Secure Communications via Physical-Layer and Information-Theoretic Techniques [Scanning the Issue]

The October 2015 Special Issue of Proceedings of the IEEE highlights recent advances along with the remaining challenges in the field of physical layer security. The paper by Jorswieck and colleagues provide an overview of the signal processing techniques used in secrecy coding and secret-key agreement at the physical layer. The standard setup assumes known channel characteristics connecting the sender to the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. The paper by Muramatsu and colleagues. pursue the related question of protocol design to achieve secret-key agreement by exploiting correlated randomness in sequences observed by players in a game. Xie and Ulukus examine various extensions of channels with additive Gaussian noise interference, seeking secrecy capacities in configurations involving helpers and/or multiple taps, borrowing ideas from powerful interference alignment concepts. Venkitasubramaniam and colleagues examine information-theoretic security in the context of control theory and cyberY physical systems, whose applications span smart grids, networked transportation systems, and even smart and connected healthcare.