User authentication in future wireless communication networks is expected to become more complicated due to their large scale and heterogeneity. Furthermore, the computational complexity of classical cryptographic approaches based on public key distribution can be a limiting factor for using in simple, low-end Internet of things (IoT) devices. This paper proposes physical layer authentication (PLA) expected to complement existing traditional approaches, e.g., in multi-factor authentication protocols. The precision and consistency of PLA is impacted because of random variations of wireless channel realizations between different time slots, which can impair authentication performance. In order to address this, a method based on error-correcting codes in the form of reconciliation is considered in this work. In particular, we adopt distributed source coding (Slepian-Wolf) reconciliation using polar codes to reconcile channel measurements spread in time. Hypothesis testing is then applied to the reconciled vectors to accept or reject the device as authenticated. Simulation results show that the proposed PLA using reconciliation outperforms prior schemes even in low signal-to-noise ratio scenarios.

翻译：未来无线通信网络由于其大规模和异构性，用户身份认证预计将变得更加复杂。此外，基于公钥分发的传统密码学方法的计算复杂性，可能成为在简单、低端物联网设备中使用的限制因素。本文提出的物理层身份认证预计将补充现有的传统方法，例如在多因素认证协议中。由于不同时间槽之间无线信道实现的随机变化，物理层身份认证的准确性和一致性会受到影响，从而可能损害认证性能。为了解决这一问题，本文考虑了一种基于纠错码形式的信息协调方法。具体而言，我们采用基于极化码的分布式信源编码（Slepian-Wolf）协调方法，以协调跨时间分布的信道测量值。随后，对协调后的向量应用假设检验，以接受或拒绝设备认证。仿真结果表明，即使在低信噪比场景下，所提出的基于信息协调的物理层身份认证也优于先前的方案。