LEO-Range: Physical Layer Design for Secure Ranging with Low Earth Orbiting Satellites#

Daniele Coppola et al., ETH Zurich; CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security — Wildcard

• Why: Not a fit for the PM's terrestrial DC/WAN focus directly, but LEO satellite constellations are an increasingly real backhaul/connectivity layer, and this is provably-secure physical-layer ranging design for exactly that emerging infrastructure — the kind of "where the physical network is heading" signal worth having on the radar.
• What: A physical-layer design for secure distance ranging between LEO satellites and ground devices, compatible with OFDM (used by high-bandwidth satellite links), with a formal security proof bounding an attacker's probability of a distance-reduction attack. Tested with a hardware satellite-channel emulator, limiting spoofing to under a 2⁻²⁰ success probability for a 117m distance-reduction attempt in realistic channel conditions. (from abstract only)
• How: A novel frequency-domain verification scheme provides provable security against arbitrary physical-layer attack strategies, rather than relying on a specific attacker model. (from abstract only)
• Where applicable: LEO satellite communication systems specifically; general technique for physical-layer secure ranging that could generalize to other wireless ranging contexts.