Waveform-Defined Security: A Framework for Secure Communications

This work proposes a waveform-defined security (WDS) framework in secure communications via the design of non-orthogonal multi-carrier waveform patterns. The sophisticated detection required by non-orthogonal signal waveforms provides a natural defence mechanism. However, brute-force tactics such as maximum likelihood detection would break the defence by attempting all possible solutions. Thus, a waveform scaling strategy is proposed to scale up the number of non-orthogonally packed sub-carriers, which complicates eavesdropping signal detections. In addition, a waveform tuning strategy is proposed to intentionally tune waveform patterns to enhance feature similarity. Therefore, eavesdroppers would be confused to misclassify signals resulting in subsequent detection failures.