arXiv subjects

Shilian Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Shilian Wang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Cross-channel Specific Emitter Identification and Verification via Signal Envelope

Specific emitter identification (SEI) determines which known emitter a received signal originates from, while specific emitter verification (SEV) determines whether the received signal genuinely comes from its claimed emitter. In this paper, we consider the effect of wireless fading channels on SEI and SEV. When the Rician $K$-factor varies, the resulting distribution shift induced by the channel degrades both identification and verification performance. To address this issue, we first theoretically prove that the coefficient of variation of the signal envelope is strictly monotonic with respect to the Rician $K$-factor. Motivated by this property, we propose an envelope-guided adaptive feature modulation (EAFM) identifier for SEI and an EAFM with Mahalanobis distance metric learning (EAFM-MD) verifier for SEV. Specifically, the proposed EAFM identifier adopts a dual-branch neural network to extract device-oriented features from the IQ-domain input and channel-conditioning features from the normalized signal envelope, and adaptively modulates the former via feature-wise linear modulation. Then, we extend the EAFM identifier to an EAFM-MD verifier. The device-fingerprint library is constructed by storing the feature centroid and covariance for each enrolled device, along with the within-device Mahalanobis distances of training signals. For verification, the Mahalanobis distance between the extracted test features and each stored centroid is computed using the stored covariance matrix, and the minimum distance is compared to the corresponding device threshold to make a decision. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed EAFM identifier improves cross-channel identification performance, while the proposed EAFM-MD verifier achieves superior detection performance against unknown spoofing attacks.

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arXiv2026

A Survey of Physical-layer Authentication Enhanced by Emerging Spatial Domain Technologies

This article surveys spatial-domain-enhanced Physical-layer Authentication (PLA), with Dual-polarized Antennas (DPA), Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO), and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) as the primary focus. With the rapid growth of wireless deployments, authentication mechanisms face stringent requirements for high security, low overhead, and low latency. PLA offers lightweight identity verification by exploiting physical-layer characteristics. However, the effectiveness of PLA critically depends on how physical observations are constructed and validated under wireless channels. Unlike existing surveys that mainly organize PLA by authentication modality, feature source, and evaluation metrics, this work emphasizes the connection between spatial-domain enhancement mechanisms, the resulting feature representation, and the authentication procedure. We review how DPA, Massive MIMO, and RIS reshape PLA feature representation, and we summarize newly introduced security threats along with representative defense strategies. Case studies further illustrate the practical impact, such as representative detection-probability trends across Signal-to-Noise Ratio regimes and quantitative comparisons among representative schemes. Finally, we outline promising future opportunities enabled by Dynamic Metasurface Antennas, Extra-large MIMO, and spatial configuration with artificial intelligence.

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arXiv2026

FAS-aided Robust Anti-Jamming Communications: Continuous and Discrete Positioning Designs

This paper investigates the joint optimization of beamforming and antenna positions in fluid antenna system (FAS)-aided anti-jamming communications. We consider a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output downlink scenario where multiple malicious jammers exist and the jammer channel state information is imperfect. The goal is to maximize the worst-case sum-rate under quality-of-service and transmit power constraints. To achieve this, we develop two distinct optimization frameworks for continuous and discrete antenna position designs, respectively. For continuous design, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) framework that integrates successive convex approximation and majorization minimization (MM) to handle the highly non-convex problem. For discrete design, based on the minimum mean squared error criterion and MM, we reformulate the problem as a sparse recovery task and propose a low-complexity block coordinate descent and simultaneous orthogonal matching pursuit, which enables joint design rather than AO. Through systematic comparison, we uncover a practical phenomenon: the discrete joint design yields superior sum-rate performance compared to the AO-based continuous counterpart under identical conditions. This superiority stems from the sparse recovery formulation which effectively circumvents the severe local optima. Our findings challenge the conventional view that continuous optimization is inherently superior, and reveal that discretization combined with sparse recovery can offer a more effective paradigm for exploiting spatial degrees-of-freedom in FAS-aided anti-jamming communications.

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arXiv2026

Frozen-Tag-Based Physical-Layer Authentication Against User Interference

Tag-based physical layer authentication (PLA) has garnered significant attention due to its low complexity and enhanced security. However, existing PLA schemes encounter two challenges. First, unintended user interference, which overlaps with the authentication signal, corrupts the tag and degrades authentication performance. Second, the vulnerability introduced by direct embedding of the raw tag exposes the tag to the adversary and degrades the security. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel frozen-tag-based PLA framework. Different from typical schemes that directly embed the uncoded tag into the signal, a well-designed frozen tag is inserted for authentication, where the frozen tag is generated based on the concept of polar codes with the anchor information as information bits and raw tags as frozen bits. Accordingly, the proposed PLA framework offers two principal advantages. First, the authentication performance is improved since the legitimate receiver can decode the frozen tag and mitigate unintended user interference. Second, the authentication process becomes indecipherable to the illegitimate receiver due to the concealment of the raw tags. Furthermore, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the proposed framework in terms of robustness, security, and compatibility. Theoretical analysis and simulation demonstrate that the proposed frozen-tag-based PLA framework not only enhances the detection performance but also significantly degrades Eve's capability to estimate the raw tags.

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arXiv2026

Tag-based Physical-Layer Authentication Against Message Interference

Tag-based Physical-Layer Authentication (PLA) has attracted significant attention in recent years due to its low complexity, high security, and low latency. Traditional tag-based PLA schemes typically estimate tags by decoding the message and then subtracting the estimation of the message from the received signal. However, these approaches suffer from two main limitations. First, decoding errors introduce message interference that degrades authentication performance. Second, the analytical complexity of decoding errors leads to sub-optimal threshold settings, thereby limiting detection probability. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a Tag-Based Challenge-Response (TBCR) scheme and a Series Cancellation Authentication (SCA) scheme. Specifically, in the TBCR scheme, the tags are superimposed on a forwarded challenge signal, enabling the receiver to estimate tags by removing the known challenge signal rather than relying on decoding. However, the challenge-response mechanism introduces extra noise. Here, we propose the SCA scheme without the noise interference, where both the series signal generation and cancellation modules are well-designed to generate authentication signals and estimate tags, respectively. Furthermore, we derive the closed-form expressions to evaluate the robustness and security of both proposed schemes. Notably, on one hand, the optimal threshold and detection probability are derived, which theoretically reveal that the SCA scheme always achieves the ideal detection performance, while the TBCR scheme does so in the absence of noise at Alice. On the other hand, the TBCR scheme provides enhanced security at high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) regions with fewer keys. Theoretical analysis and simulation demonstrate that both proposed schemes significantly outperform the benchmarks in detection probability with reduced time complexity.

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arXiv2025

Specific Multi-emitter Identification: Theoretical Limits and Low-complexity Design

Specific emitter identification (SEI) distinguishes emitters by utilizing hardware-induced signal imperfections. However, conventional SEI techniques are primarily designed for single-emitter scenarios. This poses a fundamental limitation in distributed wireless networks, where simultaneous transmissions from multiple emitters result in overlapping signals that conventional single-emitter identification methods cannot effectively handle. To overcome this limitation, we present a specific multi-emitter identification (SMEI) framework via multi-label learning, treating identification as a problem of directly decoding emitter states from overlapping signals. Theoretically, we establish performance bounds using Fano's inequality. Methodologically, the multi-label formulation reduces output dimensionality from exponential to linear scale, thereby substantially decreasing computational complexity. Additionally, we propose an improved SMEI (I-SMEI), which incorporates multi-head attention to effectively capture features in correlated signal combinations. Experimental results demonstrate that SMEI achieves high identification accuracy with a linear computational complexity. Furthermore, the proposed I-SMEI scheme significantly improves identification accuracy across various overlapping scenarios compared to the proposed SMEI and other advanced methods.

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arXiv2025

Fluid-Antenna-aided AAV Secure Communications in Eavesdropper Uncertain Location

For autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) secure communications, traditional designs based on fixed position antenna (FPA) lack sufficient spatial degrees of freedom (DoF), which leaves the line-of-sight-dominated AAV links vulnerable to eavesdropping. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a framework that effectively incorporates the fluid antenna (FA) and the artificial noise (AN) techniques. Specifically, the minimum secrecy rate (MSR) among multiple eavesdroppers is maximized by jointly optimizing AAV deployment, signal and AN precoders, and FA positions. In particular, the worst-case MSR is considered by taking the channel uncertainties due to the uncertainty about eavesdropping locations into account. To tackle the highly coupled optimization variables and the channel uncertainties in the formulated problem, an efficient and robust algorithm is proposed. Particularly, the uncertain regions of eavesdroppers, whose shapes can be arbitrary, are disposed by constructing convex hull. In addition, two movement modes of FAs are considered, namely, free movement mode and zonal movement mode, for which different optimization techniques are applied, respectively. Numerical results show that, the proposed FA schemes boost security by exploiting additional spatial DoF rather than transmit power, while AN provides remarkable gains under high transmit power. Furthermore, the synergy between FA and AN results in a secure advantage that exceeds the sum of their individual contributions, achieving a balance between security and reliability under limited resources.

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arXiv2025

Specific multi-emitter identification via multi-label learning

Specific emitter identification leverages hardware-induced impairments to uniquely determine a specific transmitter. However, existing approaches fail to address scenarios where signals from multiple emitters overlap. In this paper, we propose a specific multi-emitter identification (SMEI) method via multi-label learning to determine multiple transmitters. Specifically, the multi-emitter fingerprint extractor is designed to mitigate the mutual interference among overlapping signals. Then, the multi-emitter decision maker is proposed to assign the all emitter identification using the previous extracted fingerprint. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared with baseline approach, the proposed SMEI scheme achieves comparable identification accuracy under various overlapping conditions, while operating at significantly lower complexity. The significance of this paper is to identify multiple emitters from overlapped signal with a low complexity.

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arXiv2025

Secure Short-Packet Communications for RIS-Assisted AAV Networks

Advancements toward 6G have intensified demands for ultra-reliable low-latency communication, positioning shortpacket communications as a critical technology for autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) networks. However, the open broadcast nature introduces significant security vulnerabilities. Although physical-layer security offers a low-complexity solution by exploiting wireless channel randomness, the AAV communication performance severely degrades in weak-coverage or non-line-of sight scenarios. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a short-packet communications framework for AAV networks that leverages reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) with the aim of extending coverage and enhancing secrecy capabilities. Analytical frameworks are developed to evaluate the average secrecy throughput (AST) in finite blocklength constraints for both external and internal avesdropping scenarios, which incorporates non-orthogonal multiple access with imperfect successive interference cancellation. Asymptotic approximations of AST are derived as transmit power approaches infinity. Furthermore, we formulate a blocklength optimization problem to maximize the AST, effectively resolving the trade-offs among delay, reliability, and secrecy. Extensive simulations validate the analytical frameworks, which reveal that large-scale RIS deployment significantly boosts AST, and the power allocation coefficient exhibits dual effects in the internal eavesdropping scenario. These observations provide useful insights for designing reliable and secure lowlatency AAV communications systems.

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arXiv2025

Large-scale Aerial Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-aided Robust Anti-jamming Transmission

Aerial reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (ARIS), deployed on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), could enhance anti-jamming communication performance by dynamically configuring channel conditions and establishing reliable air-ground links. However, large-scale ARIS faces critical deployment challenges due to the prohibitive computational complexity of conventional discrete optimization methods and sophisticated jamming threats. In this paper, we introduce a mean field modeling approach to design the spatial configuration of ARIS by a continuous density function, thus bypassing high-dimensional combinatorial optimization. We consider an adaptive jammer which adjusts its position and beamforming to minimize the sum-rate. A key finding reveals that the jammer's optimal strategy is governed by a proximity-directivity trade-off between reducing path loss and enhancing spatial focusing. To combat the jamming, we propose a robust anti-jamming transmission framework that jointly optimizes the BS beamforming, the ARIS reflection, and the ARIS spatial distribution to maximize the worst-case sum-rate. By leveraging variational optimization and Riemannian manifold methods, we efficiently solve the functional optimization problems. Our analysis further unveils that the optimal ARIS deployment follows a spatial water-filling principle, concentrating resources in high-gain regions while avoiding interference-prone areas. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework remarkably improves the sum-rate. Furthermore, the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is independent of the number of UAVs, validating its effectiveness for scalable ARIS-assisted anti-jamming communications.

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arXiv2025

Dual-end Fluid Antennas For Robust Anti-jamming in Low-altitude Air-ground Communications

This paper addresses the challenge of co-channel interference and intentional jamming in low-altitude air-ground communications. Since conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems lack spatial adaptability to dynamically balance signal enhancement against interference suppression, we propose a transformative fluid antenna system (FAS)-assisted heterogeneous dual-layer transmission architecture. Specifically, a terrestrial base station with FPA serves ground users, while a low altitude-serving base station equipped with FAS communicates with the aerial user, also equipped with FAS, under the attack of a malicious jammer. We formulate a worst-case achievable rate maximization problem for aerial user subject to constraints including quality-of-service for terrestrial users, imperfect jamming directions, minimum antenna separation, etc. To address the non-convex problem, we propose a fractional programming-block coordinate descent algorithm that alternately optimizes the transmit precoders, receive combiner, and antenna positions at both transceiver sides. Convex hull-based approach and geometric boundary method are used to handle the jamming uncertainty and antenna placement constraints in confined spatial regions, respectively. Extensive simulations validate significant performance gains. The FAS achieves up to 56\% higher data rates than FPA under equivalent power constraints. Strategic antenna repositioning demonstrably enhances signal quality while suppressing interference, maintaining robustness across diverse jammer channel uncertainties.

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arXiv2025

Towards Secure Semantic Transmission In the Era of GenAI: A Diffusion-based Framework

Semantic communication, due to its focus on the transmitting meaning rather than the raw bit data, poses unique security challenges compared to the traditional communication systems. In particular, semantic communication systems are vulnerable to the malicious attacks that focus on the semantic layer, with the intention of understanding or distorting the intended meaning of the transmitted privacy data. Diffusion models, a class of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), are well-suited for ensuring data security to attack. Through iteratively adding and then removing noise, diffusion models can generate meaningful information despite the presence of the unknown noise. This article proposes a diffusion-based framework to enhance the security of semantic transmission for the attacks including eavesdropping and jamming. Specifically, the proposed framework incorporates both the artificial noise and natural channel noise into the forward process of the diffusion models during the semantic transmission, with the reverse process used to remove noise at the legitimate receiver. In the eavesdropping scenarios, the artificial noise is the friendly noise designed to prevent semantic eavesdropping. In the jamming scenarios, the artificial noise is the malicious jamming generated by the jammer, which disrupts the semantic transmission. The case studies show that the proposed diffusion-based framework is promising in securing the semantic transmission. We also consolidate several broad research directions associated with the proposed framework.

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arXiv2025

Diffusion-enabled Secure Semantic Communication Against Eavesdropping

In this paper, AN is introduced into semantic communication systems for the first time to prevent semantic eavesdropping. However, the introduction of AN also poses challenges for the legitimate receiver in extracting semantic information. Recently, denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPM) have demonstrated their powerful capabilities in generating multimedia content. Here, the paired pluggable modules are carefully designed using DDPM. Specifically, the pluggable encryption module generates AN and adds it to the output of the semantic transmitter, while the pluggable decryption module before semantic receiver uses DDPM to generate the detailed semantic information by removing both AN and the channel noise. In the scenario where the transmitter lacks eavesdropper's knowledge, the artificial Gaussian noise (AGN) is used as AN. We first model a power allocation optimization problem to determine the power of AGN, in which the objective is to minimize the weighted sum of data reconstruction error of legal link, the mutual information of illegal link, and the channel input distortion. Then, a deep reinforcement learning framework using deep deterministic policy gradient is proposed to solve the optimization problem. In the scenario where the transmitter is aware of the eavesdropper's knowledge, we propose an AN generation method based on adversarial residual networks (ARN). Unlike the previous scenario, the mutual information term in the objective function is replaced by the confidence of eavesdropper correctly retrieving private information. The adversarial residual network is then trained to minimize the modified objective function. The simulation results show that the diffusion-enabled pluggable encryption module prevents semantic eavesdropping while the pluggable decryption module achieves the high-quality semantic communication.

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arXiv2020

Backscatter Cooperation in NOMA Communications Systems

In this paper, a backscatter cooperation (BC) scheme is proposed for non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) downlink transmission. The key idea is to enable one user to split and then backscatter part of its received signals to improve the reception at another user. To evaluate the performance of the proposed BC-NOMA scheme, three benchmark schemes are introduced. They are the non-cooperation (NC)-NOMA scheme, the conventional relaying (CR)-NOMA scheme, and the incremental relaying (IR)-NOMA scheme. For all these schemes, the analytical expressions of the minimum total power to avoid information outage are derived, based on which their respective outage performance, expected rates, and diversity-multiplexing trade-off (DMT) are investigated. Analytical results show that the proposed BC-NOMA scheme strictly outperforms the NC-NOMA scheme in terms of all the three metrics. Furthermore, theoretical analyses are validated via Monte-Carlo simulations. It is shown that unlike the CR-NOMA scheme and the IR-NOMA scheme, the proposed BC-NOMA scheme can enhance the transmission reliability without impairing the transmission rate, which makes backscattering an appealing solution to cooperative NOMA downlinks.

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arXiv2019

Spatial Coded Modulation

In this paper, we propose a spatial coded modulation (SCM) scheme, which improves the accuracy of the active antenna detection by coding over the transmit antennas. Specifically, the antenna activation pattern in the SCM corresponds to a codeword in a properly designed codebook with a larger minimum Hamming distance than its counterpart conventional spatial modulation. As the minimum Hamming distance increases, the reliability of the active antenna detection is directly enhanced, which in turn improves the demodulation of the modulated symbols and yields a better system reliability. In addition to the reliability, the proposed SCM scheme also achieves a higher capacity with the identical antenna configuration compared to the conventional spatial modulation technique. Moreover, the proposed SCM scheme strikes a balance between spectral efficiency and reliability by trading off the minimum Hamming distance with the number of available codewords. The optimal maximum likelihood detector is first formulated. Then, a low-complexity suboptimal detector is proposed to reduce the computational complexity, which has a two-step detection. Theoretical derivations of the channel capacity and the bit error rate are presented in various channel scenarios, i.e., Rayleigh, Rician, Nakagami-m, imperfect channel state information, and spatial correlation. Further derivation on performance bounding is also provided to reveal the insight of the benefit of increasing the minimum Hamming distance. Numerical results validate the analysis and demonstrate that the proposed SCM outperforms the conventional spatial modulation techniques in both channel capacity and system reliability.

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arXiv2019

Impartial SWIPT-Assisted User Cooperation Schemes

In this paper, we propose an impartial simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT)-assisted cooperation mechanism for a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) downlink scenario. Specifically, both a cell-center user and a cell-edge user apply the power-splitting technique and utilize the harvested energy to forward the other user's information on the premise of successful decoding of their own information. Both analytical and numerical results show that the proposed impartial user cooperation mechanism (IUCM) outperforms the traditional partial cooperation mechanism in terms of outage probability, diversity order and diversity-multiplexing trade-off (DMT). For comparison, we further incorporate the IUCM into an orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) framework, which is shown to preserve the same diversity order, while has a worse but more flexible DMT performance in comparison with the IUCM in the NOMA framework. Although the IUCM in OFDMA has a worse outage performance, it is proved that it has the same optimal system outage probability with the IUCM in NOMA when the relaying channel between the two users is error-free.

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arXiv2019

Physical-Layer Security for Frequency Diverse Array Based Directional Modulation in Fluctuating Two-Ray Fading Channels

The frequency diverse array (FDA) based directional modulation (DM) technology plays an important role in the implementation of the physical-layer security (PLS) transmission of 5G and beyond communication system. In order to meet the tremendous increase in mobile data traffic, a new design consuming less memory for the FDA-DM-based PLS transmission is urgently demanded. In this paper, an analytical symmetrical multi-carrier FDA model is proposed in three dimensions, namely, range, azimuth angle, and elevation angle, which differs from the conventional analytical approach with only range and azimuth angle considered. Then, a single-point (SP) artificial noise (AN) aided FDA-DM scheme is proposed, which reduces memory consumption of FDA-DM systems significantly compared with the conventional zero-forcing (ZF) and singular value decomposition (SVD) approaches. Moreover, the PLS performance of the proposed low-memory-consumption FDA-DM scheme is analyzed in fluctuating two-ray (FTR) fading channels for the first time, including bit error rate (BER), secrecy rate (SR), and secrecy outage probability (SOP). More importantly, the closed-form expressions for the lower bound of the average SR and the upper bound of the SOP are derived, respectively. The effectiveness of the analytical expressions is verified by numerical simulations. This work opens a way to lower the memory requirements for the DM-based PLS transmission of 5G and beyond communication system.

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arXiv2019

A Two-Ray Multipath Model for Frequency Diverse Array-Based Directional Modulation in MISOME Wiretap Channels

A two-ray multipath model for frequency diverse array (FDA)-based directional modulation (DM) is proposed in multi-input single-output multi-eavesdropper (MISOME) wiretap channels for the first time. The excitation factors of the FDA and the weighting coefficients of the inserted artificial noise (AN) are jointly designed in a way which imposes no impact on the desired receiver while simultaneously distorting the received signals of eavesdroppers. Secrecy rate is analyzed for the proposed two-ray multipath FDA-based DM model. Numerical simulations verify the capability of physical layer secure (PLS) transmissions of the proposed FDA-DM model in two-ray multipath MISOME wiretap channels.

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