{"ID":2854843,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15063","arxiv_id":"2510.15063","title":"Physical Layer Deception as a Stackelberg Game: Strategy Regimes, Equilibrium, and Robust Design","abstract":"Physical layer deception (PLD) combines physical layer security (PLS) with deception: the transmitter actively misleads the eavesdropper with falsified information. We model the transmitter-eavesdropper interaction as a Stackelberg game in which the transmitter commits to a resource allocation and encryption strategy, and each receiver best-responds by selecting among three decryption modes: Perception, Dropping, and Exclusion. Using semantic distortion as the metric, we derive closed-form switching surfaces that partition the parameter space into strategy regimes and identify conditions under which each regime dominates. The robust operating point, at the peak of the worst-case distortion envelope, is shown to be a Stackelberg equilibrium; iterative best-response dynamics oscillate around it with strictly lower time-averaged security. We evaluate the design under Nakagami-m fading with static and adaptive transmitter strategies, benchmarked against a classical PLS baseline. Numerical results validate the regime characterization and show 12-55% higher eavesdropper distortion than the erasure-only baseline across all fading conditions.","short_abstract":"Physical layer deception (PLD) combines physical layer security (PLS) with deception: the transmitter actively misleads the eavesdropper with falsified information. We model the transmitter-eavesdropper interaction as a Stackelberg game in which the transmitter commits to a resource allocation and encryption strategy,...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15063","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15063v3","authors":"[\"Wenwen Chen\",\"Bin Han\",\"Yao Zhu\",\"Anke Schmeink\",\"Giuseppe Caire\",\"Hans D. Schotten\"]","published":"2025-10-16T18:23:35Z","proceeding":"cs.CR","tasks":"[\"cs.CR\",\"cs.IT\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}