Physical‐Layer Authentication for 6G Systems

Sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks are critical to support emerging new applications by connecting several heterogeneous devices and machines as well as complex data processes, which are vulnerable to various spoofing attacks. Conventional authentication techniques are facing some challenges in 6G wireless environments, including significant security overhead and low reliability, as well as difficulty in providing situation-aware continuous protection. To overcome these challenges, we present approaches based on physical-layer security. First, we recall the general principles of physical-layer authentication (PLA) and then we introduce the novel concept of challenge-response authentication at the physical layer when using reflective intelligent surfaces. Then, we introduce machine-learning-based PLA approaches, which are intelligent solutions that fully utilize the physical-layer parameters. Machine-learning paradigms for intelligent authentication design are presented, and the performance analysis and evaluation are given.