Implementation of Physical Layer Encryption For Wireless Communication System

The Adoption of Wireless Communication Systems has massively impacted everyday lives of the people. Securing privacy is an important aspect to consider in wireless communication systems due to their broadcast nature. The data transferred between two parties need to be protected by a process of encryption, which helps maintain its privacy. Encryption is usually only applied to the upper layers of the OSI model, which may be sufficient to protect the actual contents of the message. However, the Physical Layer (PHY) signal remains unprotected and consequently exposes critical information such as data rates, channel type, channel bandwidth, modulation, number of physical channels and traffic statistics, which can be used to deduce the channel capacity, transmission equipment and importance of the message. This issue can be mended by performing Physical Layer Encryption (PLE) to provide an additional layer of security. In this paper, a comparative analysis of different PLE techniques is provided along with their simulations. Additionally, these PLE techniques are also implemented in the wireless communication systems on the GNU Radio platform, and suitable output waveforms are illustrated with details.