Physical Layer Security - from Theory to Practice

A large spectrum of technologies are collectively dubbed as physical layer security (PLS), ranging from wiretap coding, secret key generation (SKG), authentication using physical unclonable functions (PUFs), localization / RF fingerprinting, anomaly detection monitoring the physical layer (PHY) and hardware. Despite the fact that the fundamental limits of PLS have long been characterized, incorporating PLS in future wireless security standards requires further steps in terms of channel engineering and pre-processing. Reflecting upon the growing discussion in our community, in this critical review paper, we ask some important questions with respect to the key hurdles in the practical deployment of PLS in 6G, but also present some research directions and possible solutions, in particular our vision for context-aware 6G security that incorporates PLS.