of critical challenges that prevent it from wide commercial adoption in 5G and beyond, involving the lack of secure 5G signalling, the provision of eavesdroppers' information, and the applicability of existing theoretical techniques in real environments and under low-specification hardware.

CI-PHY addresses the abovementioned challenges, and promotes a paradigm shift on security by exploiting interference. In particular, CI-PHY exploits constructive interference for Physical Layer Security by:

- Specifically tailored fundamental waveform design to exploit interference, that provides a low complexity solution with limited hardware requirements;
- Artificial noise and jamming to actively improve the desired receivers' SNR under secrecy constraints, and further improve secrecy by designing the artificial noise to align destructively to the signal at the eavesdropper;
- Robust approaches for real implementation by taking hardware impairments into account to reduce the hardware requirements for providing secrecy with resource-constrained devices;
- Real implementation and over-the-air testing of security solutions to evaluate and optimise performance in commercially relevant environments.

CI-PHY will be performed with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust in University of Luxembourg, and industrial partners QinetiQ, BT, National Instruments and Huawei, and aspires to kick-start an innovative ecosystem for high-impact players among the infrastructure and service providers of ICT to develop and commercialize a new generation of secure and power-efficient communication networks, and address the unprecedented vulnerability of emerging ICT services to cyber threats.

The explosive growth of industrial control processes and the industrial IoT, imposes unprecedented vulnerability to cyber threats in critical infrastructure through the interconnected systems. Presently, the focus is on PHY security as a first and robust layer of security towards improving the reliability of wireless networks for critical applications. The severity of threat on the business, financial, infrastructure and other UK sectors makes all facets of security and risk management pertinent, and their importance cannot be overstated.

Commercial and societal impact: Firstly, by exploitation of interference, an inherent source of security in wireless networks, CI-PHY will deliver the network security in a power efficient manner. CI-PHY aims at a 100x improvement of security over power consumption, through a multi-fold reduction in the transmit power consumption with a simultaneous increase in security metrics by means of interference exploitation. These are key 5G PPP targets. Secondly, by focusing on practical implementation and hardware imperfections, along with proof-of-concept testing, CI-PHY will ensure the promised security targets are brought to practice.

The power- and hardware- efficient designs of CI-PHY will drive the reduction of CO2 emissions associated with the ICT industry to alleviate the relevant environmental repercussions. By reducing the operational expenditure (OPEX) related to power, and consequently the cost-per-Mbyte, CI-PHY will boost the diminishing profits for the ICT industry and re-define the operators' business models. Most importantly, it will help ensure the security, reliability and robustness of wireless networks, which are now integral to key business, financial, and other infrastructure and will impact the associated critical infrastructure, healthcare, security and industrial applications. Overall CI-PHY aligns with the EPSRC portfolio of research in the themes of ICT, Digital Economy, and Energy and, particularly with the Global Uncertainties subtheme on Cybersecurity, and will contribute to the economic competitiveness of the UK and enhance quality of life.

Academic impact: The vast impact of the work in the broader research communities, detailed in the Academic Beneficiaries section, will boost the profile of the Communications groups in UCL and UL and enhance the UK research impact in these areas by citation of the proposed work and international exposure. The creation of new knowledge in the above fields within CI-PHY, and the inclusion of this in the educational curricula will further establish the UK as a world leader in technological and applied state-of-the-art knowledge transfer. Apart from the theoretical modelling that will set the benchmarks for the system performance, the practical work on implementing PHY security with low-spec RF chains will attract commercial interest, stimulate industrial research and encourage joint academic-industrial collaboration on the field. This will further augment the research income UCL and UL through follow-on research projects and industrial consultancy. The adoption of the proposed techniques by global communication standards will further establish the UK as a leader in communication standardization. The protection of the created intellectual property and the commercialization of the hybrid signal processing solutions will improve the penetration of the UK sector in the multibillion ICT industry.

New experts: The research training within the project, involving visits for hands-on training to our industrial partners Huawei and National Instruments will develop the research profile, expertise and man power of the world class research groups in UCL and UL and establish an inter-institutional team with excellence in PHY security, by producing new experts in the field of secure beamforming and jamming, energy-efficient transmission, hybrid analogue-digital transmission and wireless communications in general.