Investigating Physical Layer Security in Molecular Communication Networks

Abstract

In molecular communication networks, understanding the security level allows us to assess the quality of information transmitted accurately. The presence of unintended nodes in these networks is one of the factors compromising the security of information. This paper considers the simultaneous presence of a jammer and an eavesdropper as unintended nodes. This existence of unintended nodes prompts us to explore methods for assessing the security of a proposed system. Physical layer approaches can be regarded as one of the most efficient methods for assessing security in molecular communication networks. In this paper, we have utilized these approaches instead of the conventional cryptographic methods. At this layer, we have used several metrics to evaluate the security of our system; secrecy capacity (SC), the average probability of error (APOE), and comprehensive secure distance (CSD). By using SC, we also employed other approaches to improve security, such as changing the time interval, jamming molecules, and varying the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. As the last step, Monte Carlo simulation is used to verify the results obtained through analytical analysis.