Physical Layer Security based on Spread-Spectrum Watermarking and Jamming Receiver

Wireless communications’ infrastructures are frequently selected as a cable replacement in many applications giving an immediate advantage on the wireless investment. However, the worldwide proliferation of wireless local area network (WLAN) imposed large investments on network security. In the early days of Internet, its layered protocol stack did not consider security as a primary concern. Since then a significant amount of literature has been published. This paper proposes a watermark-based blind physical layer security (WBPLSec) utilizing a jamming receiver in conjunction with spread spectrum watermarking technique. The outage probability of the secrecy capacity is analytically derived, regardless of the eavesdropper position. The theoretical analysis let us draw an unsecured region around the legitimate transmitter and receiver. Results indicate how theWBPLSec aims to be a valuable technique for deploying physical layer security creating a secure region around the receiver. Authors utilized two performance metrics, the outage probability of secrecy capacity for assessing the secure communication effectiveness and the error probability for evaluating the watermark extraction process. Finally, the proposed protocol improves the secrecy capacity performance if compared to other protocols and moreover it has a lower energy consumption.