Distributed Physical Layer Authentication: Overview and Opportunities

Distributed physical layer authentication (DPLA) is a novel authentication framework, which not only exploits the collaborative computing of multiple devices to enhance overall efficiency, but also alleviates the degradation of processing performance caused by resource-constrained terminals. It is considered a promising architecture for solving access security issues in future communications. Considering DPLA's potential, in this article, we review existing DPLA schemes to provide a comprehensive summary of the strategies and technical approaches adopted during each implementation stage. Our simulation results show that the voting-assisted DPLA scheme has better authentication performance than the centralized PLA. In addition, we also present some open research issues on DPLA, addressing new opportunities ahead and potential research directions.