Leveraging the Physical Layer to Achieve Practically Feasible Confidentiality and Authentication

This chapter discusses how the physical layer of wireless communications can be exploited to achieve a reasonable level of security in real systems. Unlike theoretical studies that often make ideal assumptions, such as random coding, continuous modulations, and perfect channel knowledge, we consider conditions that occur in real systems complying with common communication standards. By exploiting appropriate techniques to cope with the non-idealities of such systems, such as all-or-nothing transforms, on-off transmission protocols and machine learning, we show how good performance in terms of confidentiality and authentication at the physical layer can also be achieved in real systems