A Comprehensive Guide to 5G Security

6Physical Layer Security

Simone Soderi^1,2, Lorenzo Mucchi³, Matti Hämäläinen¹, Alessandro Piva³, and Jari Iinatti¹

¹ Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

² Alstom Ferroviaria SpA, Florence, Italy

³ Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

6.1 Introduction

Along with the rapid deployment of wireless communication networks, wireless security has become a critical concern. Unfortunately, security risks are inherent in any wireless technology. Some of these risks are similar to those of wired networks, some are exacerbated by wireless connectivity and some other are completely new. The most significant source of risks in wireless networks is that the communications medium is open to intruders. Mobile and handheld wireless devices are resource constrained (e.g. battery life) and hence such devices have limited transmission power and may use weaker cryptographic mechanisms for saving power, thereby making them easy targets for powerful adversaries. Self‐configuring heterogeneous networks may use very different levels of security, the lower secured links being a potential breach for the whole system. A direct consequence of these risks is the loss of data confidentiality and integrity and the threat of denial of service (DoS) attacks to wireless communications. Unauthorized users may gain access to system and information, corrupt the data, consume network bandwidth, degrade network performance, launch attacks that ...