Improving the Physical Layer Security of the Internet of Things (IoT)

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most promising technological revolutions. However, the IoT is inherently vulnerable to attacks. In this paper, we propose to enhance the physical layer security of the IoT by using a technique called information passing and interference addition. In the physical layer security analysis, the achieved secrecy rate has an inverse relationship with the intruder’s distance to the legitimate transmitter. Our work is, first, to increase the achievable secrecy rate by letting the legitimate transmitter find an alternative route to the fusion center that could achieve a higher secrecy rate than the direct route. Hence, the legitimate transmitter must not disclose the actual information to the fusion center if there is an eavesdropper located between them, and rather must pass its information to another node via a directional antenna to concentrate the power towards the intended receiving node. Passing the information to the nearest node must happen under the condition that there is no intruder in between. Second, we use simultaneous multi-stream beamforming transmission to strengthen the legitimate receiver’s signal-to-noise ratios and at the same time poison the eavesdropper channel with interference. Third, we disclose false information to the intruder. We created the system design and investigated the secrecy analysis of that system. Also, we discussed the use of directional antennas on the legitimate nodes. The result showed that using directional antennas would increase the probability of having at least one secure connection coming out of the node to the other legitimate nodes. Moreover, the results showed that using the simultaneous multi-stream beamforming improved the legitimate channel’s achievable secrecy rate and that it has superiority over the directional antenna effect.