Physical Layer Security in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Edge Computing

Physical layer security (PLS) is emerging as an attractive security paradigm to complement or even replace complex cryptography. Although information-theoretical transmission optimization and physical-layer key generation have been thoroughly researched, there still exist many critical issues to be tackled before PLS is extensively applied. In this article, we investigate the prospect for exploiting artificial intelligent (AI) and edge computing (EC) to facilitate the practical application of PLS. First, two outstanding challenges facing PLS designers are identified by analyzing the fundamental assumptions regarding eavesdroppers and wireless channels. Accordingly, two enhancement schemes are designed by reaping the benefits offered by AI and EC. Specifically, a novel secure resource management framework is developed to enhance the adaptability of an optimization-based PLS paradigm, and a robust physical-layer key generation method is designed to cope with reciprocity failure. Finally, we discuss a coordinated defense architecture with multi-layer, multi-domain, and multi-dimension, which is expected to exploit the compatibility and complementarity of the existing PLS methods.