WS-08: The First IEEE Workshop on PHY and Cross-Layer Security Solutions for 5G Networks

With the explosive growth of ubiquitous information exchange requirements and the widespread of smart devices, 5G networks are expected to support massive user connections and exponentially increasing wireless services, which makes information security unprecedentedly important. 

Differently from the encryption-based secure approach, physical layer (PHY) security exploits the intrinsic characteristics of wireless channels, such as noise, fading, and interference, to degrade the received signal qualities at the malicious users. In this manner, information leakage can be prohibited even though upper-layer encryption is not applied. PHY security can realize adaptive signal design based on real-time channel conditions, thereby providing flexible security levels. Moreover, PHY security techniques match the features of 5G networks well. The adoptions of massive MIMO and high-frequency communications in 5G bring in new opportunities for the development of PHY security strategies. Specifically, the employment of massive MIMO greatly enriches the spatial resolution of wireless channels and offers additional spatial resources to combat eavesdropping; abundant spectra within the high frequency band provide favorable conditions for physical-layer secret key generation. Therefore, the applications of PHY security techniques to 5G networks is a promising security provisioning solution. It would be more advantageous by combining PHY and upper layer security techniques via cross-layer design. Some interesting topics include PHY-authentication, CSI-based secret key generation and encryption, anti-eavesdropping cross-layer resource allocation, content-aware signal design and secure transmission, etc. 

Although the PHY and cross-layer security has been recognized as a promising paradigm to secure wireless systems, there are still several technical challenges needed to be addressed, such as low-complexity signal design and detection, security-embedded coding, secrecy performance analysis for large-scale HetNets, countermeasures for active eavesdropping, etc. This workshop is organized to exchange novel ideas among collogues in this area and promote the research in PHY & cross-layer security techniques for 5G networks.

The topics of this workshop include, but not limited to, the following: 

  • Information-theoretic fundamentals for PHY and cross-layer security techniques
  • PHY authentication techniques in 5G
  • CSI-based key generation and encryption algorithms
  • Secure transmissions in massive MIMO and millimeter wave systems
  • Advanced coding techniques for security in 5G
  • Low complexity signal design toward enhanced security
  • Security threats and countermeasures in full-duplex communications
  • Secure massive access techniques in IoT applications
  • PHY and cross-layer design for secure multimedia delivery in 5G
  • Security provisioning for NOMA
  • Security-throughput-delay tradeoff analysis for PHY security strategies
  • Testbed development for the evaluation of PHY and cross-layer security solutions