Directional modulation techniques for secure wireless communication: a comprehensive survey

Abstract

AbstractDirectional Modulation (DM) techniques provide wireless communication security against passive eavesdropping by means of specific physical layer characteristics. The original symbol constellations are transmitted along pre-specified spatial direction of legitimate users, while phase-amplitude distorted symbols are transmitted along the undesired directions of eavesdropper. In this paper, a comprehensive review of DM techniques and the most recent developments in this area are discussed. An analysis from three independent Physical Layer Security (PLS) viewpoints; communications, information-theoretic and cryptographic perspective is presented. Different performance metrics in literature are compared and the need for unified PLS approach is emphasized. As DM techniques constitute a relatively new class of PLS, there is no systematic organization of these techniques so far. This paper presents a classification framework for DM comprising of two main categories; angular (1D) and range-angular (2D) techniques. The former secures data along angular direction of physical space, while the latter provides security within certain range (distance) from the transmitter along desired angular direction. Further sub-categorization is based on the under-lying physical layer parameters exploited to achieve security, i.e. space, time, frequency, phase and polarization. The proposed framework is generic, flexible and extend-able to future research. In the end, limitations of existing techniques are pointed out and research directions are suggested.