research-article

Protego: securing wireless communication via programmable metasurface

Authors:

Chenghan Jiang,

Xiaojiang ChenAuthors Info & Claims

MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking

Pages 55 - 68

https://doi.org/10.1145/3495243.3560547

Published: 14 October 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Phased array beamforming has been extensively explored as a physical layer primitive to improve the secrecy capacity of wireless communication links. However, existing solutions are incompatible with low-profile IoT devices due to cost, power and form factor constraints. More importantly, they are vulnerable to eavesdroppers with a high-sensitivity receiver. This paper presents Protego, which offloads the security protection to a metasurface comprised of a large number of 1-bit programmable unit-cells (i.e., phase shifters). Protego builds on a novel observation that, due to phase quantization effect, not all the unit-cells contribute equally to beamforming. By judiciously flipping the phase shift of certain unit-cells, Protego can generate artificial phase noise to obfuscate the signals towards potential eavesdroppers, while preserving the signal integrity and beamforming gain towards the legitimate receiver. A hardware prototype along with extensive experiments has validated the feasibility and effectiveness of Protego.

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Cited By

He JXiong JHu WFeng CYao EWang XLiu CChen XOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)CW-AcousLen: A Configurable Wideband Acoustic MetasurfaceProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661882(29-41)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643832.3661882
Hassan FShaikhanov ZGuerboukha HMittleman DSengupta KKnightly E(2023)RMDM: Using Random Meta-Atoms to Send Directional Misinformation to Eavesdroppers2023 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10288796(1-9)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10288796

Index Terms

Protego: securing wireless communication via programmable metasurface
1. Hardware
  1. Communication hardware, interfaces and storage
    1. Wireless devices
2. Security and privacy
  1. Network security
    1. Mobile and wireless security

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MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking

October 2022

932 pages

ISBN:9781450391818

DOI:10.1145/3495243

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

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Published: 14 October 2022

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Shaanxi International Science and Technology Cooperation Program
National Natural Science Foundation of China
NSFC A3 Foresight Program

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ACM MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

October 17 - 21, 2022

NSW, Sydney, Australia

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Cited By

He JXiong JHu WFeng CYao EWang XLiu CChen XOkoshi TKo JLiKamWa R(2024)CW-AcousLen: A Configurable Wideband Acoustic MetasurfaceProceedings of the 22nd Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3643832.3661882(29-41)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643832.3661882
Hassan FShaikhanov ZGuerboukha HMittleman DSengupta KKnightly E(2023)RMDM: Using Random Meta-Atoms to Send Directional Misinformation to Eavesdroppers2023 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10288796(1-9)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10288796

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