Evolution of Physical-Layer-Security-Enhanced Wireless Communications towards 6G

Dear Colleagues,

The advent of 6G wireless communication networks promises to revolutionize the way we interact in the digital world, as well as the real world. As we embark on this journey towards 6G, ensuring robust information security and privacy over wireless transmissions becomes increasingly vital. Over the past 20 years, physical-layer security technologies have been marked as non-breakable defense shields against eavesdropping, but their potential is yet to be fulfilled in practical communications systems. In contrast, cryptography-based security mechanisms are still the mainstream approaches to defend against information security attacks, because they are more convenient and effective to evaluate, standardize, and deploy towards practical communication applications. However, with rapidly enhanced computing capabilities, many new potential threats have again been imposed on cryptography-based information security. This will force communication protocols to increase the length of secret keys in order to enhance protection capability, which, in the meantime, introduces more overhead and inefficiency. It is worth noting that to achieve more dependable and effective security protection, singlehandedly relying on certain technique is not wise. Thus, there is an urgent need to devise a new approach to identify the potential predicted by physical-layer security theories and to smartly combine the strengths of physical-layer security and cryptography, such that an utterly new paradigm with a fully dependable security shield for information can be invented and implemented. To this end, this Special Issue aims to explore the evolution of physical-layer-security-enhanced wireless communications in the context of 6G.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Innovative physical-layer security protocols and mechanisms tailored for 6G;
• Secure waveform design and modulation techniques for 6G;
• Physical-layer authentication and key management in 6G networks;
• Quantum-inspired approaches to physical-layer security for 6G;
• Machine learning and AI-driven solutions for enhancing physical-layer security in 6G;
• Cross-layer design methodologies for integrating physical-layer security in 6G systems;
• Experimental studies and testbed implementations of physical-layer security in 6G environments;
• Performance analysis and evaluation of physical-layer security solutions for 6G;
• Integration of physical-layer security with emerging 6G technologies (e.g., terahertz communications, massive MIMO, etc.);
• Privacy-preserving techniques and anonymity in 6G wireless communications.

Prof. Dr. QingHe Du
Dr. Xiao Tang
Guest Editors

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• 6G
• mobile wireless networks
• physical-layer security
• wireless communications
• AI-driven security