Physical layer security analysis using radio frequency-fingerprinting in cellular-V2X for 6G communication

Abstract

It is anticipated that sixth-generation (6G) systems would present new security challenges while offering improved features and new directions for security in vehicular communication, which may result in the emergence of a new breed of adaptive and context-aware security protocol. Physical layer security solutions can compete for low-complexity, low-delay, low-footprint, adaptable, extensible, and context-aware security schemes by leveraging the physical layer and introducing security controls. A novel physical layer security scheme that employs the concept of radio frequency fingerprinting (RF-FP) for location estimation is proposed, wherein the RF-FP values are collected at different points with in the cell. Then, based on the estimated location, the nearest possible road-side unit for sending the information signal is located. After this, the effects on secrecy capacity (SC) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) in the presence of multiple eavesdropper per unit time are analysed. It has been shown via simulations that the proposed RF-FP scheme increases SC by up to 25% for the same signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values as those of the benchmarks, while the SOP tends to decrease by up to 30% as compared to the benchmark scheme for the same SNR value. Thus, the proposed RF-FP-based location estimation provides much better results as compared to the existing physical layer security schemes.