Physical layer security offers an efficient means to decrease the risk of confidential information leakage through wiretap links. In this paper, we address the physical-layer security in a cooperative wireless subnetwork that includes a source-destination pair and multiple relays, exchanging information in the presence of a malevolent eavesdropper. Specifically, the eavesdropper is active in the network and transmits artificial noise (AN) with a multiple-antenna transmitter to confound both the relays and the destination. We first analyse the secrecy capacity of the direct source-to-destination transmission in terms of intercept probability (IP) and secrecy outage probability (SOP). A decode-and-forward incremental relaying (IR) protocol is then introduced to improve security of communications in the presence of the active eavesdropper. Within this context, and depending on the availability of channel state information, three different schemes (one optimal and two sub-optimal) are proposed to select a trusted relay and improve the achievable secrecy rate. For each one of these schemes, and for both selection and maximum ratio combining at the destination and eavesdropper, we derive new and exact closed-form expressions for the IP and SOP. Our analysis and simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed IR-based selection schemes for secure communication. They also confirm the existence of a floor phenomenon for the SOP in the absence of AN.
Physical layer security offers an efficient means to decrease the risk of confidential information leakage through wiretap links. In this paper, we address the physical-layer security in a cooperative wireless subnetwork that includes a source-destination pair and multiple relays, exchanging information in the presence of a malevolent eavesdropper. Specifically, the eavesdropper is active in the network and transmits artificial noise (AN) with a multiple-antenna transmitter to confound both the relays and the destination. We first analyse the secrecy capacity of the direct source-to-destination transmission in terms of intercept probability (IP) and secrecy outage probability (SOP). A decode-and-forward incremental relaying (IR) protocol is then introduced to improve security of communications in the presence of the active eavesdropper. Within this context, and depending on the availability of channel state information, three different schemes (one optimal and two sub-optimal) are proposed to select a trusted relay and improve the achievable secrecy rate. For each one of these schemes, and for both selection and maximum ratio combining at the destination and eavesdropper, we derive new and exact closed-form expressions for the IP and SOP. Our analysis and simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed IR-based selection schemes for secure communication. They also confirm the existence of a floor phenomenon for the SOP in the absence of AN.
In the last decade, multi-hop cooperation has evolved bringing several advantages including coverage improvement, more reliability of wireless links, and power consumption reduction. Still, its application has raised several challenges, such as the need for secure transmission at each hop, algorithms to perform relay selection and the accurate models to facilitate performance analysis. This paper addresses the problem of physical layer (PHY) security in a multi-hop wireless cooperative network, where communication at each hop is assisted by multiple relays forming a cluster, each cluster being surrounded by multiple eavesdroppers which together may tap transmissions from both the source and the relays. The main focus of the study is on analyzing the benefits of various relay selection schemes for protecting the source-destination transmission against the eavesdroppers, which can collude and combine information via diversity combining techniques. To be specific, four relay selection schemes, which differ in the way they employ available measures link quality, are considered to deliver the source information to the destination via a decode-and-forward (DF) strategy. To evaluate the security performance of the multi-hop cooperative link in the presence of colluding eavesdroppers, we derive novel closed-form analytical expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) with consideration of special cases of practical interest.
In this study, we deal with a cooperative wireless communications system of security constraints in which there is no knowledge about channel state information (CSI) of the eavesdropper. In order to improve the tradeoff between security and reliability, we opportunistically employ relays via an incremental and selective cooperation with respect to the CSI of the main link. In this cooperation, named as opportunistic cooperative transmission (OCT), the first priority is communication through the direct link as far as possible. However, a relay that has the best link to the main destination is employed for retransmitting the source information when the direct link is so weak which cannot provide a specific quality. In fact, since improving the reliability of the favorable communications by use of the relays increases the risk of successful interception by the eavesdropper at the same time, the OCT scheme tries to avoid excess of rebroadcasting the secret information by the relays whenever the direct link is strong enough; otherwise it employs an opportunistically selected relayed link. Hence, it can improve the security for a specific level of reliability and vice versa. We derive closed-form expressions for the security-reliability tradeoff (SRT) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) of the OCT scheme. Moreover, we provide asymptotic analyses which are illustrative on the security behavior of the proposed scheme. Finally, simulation results are presented which confirm validity of the analysis and reveal the desired performance of OCT in terms of both SRT and SOP.
In this paper we investigate the physical layer security in a cooperative scenario where the source and the eavesdropper are equipped with multiple antennas, while the relay and the destination are single-antenna devices. We consider that no channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitter, besides the index of the selected transmit antenna. Closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability of the selective decode-and-forward (SDF) and incremental decode-and-forward (IDF) schemes are derived. In addition, we also conduct an asymptotic analysis to get further insights on the performance of each scheme, which predicts a performance floor inherent to the scenario without CSI at the transmitter. Moreover, we also analyze the schemes in terms of the secrecy throughput, which shows that the performance floor that appear in the outage analysis only affects the secrecy throughput if the floor is too high, as is the case of the non-cooperative transmission. Our analysis show that IDF can considerably outperform the SDF and the non-cooperative transmission both in terms of secrecy outage probability and secrecy throughput.
In the last decade, multi-hop cooperation has evolved bringing several advantages including coverage improvement, more reliability of wireless links, and power consumption reduction. Still, its application has raised several challenges, such as the need for secure transmission at each hop, algorithms to perform relay selection and the accurate models to facilitate performance analysis. This paper addresses the problem of physical layer (PHY) security in a multi-hop wireless cooperative network, where communication at each hop is assisted by multiple relays forming a cluster, each cluster being surrounded by multiple eavesdroppers which together may tap transmissions from both the source and the relays. The main focus of the study is on analyzing the benefits of various relay selection schemes for protecting the source-destination transmission against the eavesdroppers, which can collude and combine information via diversity combining techniques. To be specific, four relay selection schemes, which differ in the way they employ available measures link quality, are considered to deliver the source information to the destination via a decode-and-forward (DF) strategy. To evaluate the security performance of the multi-hop cooperative link in the presence of colluding eavesdroppers, we derive novel closed-form analytical expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) with consideration of special cases of practical interest.
Privacy and security have an increasingly important role in wireless networks. A secure communication enables a legitimate destination to successfully retrieve information sent by a source, while it disables the eavesdropper (illegitimate destination) to interpret the intercepted information. Physical (PHY) layer security approaches for wireless communications can prevent eavesdropping without encryption. It exploits the physical characteristics of the wireless channel in order to transmit messages securely. They are typically feasible when the source-destination channel is better than the source-eavesdropper channel. Cooperative schemes are a means to improve the performance of secure wireless communications. We propose an improved relay selection scheme, based on source-eavesdropper channel SNR restriction, that will guarantee the best secrecy rate at the destination under QoS condition. Performance has been studied in terms of secrecy rate, outage probability and average error probability. Simulations shows that the proposed scheme outperforms in terms of the secrecy rate at the destination when compared to techniques in the literature.