Chaos-based physical-layer encryption for OFDM-based VLC schemes with robustness against known/chosen plaintext attacks

摘要

The technology of visible light communication (VLC) is regarded as an appealing technique for upcoming wireless indoor multimedia communications. Considering the broadcast aspect of visible light propagation, the visible light interface is exposed and approachable to both licensed and unlicensed parties settled within the illuminated region. In this study, the authors present a chaos-based physical-layer encryption method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based VLC schemes with the ability to counter known-plaintext attacks (KPAs) and chosen-plaintext attacks (CPAs). A logistic map is utilised for the chaos mapping. The presented method produces dynamic ciphertexts by employing the random quality of the chaotic keys and input data. It uses a multiple-fold encryption protocol which implements chaotic scrambling of the subcarrier distribution in time and frequency domains, as well as chaotic polarity inversion of subcarriers. To generate the secret key, a chaotic key creation approach is introduced by including the position-sensitive and real-valued channel state information of the VLC channel. The presented method provides supreme confidentiality for the OFDM-based VLC schemes to counter KPAs, CPAs, brute-force attacks, and statistical attacks. The secrecy capacity of the presented method is improved by applying a pre-equalisation technique at the transmitter instead of the receiver.