arXiv subjects

Onur Günlü

Publications and source records attributed to Onur Günlü.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Digital-Twin-Referenced Belief-Guided Q-Learning for Jammer Identification and Beam-Power Control in a mmWave Model

Digital Twin (DT) combined with reinforcement learning (RL) can support adaptive resource allocation and security-aware decision-making by comparing expected and observed network behavior. This paper presents a simulation-based DT reference and a belief-guided Q-learning (BGQL) for joint jammer identification and beam-power control in a site-specific 28-GHz network. For each action, the same channel simulator is evaluated under an attack-free and an attacked configuration. Receiver-level residuals are combined with spatial jamming footprints and accumulated to form a normalized suspicion vector. BGQL incorporates this vector into an aggregated state, a belief-concentration reward, and exploratory beam-selection rule. The BGQL scheme is compared with SARSA, Greedy, and Random under matched attacker sets. Across 30 paired Monte Carlo runs in four configurations, with the number of active jammers supplied to every method, BGQL achieves mean aggregate full-band link-rate scores of approximately 437.4--564.2~Mbit/s and rate-to-device-power scores of 60.37--76.79~Mbit/J. Its detection accuracy is 100\% in one-jammer configurations and approximately 78\%--81\% in two-jammer configurations. BGQL requires approximately 80--130~s per run, compared with 5--14~s for SARSA, reflecting evaluation of 625 beam pairs during exploratory steps. These findings provide a matched-model simulation proof of concept for DT-referenced belief-guided learning for security-aware beam-power control in 6G networks.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Bayesian-Guided Cooperative RL Beamforming for Wireless Adversarial User Detection

In next-generation wireless networks, communication systems are expected to go beyond simple data transmission and simultaneously provide high data rates, efficiency, and security. This requirement has motivated the extensive adoption of machine learning methods to develop intelligent and real-time network management frameworks, enabling the system to continuously monitor and react to channel variations and user behavior while maintaining efficient information delivery. In this context, the integration of machine learning with beamforming enables adaptive and data-driven beam direction selection, improving both the efficiency and security of wireless links. In this work, a 3GPP-based system model is first implemented under a no-attacker scenario, and an exhaustive search is employed as a reference to identify the best beamforming configurations. The proposed framework is then evaluated in the presence of an attacker and under different network scalability conditions. We demonstrate that the reinforcement learning-based approaches, namely Q-learning and SARSA (State-Action-Reward-State-Action), consistently outperform random selection in terms of total channel capacity, attacker detection accuracy, and performance stability. Among the evaluated reinforcement learning methods, Q-learning achieves the best overall trade-off between detection accuracy and computational efficiency. Our results indicate that the proposed framework provides a stable, scalable, and effective solution for joint beamforming and security-aware decision-making in dynamic and adversarial wireless environments.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Exploiting Overlapping Fields of View for Redundancy-Aware Uplink Transmission in Vehicular 6G

Emerging uplink-dominant 6G use cases, such as cooperative vehicular streaming, require efficient transmission of high-volume visual data over limited wireless resources. While semantic communications can reduce traffic by prioritizing task-relevant content, most existing approaches treat users independently and therefore overlook spatial redundancy among nearby devices' observations. This paper proposes a semantic-aware multiple access scheme that exploits overlapping fields of view among vehicular users to reduce redundant uplink transmissions. We formulate a joint perception and transmission control problem in which users decide which image patches to transmit, when to transmit them, and over which channel, subject to communication constraints. To address the resulting complexity, we introduce a practical two-phase approach. First, nearby vehicles share selected observation patches over Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) links to calculate inter-user spatial redundancy. Second, users transmit only semantically important, non-redundant patches to the base station, where observations can be reconstructed using the received patches and complementary views from neighboring vehicles. Simulation results in a dense urban vehicular scenario demonstrate that our approach improves the proportion of users who achieve high-fidelity reconstruction, highlighting the potential of semantic-aware multiple access for sustainable and resource-efficient 6G uplink systems.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2026

Secure OFDM-IM ISAC With Artificial-Noise-Aided Index Deception

We propose an artificial noise (AN)-aided, secure OFDM with index modulation (OFDM-IM) framework for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Consider a security-critical scenario, where the sensing target is also a potential eavesdropper. Instead of suppressing the signal power toward the target, the proposed method injects AN into inactive OFDM-IM subcarriers. The precoder spatially nulls the AN at the legitimate receiver, while projecting active-subcarrier energy levels toward the target to deceive its index detector. Since the monostatic ISAC transmitter knows the AN waveform, the same inactive subcarriers also contribute to sensing. We formulate this scenario as an optimization problem that maximizes transmit power toward the target while providing secure communication with a legitimate receiver. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme improves targeted transmit power compared to classical OFDM.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

EML-AirComp: Layered Over-the-Air Computation from a Single Nomographic Gate

Over-the-air computation (AirComp) exploits multiple-access superposition to compute functions of distributed data without separately decoding all terminal messages. We study a reusable two-input AirComp gate for the exp-minus-log (EML) operation $\eml(u,v)=\exp(u)-\log(v)$, $v>0$. Thus, all internal nodes of a prescribed real-admissible EML tree reuse one gate type, avoiding node-specific nonlinear gate designs. Given an explicit EML tree whose intermediate logarithm arguments remain positive on a given compact domain, we derive additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and coherent flat fading implementations under peak-power constraints. We then characterize the number of gate evaluations, the dependency depth, evaluation latency, node-wise feasibility, deterministic error propagation, positivity preservation, and a high-probability AWGN error bound for the complete tree. A four-terminal two-hop example gives explicit positivity and end-to-end error conditions, and a digital interface propagates quantization and gate errors across the tree.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

6G Sensing Security: Distributed Game-Theoretic RL for Urban Beamforming and Attacker Detection

In next-generation networks, communication systems will no longer be limited to data transmission and will be expected to acquire awareness of the surrounding environment. This leads to the concept of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), where the same wireless infrastructure is used for both communication and environmental sensing. Thus, ISAC enables the system to transmit information efficiently and observe and interpret channel variations and user behavior. Motivated by this capability, this work focuses on detecting an active attacker in an urban environment scenario, where the attacker intentionally manipulates beamforming directions to increase interference and mislead the transmitter into allocating the main lobe of beam toward itself instead of legitimate users. We apply game-theoretic approaches to model the interaction between legitimate users and the attacker, and integrate the resulting utility-based formulation into a reinforcement learning (RL) framework. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively addresses security challenges in dynamic 6G ISAC systems.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Deployed trusted-node quantum key distribution over 300 km with a multi-core fiber access link

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is increasingly considered for deployment in realistic communication networks, where long distances, heterogeneous fiber infrastructure, and coexistence with classical traffic present substantial challenges. Here, we demonstrate trusted-node QKD between Linköping University and the Stockholm hub of the Swedish national quantum communication infrastructure over 270 km of deployed single-mode fiber, extended by a 33 km multi-core fiber (MCF) segment emulating a metropolitan access link, for a total distance of 303 km. The two sub-links use commercial QKD systems whose receivers are interfaced with external superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, enabling operation at losses beyond those supported by standard internal gated-mode detectors. We operate the link while actively switching the QKD channel between two MCF cores, with co-propagating Ethernet traffic and injected broadband optical noise in the other cores. The results demonstrate the integration of commercial QKD into demanding, dynamically reconfigurable fiber infrastructure relevant to future hybrid quantum-classical networks. Finally, using the generated secret keys, we illustrate how limited and time-varying QKD throughput affects one-time-pad-protected image transmission: image fidelity depends strongly on the available QKD-generated key budget and the choice of compression algorithm, highlighting application-level challenges for QKD-based encryption in realistic scenarios.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

ISAC Privacy: Challenges and Solutions for 6G

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a promising feature of future communication networks. While spatial sensing can improve network performance and enable external services, it also creates privacy challenges that go beyond the confidentiality of communication content. Future networks using millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-terahertz (THz) frequencies may collect or infer detailed information about people, devices, bystanders, passive objects, and environments in a sixth-generation (6G) deployment area. Such sensing can reveal location and environment data, support behavioral profiling such as movement or activity recognition, and, in advanced cases, expose physiological information such as breathing frequency or heart-rate-related data. Thus, the capabilities of spatial sensing must be controlled to satisfy privacy requirements. In this work, we organize privacy-sensitive ISAC data into three sensing levels: location and environment data, behavioral data, and physiological data, and use this classification as the organizing principle throughout the paper. Based on this classification, we discuss internal and external ISAC applications, identify privacy challenges related to consent, transparency, data ownership, profiling, bystander exposure, and sensitive sensing data, review representative solution directions, and outline future research directions for privacy-preserving ISAC.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Exact Bias of Linear TRNG Correctors -- Spectral Approach

Using Fourier analysis, this paper establishes near-optimal security bounds for linear correctors commonly used in True Random Number Generators (TRNGs), expressed through code weight enumerators and input bias parameters. We provide the first near-tight bias characterization in total variation, by interpolating between optimal $\ell_\infty$ and $\ell_2$ norm results. Our bounds improve security assessments by an order of magnitude over previously known (overly conservative) estimates. Across $\sim $20,000 codes, we examine fundamental trade-offs between compression efficiency, cryptographic security, and hardware complexity. Achieving 80-bit security with 10\% input bias typically requires sacrificing more than 50\% of the code rate and incurs increased hardware cost. This quantifies the inherent cost of randomness extraction in hardware TRNG implementations.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

Feedback Lunch: Learned Feedback Codes for Secure Communications

We consider reversely-degraded secure-communication channels, for which the secrecy capacity is zero if there is no channel feedback. Specifically, we focus on a seeded modular code design for the block-fading Gaussian wiretap channel with channel-output feedback, combining universal hash functions for security and learned feedback-based codes for reliability. The trade-off between communication reliability and information leakage is studied, illustrating that feedback enables agreeing on a secret key shared between legitimate parties, overcoming the security advantage of the eavesdropper. Our findings motivate code designs for sensing-assisted secure communications in the context of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC).

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Secure Integrated Sensing and Communication: Information Theory Offers Insights

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) combines sensing and communication within a shared system framework by using the same transmitted signal for both objectives. ISAC can improve the efficiency of spectrum and hardware use but also gives rise to new security challenges, as users associated with one function may need to be prevented from inferring information related to the other. This paper surveys information-theoretic approaches to secure ISAC with emphasis on formulations, performance metrics, and fundamental limits. We first review the information-theoretic ISAC models that underlie secure formulations. We then organize the secure ISAC literature according to the protected functionality and the adversary model, covering secure communication, sensing security, and active-adversary settings such as jamming. We also discuss formulations in which communication security and sensing security interact more directly, as well as their connections to privacy and covert communication. Throughout, we highlight the main modeling assumptions and the insights they provide on the tradeoffs among communication reliability, sensing performance, and security.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Secure Rate-Distortion-Perception: A Randomized Distributed Function Computation Approach for Realism

Fundamental rate-distortion-perception (RDP) trade-offs arise in applications requiring maintained perceptual quality of reconstructed data, such as neural image compression. When compressed data is transmitted over public communication channels, security risks emerge. We therefore study secure RDP under negligible information leakage over both noiseless channels and broadcast channels, BCs, with correlated noise components. For noiseless channels, the exact secure RDP region is characterized. For BCs, an inner bound is derived and shown to be tight for a class of more-capable BCs. Separate source-channel coding is further shown to be optimal for this exact secure RDP region with unlimited common randomness available. Moreover, when both encoder and decoder have access to side information correlated with the source and the channel is noiseless, the exact RDP region is established. If only the decoder has correlated side information in the noiseless setting, an inner bound is derived along with a special case where the region is exact. Binary and Gaussian examples demonstrate that common randomness can significantly reduce the communication rate in secure RDP settings, unlike in standard rate-distortion settings. Thus, our results illustrate that random binning-based coding achieves strong secrecy, low distortion, and high perceptual quality simultaneously.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Evaluating PQC KEMs, Combiners, and Cascade Encryption via Adaptive IND-CPA Testing Using Deep Learning

Ensuring ciphertext indistinguishability is fundamental to cryptographic security, but empirically validating this property in real implementations and hybrid settings presents practical challenges. The transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), with its hybrid constructions combining classical and quantum-resistant primitives, makes empirical validation approaches increasingly valuable. By modeling IND-CPA games as binary classification tasks and training on labeled ciphertext data with BCE loss, we study deep neural network (DNN) distinguishers for ciphertext indistinguishability. We apply this methodology to PQC KEMs. We specifically test the public-key encryption (PKE) schemes used to construct examples such as ML-KEM, BIKE, and HQC. Moreover, a novel extension of this DNN modeling for empirical distinguishability testing of hybrid KEMs is presented. We implement and test this on combinations of PQC KEMs with plain RSA, RSA-OAEP, and plaintext. Finally, methodological generality is illustrated by applying the DNN IND-CPA classification framework to cascade symmetric encryption, where we test combinations of AES-CTR, AES-CBC, AES-ECB, ChaCha20, and DES-ECB. In our experiments on PQC algorithms, KEM combiners, and cascade encryption, no algorithm or combination of algorithms demonstrates a significant advantage (two-sided binomial test, significance level $α= 0.01$), consistent with theoretical guarantees that hybrids including at least one IND-CPA-secure component preserve indistinguishability, and with the absence of exploitable patterns under the considered DNN adversary model. These illustrate the potential of using deep learning as an adaptive, practical, and versatile empirical estimator for indistinguishability in more general IND-CPA settings, allowing data-driven validation of implementations and compositions and complementing the analytical security analysis.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2026

The Role of ISAC in 6G Networks: Enabling Next-Generation Wireless Systems

The commencement of the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks represents a fundamental shift in the integration of communication and sensing technologies to support next-generation applications. Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a key concept in this evolution, enabling end-to-end support for both communication and sensing within a unified framework. It enhances spectrum efficiency, reduces latency, and supports diverse use cases, including smart cities, autonomous systems, and perceptive environments. This tutorial provides a comprehensive overview of ISAC's role in 6G networks, beginning with its evolution since 5G and the technical drivers behind its adoption. Core principles and system variations of ISAC are introduced, followed by an in-depth discussion of the enabling technologies that facilitate its practical deployment. The paper further analyzes current research directions to highlight key challenges, open issues, and emerging trends. Design insights and recommendations are also presented to support future development and implementation. This work ultimately tries to address three central questions: Why is ISAC essential for 6G? What innovations does it bring? How will it shape the future of wireless communication?

eess.SP↗

arXiv2026

Deep Randomized Distributed Function Computation (DeepRDFC): Neural Distributed Channel Simulation

The randomized distributed function computation (RDFC) framework, which unifies many cutting-edge distributed computation and learning applications, is considered. An autoencoder (AE) architecture is proposed to minimize the total variation distance between the probability distribution simulated by the AE outputs and an unknown target distribution, using only data samples. We illustrate significantly high RDFC performance with communication load gains from our AEs compared to data compression methods. Our designs establish deep learning-based RDFC methods and aim to facilitate the use of RDFC methods, especially when the amount of common randomness is limited and strong function computation guarantees are required.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Randomized Distributed Function Computation (RDFC): Ultra-Efficient Semantic Communication Applications to Privacy

We establish the randomized distributed function computation (RDFC) framework, in which a sender transmits just enough information for a receiver to generate a randomized function of the input data. Describing RDFC as a form of semantic communication, which can be essentially seen as a generalized remote-source-coding problem, we show that security and privacy constraints naturally fit this model, as they generally require a randomization step. Using strong coordination metrics, we ensure (local differential) privacy for every input sequence and prove that such guarantees can be met even when no common randomness is shared between the transmitter and receiver. This work provides lower bounds on Wyner's common information (WCI), which is the communication cost when common randomness is absent, and proposes numerical techniques to evaluate the other corner point of the RDFC rate region for continuous-alphabet random variables with unlimited shared randomness. Experiments illustrate that a sufficient amount of common randomness can reduce the semantic communication rate by up to two orders of magnitude compared to the WCI point, while RDFC without any shared randomness still outperforms lossless transmission by a large margin. A finite blocklength analysis further confirms that the privacy parameter gap between the asymptotic and non-asymptotic RDFC methods closes exponentially fast with input length. Our results position RDFC as an energy-efficient semantic communication strategy for privacy-aware distributed computation systems.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Multi-hop Deep Joint Source-Channel Coding with Deep Hash Distillation for Semantically Aligned Image Recovery

We consider image transmission via deep joint source-channel coding (DeepJSCC) over multi-hop additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels by training a DeepJSCC encoder-decoder pair with a pre-trained deep hash distillation (DHD) module to semantically cluster images, facilitating security-oriented applications through enhanced semantic consistency and improving the perceptual reconstruction quality. We train the DeepJSCC module to both reduce mean square error (MSE) and minimize cosine distance between DHD hashes of source and reconstructed images. Significantly improved perceptual quality as a result of semantic alignment is illustrated for different multi-hop settings, for which classical DeepJSCC may suffer from noise accumulation, measured by the learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS) metric.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2026

Secure Communications, Sensing, and Computing Towards Next-Generation Networks

Next-generation wireless networks are progressing beyond conventional connectivity to incorporate emerging sensing and computing capabilities. This convergence gives rise to integrated systems that enable not only uninterrupted communication, but also environmental awareness, intelligent decision-making, and novel applications that take advantage of these combined features. At the same time, this integration brings substantial security challenges. As computing, sensing, and communication become more tightly intertwined, the overall complexity of the system increases, creating new vulnerabilities and expanding the attack surface. The widespread deployment of data-heavy artificial intelligence applications further amplifies concerns regarding data security and privacy. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of security and privacy threats, along with potential countermeasures, in integrated wireless systems. We first review physical-layer security techniques for communication networks, and then investigate the security and privacy implications of semantic and pragmatic communications and their associated cross-layer design methodologies. For sensing functionalities, we pinpoint security and privacy risks at the levels of signal sources, propagation channels, and sensing targets, and summarize state-of-the-art defense strategies for each. The growing computational requirements of these applications drive the need for distributed computing over the network, which introduces additional risks such as data leakage, weak authentication, and multiple points of failure. We subsequently discuss secure coded computing approaches that can help overcome several of these challenges. Finally, we introduce unified security frameworks tailored to integrated communication-sensing-computing architectures, offering an end-to-end perspective on protecting future wireless systems.

cs.IT↗