Physical-layer security: practical aspects of channel coding and cryptography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Let me start at the beginning and thank my parents. They provided a glorious childhood for me and my siblings in a small town in northern Utah. They are extremely diligent and humble, and they raised their family to appreciate traditional Christian values. No matter where my career leads, if I can only duplicate their success with their children, then I will have no regrets. Thank you Mom and Dad. Next, I want to say thank you to my Ph. Steve hired me into his group at a time when most faculty probably wouldn't have been willing to take on new students. So Steve, thank you for letting me join the group, for guiding me in my research, for opening up the world to me, for teaching me to write, for letting me teach your class on occasion, and for involving me with Whisper Communications. I will always be grateful for the many diverse experiences that made up my Ph.D., and you were the driving force behind nearly all of them. Also, a very sincere thank you to the members of my Ph.D. dissertation committee: I appreciate the time you spent serving on my committee and the guidance you provided one-on-one to me. In that same vein, I should thank the other faculty at you João for helping me discover a meaningful problem and publish it within three months. Thank you also for picking me, my family, and our eight suitcases up from the airport, for helping us find a place to live, for taking us to the beach, for feeding us pancakes, and for entertaining us with your family symphony. iv During the last two years of my Ph.D., I started working with some of the best people I know in a very cool start-up company called Whisper Communications. Thank you Steve, Jeff, Cenk, and Demijan. I learned a lot from each one of you, and will always call you my friends. Gerhard. Thanks for reading my bills for me and telling me how to pay them (Fausto), helping me find contact solution (also Fausto), taking me to Bola em Jogo for futebol, teaching me about Portugal, and, of course, solving research problems with me. Although I appear to be the last of the McLaughlins for now, I still assert that our research group was very active and productive. Some of my best friends from my years at …