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5G enabled secure wireless networks
Jayakody D., Srinivasan K., Sharma V., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2019. 200 pp. Type: Book (978-3-030035-07-5)
Date Reviewed: Jan 15 2021

Wireless 5G networks are widely deployed and, compared to previous generations, carry vastly augmented data flows with low latency. Thus, their security and privacy aspects warrant special attention [1], even if a vast number of standards have already been specified covering them.

The (unnumbered) chapters of this book seem to have been written in 2017 and 2018, and refer to 5G “enabled” networks, so it is unclear if the actual scope is 4G transitional long-term evolution (LTE) technologies, such as LTE Advanced and LTE Advanced Pro, or 5G networks governed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 or the very recent Release 17. It is indeed necessary to remember:

5G is not an incremental or backward-compatible update to existing mobile communications standards. It does not overlap with 4G standards like LTE or WiMAX, and it cannot be delivered to existing phones, tablets, or wireless modems by means of tower upgrades or software updates. [2]

Furthermore, the security features are different.

This edited collection is by many different authors. The chapter “5G Security: Concepts and Challenges” lists some envisaged features and requirements put to 5G, and some security and network planning related initiatives at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 3GPP (Release 15), ETSI, and IEEE. Some security models are discussed, covering identity management, user equipment security, radio network security, network slicing, and cloud security. Elements of security protocols and threat models are defined, including the Dolev-Yao adversary, before addressing physical layer security codes (low-density parity-check (LDPC), polar, lattice) and nonorthogonal multiple access. Eavesdropping in multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) millimeter wave communications is also discussed.

The following chapter, “5G Applications and Architectures,” revisits parts of the previous one before covering notions necessary to understanding network layer security: software-defined networks, network function virtualization, and service architectures.

Much more research focused, the third chapter addresses links between security and osmotic or catalytic computing. It is claimed that osmotic computing supports load balancing between a data center and micro-services. The principle of catalysis is used to provide resource sharing without affecting operations or performance in a network. An extensive literature review covers secure resource allocation, secure mobility management, secure routing, secure layer formation, and smart services relevant to 5G. A generalized model for 5G security is summarized in just two pages.

The following chapter is dedicated to an analytical model of performance in three-tier heterogeneous cellular networks with massive MIMO in sub-6 GHz small cells. It serves to provide equations for secrecy outage probability, secrecy spectral efficiency, and secrecy energy efficiency. This hinges on assuming an eavesdropper in a side lobe with Nakagami fading (and later a density of eavesdropper nodes), and a secrecy transmission capacity constraint. The conclusion is a necessary but foreseeable tradeoff between directional beamforming gains, number of antennas, network coverage, and overall secrecy performance.

Modeling is again used in the fifth chapter on physical layer security and power management in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, focusing on the narrow issue of the security compromise between information transmission and node powering, when RF energy harvesting is used and if a power receiver is an eavesdropper or a jammer. It aims at providing a closed-form expression for the intercept probability and secrecy outage probability of destination-assisted jamming.

The final chapter, “Beam-domain Full-duplex Massive MIMO Transmission in the Cellular System,” belongs more to communication theory and covers systems with co-frequency uplink and downlink in the context of the 3GPP LTE model, which may help reduce interference.

The book includes an integrated index, and each chapter has author bios as well as (sometimes overlapping) bibliographies.

This is not a textbook for 5G network security courses [3], as it does not cover any of the essential standards, for example, protocols, coding, and cryptographic and information security elements. It may be of interest to academic researchers interested in an evolving communication theoretical view on some aspects of mobile network security.

Reviewer:  Prof. L.-F. Pau, CBS Review #: CR147161 (2106-0131)
1) Ericsson. A guide to 5G network security. https://www.ericsson.com/en/security/a-guide-to-5g-network-security (Accessed 11/05/2020).
2) TechRepublic Staff. 5G mobile networks: a cheat sheet. TechRepublic, Oct. 13, 2020, https://www.techrepublic.com/article/5g-mobile-networks-a-cheat-sheet/.
3) Fang, D.; Qian, Y.; Hu, R. Q. Security for 5G mobile wireless networks. IEEE Access 6, (2018), 4850–4874.
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