Optimal Power Allocation for Channel-Based Physical Layer Authentication in Dual-Hop Wireless Networks

Area of Science:

• Wireless communication security
• Signal processing
• Information theory

Background:

• Dual-hop wireless networks face spoofing attacks.
• Channel-based physical-layer authentication offers low-cost detection.
• Likelihood ratio test (LRT) is theoretically optimal but complex to implement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a practical and effective channel-based authentication method for dual-hop wireless networks.
• To analyze and minimize false alarm rate (FAR) and miss detection rate (MDR).
• To optimize power allocation between transmitter and relay for enhanced security.

Main Methods:

• Utilized majority voting (MV) algorithm on temporal variations of channel frequency response.
• Analyzed theoretical upper bounds for the sum of FAR and MDR.
• Developed an optimal power allocation strategy minimizing the derived upper bound.
• Leveraged differences in noise power between relay and receiver.

Main Results:

• The majority voting algorithm provides a practical trade-off for hypothesis testing.
• The proposed power allocation strategy effectively reduces FAR and MDR compared to equal allocation.
• Simulation results validate the superiority of the optimized power strategy.

Conclusions:

• The developed channel-based authentication method with optimal power allocation enhances security in dual-hop wireless networks.
• The strategy effectively mitigates spoofing attacks by improving detection performance.
• This approach offers a practical solution for robust wireless network authentication.