Physical Layer Security in Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems
Summary
Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) represents a transformative paradigm in wireless communications, allowing multiple users to share the same frequency-time resources by allocating different power levels. This power-domain multiplexing, combined with successive interference cancellation at the receiver, dramatically enhances spectral efficiency and user connectivity. Physical Layer Security (PLS) in NOMA systems exploits the inherent randomness of wireless channels, multiuser interference and power allocation strategies to ensure confidentiality against passive and active eavesdroppers. By carefully designing signal superposition, cooperative relaying, jamming and beamforming, PLS techniques can guarantee a non-zero secrecy rate even in the presence of sophisticated adversaries. Recent advances encompass analytical bounds on secrecy outage probability, ergodic secrecy rate analyses under fading and interference, and novel resource-allocation schemes that jointly optimise user fairness, latency and confidentiality. As next-generation networks evolve towards 6G, the integration of PLS mechanisms in NOMA is set to deliver secure, low-latency and ultra-reliable connectivity for applications ranging from industrial automation to Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems.
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Physical Layer Security in Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in physical layer security in non-orthogonal multiple access systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA): A multiple-access technique where users share the same spectrum resources by superimposing signals at different power levels.
Physical Layer Security (PLS): A set of methods that exploit the physical properties of wireless channels to secure data transmission without upper-layer cryptographic protocols.
Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC): A receiver technique that sequentially decodes and subtracts stronger signals to recover weaker ones in a superimposed transmission.
Ergodic Secrecy Rate: The long-term average rate at which confidential information can be reliably transmitted while ensuring that the eavesdropper’s channel capacity remains below that rate.
Secrecy Outage Probability (SOP): The probability that the instantaneous secrecy rate falls below a target threshold, indicating a failure to guarantee confidentiality.
References
- Safeguarding Next-Generation Multiple Access Using Physical Layer Security Techniques: A Tutorial. Proceedings of the IEEE (2024).
- Physical Layer Security in Random NOMA-Enabled Heterogeneous Networks. IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society (2024).
- Enhancing Physical-Layer Security for IoT With Nonorthogonal Multiple Access Assisted Semi-Grant-Free Transmission. IEEE Internet of Things Journal (2022).
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