Physical Layer Error Correction Based Cipher

Abstract

In conventional communication systems, error correction is carried out at the physical layer while data security is performed performed at an upper layer. As a result, these steps are done as separate steps. As opposed to this conventional system, we present a scheme that combines error correction and data security as one unit so that both encryption and encoding could be carried out at the physical layer. Hence, in this paper, we present an Error Correction Based Cipher (ECBC) that combines error correction and encryption/decryption in a single step. Encrypting and encoding or decoding and decrypting in a single step will lead to a faster and more efficient implementation. One of the challenges of using previous joint schemes in a communications channel is that there is a tradeoff between data reliability and security. However in ECBC, there is no trade off between reliability and security. Errors introduced at the transmitter for randomization are removed at the receiver. Hence ECBC can utilize its full capacity to correct channel errors. We show the result of randomization test on ECBC and its security against conventional attacks. We also present the result of the FPGA implementation of the ECBC encryption.