Phase-Assisted Dynamic Tag-Embedding Message Authentication for IoT Networks

Security is a critical issue in Internet of Things (IoT) networks and it has been under investigation by researchers worldwide. Different from other wireless networks, IoT networks suffer from conventional security mechanisms due to complexity and resource consumption which cannot be tolerated in IoT networks. Among the recently proposed security schemes for IoT networks is the tag-embedding message authentication scheme in which a tag is embedded to the modulated message and concurrently sent over the same channel. Although it has avoided significant resource expenditure, its performance still requires improvement especially in terms of immunity against nearby eavesdroppers. In this article, a novel scheme is proposed that is able to enhance the authentication rate and the tag confidentiality without inducing any extra requirements. The proposed scheme implies performing tag puncturing at the transmitter side where only a part of the tag is embedded to the message based on the instantaneous channel phase. The performance of the proposed scheme is mathematically analyzed where the authentication failure probability is derived in closed-form expression, and compared to the conventional tag-embedding scheme.