5602

Relays are extensively utilized in various wireless networks, such as cellular and WiFi, to extend coverage and enhance network capacity. However, the presence of relays also introduces data integrity challenges. One critical concern is the threat of data integrity attacks, where a relay maliciously modifies packets during transit. This type of attack is particularly detrimental as maliciously altered data can disrupt system operations. Therefore, ensuring data integrity as data traverse through relays becomes a fundamental requirement.

 

We present a novel framework for secure message authentication in wireless relay networks, leveraging nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique. In this framework, the source transmits the message to the destination through a relay, while the tag is directly sent to the destination. One advantage of our approach is its resilience against integrity attacks. Even if the adversary manages to extract the key from the message and tag pair and generate a valid tag for a modified message, the modification can still be detected at the destination using the tag received directly from the source. In the traditional scheme, both the message and the tag are sent through the relay, allowing the relay to tamper with the message without being detected. To further enhance security, we present a crypto-physical message authentication scheme that combines cryptographic message authentication with physical-layer message authentication. This fusion of authentication schemes offers synergistic benefits.

• Inherent security against data integrity attacks, even when adversaries may extract the secret key through advanced computational means, such as quantum computing.

• No additional bandwidth nor power is needed beyond the current state-of-the-art.

• No need to lower the tag power to make it hard for adversaries to learn the secret key, which also weakens the receiver’s ability to authenticate messages.

Current cryptographic approaches are vulnerable to compromise by adversaries with access to high-performance computing resources, such as quantum computers. The invention addresses this looming quantum threat in wireless relay networks, such as cellular, WiFi, and Internet of Things, where ensuring message authenticity is of utmost importance becomes an imperative and timely endeavor, necessitating a fundamental shift in data security paradigms.

Patent(s) applied for