IIT Jodhpur researchers find method to provide physical security in data transmission through PLC

NEW DELHI: The researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur (IITJ) find methods that can be utilized for providing physical layer security in data transmission through Power Line Communication (PLC) systems. This study will play a role in IoT applications including smart buildings, smart vehicles, smart grids for advanced metering infrastructure and home automation.

This research study was done in collaboration with École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS), Université du Québec, Montreal, Canada. IIT Jodhpur researchers examined how secure a PLC system is when using a type of modulation called differential chaos shift keying (DCSK). The study focused on analysing the system's performance when the legitimate communication channel and an eavesdropper channel are correlated, meaning they are dependent in some way.

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The IIT Jodhpur study was published in IEEE Open Journal of the communications society. The paper was authored by IIT Jodhpur, Department of Electrical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Research Platform on IoT and Applications, assistant professor, Ashish Mathur along with ETS professor Georges Kaddoum and PhD student Vinay Mohan.

The key points of the IITJ study are-

• This method offers excellent flexibility in mathematical modeling and simplification in computational complexity.
• The research analysis took into consideration the unique non-Gaussian nature of the PLC noise.
• The proposed algorithm was designed to obtain the optimal threshold value of the signal-to-noise ratio for a target SOP.
• The algorithm aimed to maximize the system's secrecy throughput under the constraint of a target SOP.
• The algorithm helps to enhance the system's performance and maintain its security in the presence of an eavesdropper.

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Talking about the key research findings, IIT Jodhpur, department of electrical engineering and interdisciplinary research platform assisant professor Aashish Mathur, on IoT and Applications, IIT Jodhpur, said: "From the analysis, it is observed that as the correlation dependence parameter increases, the secrecy performance of the proposed system degrades. The asymptotic SOP analysis demonstrates that the secrecy diversity order relies on the shaping parameter of the main channel. To maximize the secrecy throughput under SOP constraints, we formulate an optimization problem."