A Novel Seed Based Random Interleaving for OFDM System and Its PHY Layer Security Implications

Wireless channels are characterized by multipath and fading that can often cause long
burst of errors. Even though, to date, many very sophisticated error correcting codes have
been designed, yet none can handle long burst of errors efficiently. An interleaver, a
device that distributes a burst of errors, possibly caused by a deep fade, and makes them
appear as simple random errors, therefore, proves to a very useful technique when used in
conjunction with an efficient error correcting code.
In this work, a novel near optimal seed based random interleaver is designed. An optimal
interleaver scatters a given burst of errors uniformly over a fixed block of data - a
property that is measured by so called ‘spread’. The design makes use of a unique seed
based pseudo-random sequence generator or logistic map based chaotic sequence
generator to scramble the given block of data. Since the proposed design is based on a
seed based scrambler, the nature of input is irrelevant. Therefore, the proposed interleaver
can interleave either the bits or the symbols or the packets or even the frames.
Accordingly, in this work, we analyze the suitability of interleaver when introduced
before or after the modulation in single carrier communication systems and show that
interleaving the bits before modulation or interleaving the symbols after modulation has
same advantage. We further show that, in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) systems, the position of interleaver, whether before or after constellation
mapper, has no significance, and is interchangeable. However, scrambling symbols is
computationally less expensive than scrambling bits.
For the purpose of analyzing the performance of the proposed seed based random
interleaver, simulations are carried out in MATLAB®. Results show that our proposed
seed based random interleaver has near optimal properties of ‘spread’ and ‘dispersion’.
Furthermore, the proposed interleaver is evaluated in terms of bit error rate (BER) versus
length of burst error in a single carrier system both before and after modulation. The
proposed interleaver out-performs the built in RANDINTLV in MATLAB® when used in
the same system. It shows that proposed interleaver can convert greater amount of burst
errors into simple random errors than that of MATLAB® interleaver. The proposed
interleaver is also tested in IEEE 802.16e based WiMAX system with Stanford University Interim (SUI) channels to compare the performance of average BER versus
SNR for both pre modulation and post modulation interleaver. Results show that pre
modulation interleaver and post modulation has same performance.
There is also a side advantage of this seed based interleaver, in that it generates a variety
of unique random-looking interleaving sequences. Only a receiver that has the knowledge
of the input seed can generate this sequence and no one else. If the interleaving patterns
are kept secure then it can possibly be used to introduce an extra layer of security at
physical (PHY) layer. In that way, at PHY layer, one builds an additional entry barrier to
break through and it comes with no extra cost. This property has been investigated by
carrying out key sensitivity analysis to show that the attacks to guess key can be very
futile, as difference at 4th decimal place in the initial condition can lead to entirely
different scrambling.