Trustworthy decoding of random network coded packets under pollution attack: Physical-layer approach

We propose a physical-layer approach to detect the trustworthiness (integrity) of network coded packet and exploit the detection outcome in decoding the message in the presence of pollution (Byzantine) attack. The trustworthiness of data x is defined as the likelihood of x being true. It is determined based on the physical-layer information that is available for free to the destination (detector). We show that the proposed scheme provides a significantly lower probability of decoding error than the conventional random selection scheme which does not exploit the physical-layer information and performs close to the cryptographic schemes that require computational and bandwidth overheads.