Search

Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) is an innovative service offered by fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems. URLLC enables various mission-critical applications by facilitating reliable and low-latency signal transmission to support extreme Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Apart from reliability and latency, ensuring secure data transmission for URLLC has been a prominent issue for researchers in recent years. Using finite blocklength signals to achieve the stringent reliability and latency criteria in URLLC eliminates the possibility of using conventional complex cryptographic security enhancement techniques based on encoding and decoding of secret keys. Thus, the development of lightweight security mechanisms is of paramount importance for URLLC. Recently, Physical-Layer Security (PLS) techniques have emerged as a powerful alternative to the complex cryptography-based security approaches for facilitating secure URLLC by exploiting the randomness of the wireless channel. Therefore, in this survey, we present a comprehensive and in-depth review of the state-of-the-art PLS enhancements utilized to unleash secure URLLC while analyzing the impact of various system design parameters on its performance. Moreover, the survey incorporates a detailed overview of the recent advancements in ensuring secure URLLC using PLS in various mission-critical applications, and 5G URLLC enabling technologies like non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), multi-antenna systems, cooperative communication using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and intelligent reflective surfaces (IRS). Apart from this, we briefly discuss the role of advanced Machine Learning (ML) techniques in designing robust and intelligent PLS schemes for URLLC service.