Joint source-channel coding has been shown to yield optimal end-to-end performance in terms of overall expected distortion for quasi-static fading channels. Due to the inherent broadcast nature of the wireless medium, wireless communications are susceptible to eavesdropping. Thus, it is unclear how imposing additional secrecy constraint on the system will affect the end-to-end performance of the joint source-channel coding. In this paper, we consider the information theoretic secure source transmission in a classical three node wiretap channel, consisting of a source node, a destination node, and a wiretapper node. In the high signal-to-noise ratio regime, we quantify the cost of providing secure transmissions through secrecy outage probability and secrecy distortion exponent. Our results show that with the additional secrecy constraint, there exists a lower bound on the bandwidth expansion factor, below which perfect secrecy is impossible. Moreover, this lower bound on bandwidth expansion factor depends on the type of layered source transmission strategy used. In summary, this work indicates that source-channel coding strategies as well as the level of secrecy need to be carefully designed in order to maximize the secrecy distortion exponent.
In this work, the problem of transmitting an i.i.d Gaussian source over an i.i.d Gaussian wiretap channel with an i.i.d Gaussian side information is considered. The intended receiver is assumed to have a certain minimum SNR and the eavesdropper is assumed to have a strictly lower SNR compared to the intended receiver. The objective is minimizing the distortion of source reconstruction at the intended receiver. In this work, it is shown that unlike the Gaussian wiretap channel without side information, Shannon's source-channel separation coding scheme is not optimum in the sense of achieving the minimum distortion. Three hybrid digital-analog secure joint source channel coding schemes are then proposed which achieve the minimum distortion. The first coding scheme is based on Costa's dirty paper coding scheme and wiretap channel coding scheme when the analog source is not explicitly quantized. The second coding scheme is based on the superposition of the secure digital signal and the hybrid digital-analog signal. It is shown that for the problem of communicating a Gaussian source over a Gaussian wiretap channel with side information, there exists an infinite family of optimum secure joint source-channel coding scheme. In the third coding scheme, the quantized signal and the analog error signal are explicitly superimposed. It is shown that this scheme provides an infinite family of optimum secure joint source-channel channel coding schemes with a variable number of binning. Finally, the proposed secure hybrid digital-analog schemes are analyzed under the main channel SNR mismatch. It is proven that the proposed schemes can give a graceful degradation of distortion with SNR under SNR mismatch, i.e., when the actual SNR is larger than the designed SNR.
In this work we study encoding/decoding schemes for the transmission of a discrete time analog Gaussian source over a Gaussian wiretap channel. The intended receiver is assumed to have a certain minimum signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the eavesdropper is assumed to have a strictly lower SNR compared to the intended receiver. For a fixed information leakage rate (Iϵ) to the eavesdropper, we are interested in minimizing the distortion in source reconstruction at the intended receiver, and we propose joint source channel coding (JSCC) schemes for this setup. For a fixed information leakage rate (Iϵ) to the eavesdropper, we also show that the schemes considered give a graceful degradation of distortion with SNR under SNR mismatch, i.e., when the actual channel SNR is observed to be different from the design SNR.
The use of wireless networks has grown significantly in contemporary \ntimes, and continues to develop further. The broadcast nature of \nwireless communications, however, makes them particularly vulnerable \nto eavesdropping. Unlike traditional solutions, which usually handle \nsecurity at the application layer, the primary concern of this \ndissertation is to analyze and develop solutions based on coding \ntechniques at the physical-layer. \n \nFirst, in chapter
2, we consider a scenario where a source node \nwishes to broadcast two confidential messages to two receivers, \nwhile a wire-tapper also receives the transmitted signal. This model \nis motivated by wireless communications, where individual secure \nmessages are broadcast over open media and can be received by any \nillegitimate receiver. The secrecy level is measured by the \nequivocation rate at the eavesdropper. We first study the general \n(non-degraded) broadcast channel with an eavesdropper, and present \nan inner bound on the secrecy capacity region for this model. This \ninner bound is based on a combination of random binning, and the \nGelfand-Pinsker binning. We further study the situation in which the \nchannels are degraded. For the degraded broadcast channel with an \neavesdropper, we present the secrecy capacity region. Our achievable \ncoding scheme is based on Cover's superposition scheme and random \nbinning. We refer to this scheme as the Secret Superposition Scheme. \nOur converse proof is based on a combination of the converse proof \nof the conventional degraded broadcast channel and Csiszar Lemma. We \nthen assume that the channels are Additive White Gaussian Noise and \nshow that the Secret Superposition Scheme with Gaussian codebook is \noptimal. The converse proof is based on Costa's entropy power \ninequality. Finally, we use a broadcast strategy for the slowly \nfading wire-tap channel when only the eavesdropper's channel is \nfixed and known at the transmitter. We derive the optimum power \nallocation for the coding layers, which maximizes the total average \nrate. \n \n \nSecond, in chapter
3 , we consider the \nMultiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) scenario of a broadcast \nchannel where a wiretapper also receives the transmitted signal via \nanother MIMO channel. First, we assume that the channels are \ndegraded and the wiretapper has the worst channel. We establish the \ncapacity region of this scenario. Our achievability scheme is the \nSecret Superposition Coding. For the outerbound, we use notion of \nthe enhanced channels to show that the secret superposition of \nGaussian codes is optimal. We show that we only need to enhance the \nchannels of the legitimate receivers, and the channel of the \neavesdropper remains unchanged. We then extend the result of the \ndegraded case to a non-degraded case. We show that the secret \nsuperposition of Gaussian codes, along with successive decoding, \ncannot work when the channels are not degraded. We develop a Secret \nDirty Paper Coding scheme and show that it is optimal for this \nchannel. We then present a corollary generalizing the capacity \nregion of the two receivers case to the case of multiple receivers. \nFinally, we investigate a scenario which frequently occurs in the \npractice of wireless networks. In this scenario, the transmitter and \nthe eavesdropper have multiple antennae, while both intended \nreceivers have a single antenna (representing resource limited \nmobile units). We characterize the secrecy capacity region in terms \nof generalized eigenvalues of the receivers' channels and the \neavesdropper's channel. We refer to this configuration as the MISOME \ncase. We then present a corollary generalizing the results of the \ntwo receivers case to multiple receivers. In the high SNR regime, we \nshow that the capacity region is a convex closure of rectangular \nregions. \n \n \nFinally, in chapter
4, we consider a
K-user secure Gaussian \nMultiple-Access-Channel with an external eavesdropper. We establish \nan achievable rate region for the secure discrete memoryless MAC. \nThereafter, we prove the secrecy sum capacity of the degraded \nGaussian MIMO MAC using Gaussian codebooks. For the non-degraded \nGaussian MIMO MAC, we propose an algorithm inspired by the \ninterference alignment technique to achieve the largest possible \ntotal Secure-Degrees-of-Freedom . When all the terminals are \nequipped with a single antenna, Gaussian codebooks have shown to be \ninefficient in providing a positive S-DoF. Instead, we propose a \nnovel secure coding scheme to achieve a positive S-DoF in the single \nantenna MAC. This scheme converts the single-antenna system into a \nmultiple-dimension system with fractional dimensions. The \nachievability scheme is based on the alignment of signals into a \nsmall sub-space at the eavesdropper, and the simultaneous separation \nof the signals at the intended receiver. We use tools from the field \nof Diophantine Approximation in number theory to analyze the \nprobability of error in the coding scheme. We prove that the total \nS-DoF of
fracK−1K can be achieved for almost all channel \ngains. For the other channel gains, we propose a multi-layer coding \nscheme to achieve a positive S-DoF. As a function of channel gains, \ntherefore, the achievable S-DoF is discontinued.
In this work, the problem of transmitting an i.i.d Gaussian source over an i.i.d Gaussian wiretap channel with an i.i.d Gaussian side information available at the intended receiver is considered. The intended receiver is assumed to have a certain minimum SNR and the eavesdropper is assumed to have a strictly lower SNR, compared to the intended receiver. The objective is to minimize the distortion of source reconstruction at the intended receiver. In this work, it is shown that the source-channel separation coding scheme is optimum in the sense of achieving minimum distortion. Two hybrid digital-analog Wyner-Ziv coding schemes are then proposed which achieve the minimum distortion. These secure joint source-channel coding schemes are based on the Wyner-Ziv coding scheme and wiretap channel coding scheme when the analog source is not explicitly quantized. The proposed secure hybrid digital-analog schemes are analyzed under the main channel SNR mismatch. It is proven that the proposed schemes can give a graceful degradation of distortion with SNR under SNR mismatch, i.e., when the actual SNR is larger than the designed SNR.
In physical-layer security, communication secrecy is commonly achieved by providing the legitimate receiver a physical-layer advantage over the eavesdropper or, equivalently, by making the eavesdropper's channel more degraded than the legitimate receiver's, a setting traditionally known as the degraded wiretap channel. There may be situations, however, where such advantages cannot be guaranteed. One example is the wireless channel where the legitimate receiver's channel may be more degraded than the eavesdropper's owing to a deep fade (outage), additive interference at the edge of a network cell, etc. To our knowledge, such scenarios have not been remedied in the related literature. Thus, we propose in this work the first physical-layer security scheme that achieves communication in a setting where the eavesdropper has the physical-layer advantage over the legitimate receiver, a scenario that we call the reversely-degraded wiretap channel. Precisely, we show that by constraining the transmitter's input to be discrete uniformly distributed (such as an on-off keying modulation) and by using nonlinear threshold-based signal detection, the legitimate receiver is guaranteed to have a positive secrecy capacity even though the eavesdropper has a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The former requirement on the input distribution is to limit the capacity gains of the eavesdropper at high SNR. The latter requirement allows the communication channel to exhibit supra-threshold stochastic resonance, a phenomenon whereby noise improves signal detection and increases the mutual information. A numerical example is provided to confirm our claims.