Enhancing security of SIC algorithm on non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) based systems

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising candidate among potential nominees for future radio access. NOMA adopts the principle of successive interference cancellation (SIC) algorithm at the receiver's side to segregate user's information. However, during SIC process, information of the user(s) with weaker channel gain is extracted by user(s) with stronger channel gain. It can raise major security concerns, e.g. session hijacking, eavesdropping, identity theft, and others, for users with weaker channel gains. Therefore, this research aims to analyze and verify a secure SIC algorithm for NOMA based systems. This research proposes and demonstrates the SIC scheme to enhance security on the user's side by making use of MAC address and IMEI that are devoted to a smartphone as distinctive keys. This research shown that the proposed scheme can improve security in terms of confidentiality time and secrecy capacity. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.