A Survey on Cross-Layer Authentication in Wireless Communication Networks

In current wireless networks, Physical Layer Authentication (PLA) and cryptography-based authentication have been recognized as the two dominant methods that can be trusted for user authentication and device identification. PLA methods are intensively studied in the field of network security as a strong complement to upper layer authentication. However, using only two existing authentication mechanisms cannot meet the security requirements and service demands of future wireless network development. Cross-layer authentication was created in response to the future explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices for secure authentication and broader service requirements. This paper presents a survey on current research status of cross-layer authentication schemes in wireless networks. We divide current cross-layer authentication approaches into two categories: cross-layer device authentication and cross-layer user-device authentication, introduce the state-of-the-art works in each category and finally discuss the challenges and future research directions.