Autor(es):
Martins, João ; Conceição, Filipe ; Gomes, Marco ; Silva, Vitor ; Dinis, Rui
Data: 2025
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/188620
Origem: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Projeto/bolsa:
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/Concurso de avaliação no âmbito do Programa Plurianual de Financiamento de Unidades de I&D (2017%2F2018) - Financiamento Base/UIDB%2F50008%2F2020/PT;
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/Concurso de avaliação no âmbito do Programa Plurianual de Financiamento de Unidades de I&D (2017%2F2018) - Financiamento Programático/UIDP%2F50008%2F2020/PT;
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/Concurso para Atribuição do Estatuto e Financiamento de Laboratórios Associados (LA)/LA%2FP%2F0109%2F2020/PT;
Assunto(s): access point selection (APS); active eavesdropping detection; Cell-free (CF); physical layer security (PLS); pilot contamination attacks; spoofing attacks; wireless authentication; Computer Science(all); Materials Science(all); Engineering(all)
Descrição
Funding Information: This work was supported in part by Funda\u00E7\u00E3o para a Ci\u00EAncia e a Tecnologia / Minist\u00E9rio da Educa\u00E7\u00E3o e Ci\u00EAncia (FCT/MEC) through the National Funds co-funded by European Regional Development Fund (FEDER); in part by the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (COMPETE 2020) of the Portugal 2020 Framework; in part by the Regional Programa Operacional (OP) Centro under Grant POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030588; in part by the Regional Operational Program of Lisbon under Grant Lisboa-01-0145-FEDER-030588; in part by the Financial Support National Public [FCT [Or\u00E7amento Estado (OE)]] through the Ph.D. Grant SFRH/BD/08221/2021; and in part by European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) through the COST Action Physical layer security for trustworthy and resilient 6G systems (6GPHYSEC) under Grant CA22168. Publisher Copyright: © 2013 IEEE.
The ability to provide reliable data rates across several coverage areas establishes massive multiple-input multiple-output (m-MIMO) cell-free (CF) systems as a pivotal technology for future sixth-generation (6G) systems. CF networks do, however, introduce additional security and network integrity vulnerabilities. For that, to complement the traditional cryptographic algorithms, physical layer security (PLS) can be an effective strategy for acquiring essential wireless network information in order to develop authentication methods against impersonation attacks. To prevent these spoofing attacks, we propose leveraging the wireless channel and the access point selection (APS) allocation schemes as authentication mechanisms. Our approach begins with a threshold-based analysis of spectral efficiency (SE) losses across different APS schemes. We then propose an algorithm capable of estimating the number of eavesdroppers executing active attacks while identifying the targeted user equipment (UE). Finally, we test the robustness of our detection scheme by examining how SE loss and achievable secrecy SE change when a single attacker is positioned at various locations relative to the targeted UE. Results demonstrate that monitoring these parameters provides critical insights into network performance and the impact of active eavesdropping. These findings highlight the potential of integrating PLS with upper-layer authentication protocols to significantly enhance wireless network security.
