PhySec in Cellular Networks: Enhancing Security in the IIoT

There is currently a jolt through the industrial landscape, based on the actual developments in the field of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). New application scenarios within these Factories of the Future, such as Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Machine-to-Service (M2S) communication burst the traditional communication links within Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS). There is an interconnection of assembly lines, robot motion control systems, Automated Guided Vehicles (AVG) as well as a multitude of sensors and actuators. The key enablers of this development are at first the mobility and flexibility of the components due to the use of wireless connections, and secondly, the possibility of actively influencing the network management with Software Defined Network (SDN) approaches. Nevertheless, the use of this wireless communication solutions are accompanied by great risks, new attack vectors, and cyber security threats. The open nature and the broadcast characteristic suffer a huge potential for miscellaneous cyberattacks. Not only because of that, but there is a fundamental need for sound and secure authentication of participating entities and reliable encryption of transmitted data. However, traditional cryptographic applications come along with a lot of overhead in the form of complex computations and communication. Besides that, the new system often no longer have any interface to enter conventional credentials. In order to face these requirements, new methods have to be developed, which meet the demands of the industry such as low latency, low cost and, reliable communication. Within this work, Physical Layer Security (PhySec) approaches are used to derive and establish shared secret keys between participating entities. This Secret Key Generation (SKG) is based on characteristics of the wireless channel. It is shown that a transfer of the principle into Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) such as Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE+) or the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) also perform as well. This approach is an easy to use, low cost, resource saving and efficient method to enable confidence and trust into IIoT systems. And this with already existing hardware.