Over the past decade, I have led a concerted theory-meets-systems effort in the new field of physical layer security. Physical layer security is an emerging hot-topic in wireless systems, and involves using wireless-specific properties associated with the wireless medium itself to enhance traditional approaches to authentication and confidentiality. I have been developing a way to extract forge-resistant signatures that can identify wireless transmitters without requiring conventional cryptographic mechanisms.

We have been able to build systems that can discriminate between different wireless devices based solely on their wireless signatures, thereby thwarting spoofing and supporting appropriate countermeasures. I have also shown that it is possible to turn the complexities of the wireless medium into an advantage for secret communications. We have developed and validated techniques that extract cryptographically secure secret bits from the natural randomness that exists in the wireless fading channel.

Related reading: Information-Theoretically Secret Key Generation for Fading Wireless Channels