A Secure Architecture of Relay-Aided Space Information Networks

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been extensively investigated as an enabling technology to support massive devices or sensors. With increasing demands of seamless connectivity of IoT, space information networks (SINs) are adopted to provide reliable communications for IoT devices at any time and anywhere. However, the conventional SIN suffers from different malicious attacks (e.g., jamming attack, eavesdropping attack) due to its highly exposed satellite-ground links with fixed spot beams. Those attacks may cause severe security problems to SINs. To overcome these drawbacks, in this article, a secure architecture is proposed as a promising strategy to improve the security of SINs, where relays are deployed together with hopped beams to relieve the jamming attack of the uplink and combat the eavesdropping attack of the downlink. In the proposed new structure, by utilizing spatial diversity, inter-satellite beam hopping is developed to build jamming-free uplink channels, while relay selection is carried out to form eavesdropping-free downlink channels. Meanwhile, relay deployment optimization is studied to maximize the system efficiency, and data aggregation is adopted to encrypt the data packets of IoT devices at relays. As a result, the security of SINs can be strongly improved in the existence of jamming and eavesdropping threats. Furthermore, future works for the secure SIN are also discussed.

Automated summary

This article proposes a secure architecture to enhance the security of Space Information Networks (SINs) by deploying relays and hopped beams to mitigate jamming attacks and combat eavesdropping attacks. The use of spatial diversity and data aggregation successfully improves the security of SINs in the presence of jamming and eavesdropping threats.