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EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking

Successive optimization Tomlinson-Harashima precoding strategies for physical-layer security in wireless networks

Xiaotao Lu, Rodrigo C. de Lamare, Keke Zu

Published Oct 26, 2016• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we propose novel non-linear precoders for the downlink of a multi-user MIMO system in the existence of multiple eavesdroppers. The proposed non-linear precoders are designed to improve the physical-layer secrecy rate. Specifically, we combine the non-linear successive optimization Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (SO-THP) with the generalized matrix inversion (GMI) technique to maximize the physical-layer secrecy rate. For the purpose of comparison, we examine different traditional precoders with the proposed algorithm in terms of secrecy rate as well as bit error rate (BER) performance. We also investigate simplified generalized matrix inversion (S-GMI) and lattice-reduction (LR) techniques in order to efficiently compute the parameters of the precoders. We further conduct computational complexity and secrecy-rate analysis of the proposed and existing algorithms. In addition, in the scenario without knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) to the eavesdroppers, a strategy of injecting artificial noise (AN) prior to the transmission is employed to enhance the physical-layer secrecy rate. Simulation results show that the proposed non-linear precoders outperform existing precoders in terms of BER and secrecy-rate performance.

DOI
10.1186/s13638-016-0755-5

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In this paper, we propose novel non-linear precoders for the downlink of a multi-user MIMO system in the existence of multiple eavesdroppers. The proposed non-linear precoders are designed to improve the physical-layer secrecy rate. Specifically, we combine the non-linear successive optimization Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (SO-THP) with the generalized matrix inversion (GMI) technique to maximize the physical-layer secrecy rate. For the purpose of comparison, we examine different traditional precoders with the proposed algorithm in terms of secrecy rate as well as bit error rate (BER) performance. We also investigate simplified generalized matrix inversion (S-GMI) and lattice-reduction (LR) techniques in order to efficiently compute the parameters of the precoders. We further conduct computational complexity and secrecy-rate analysis of the proposed and existing algorithms. In addition, in the scenario without knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) to the eavesdroppers, a strategy of injecting artificial noise (AN) prior to the transmission is employed to enhance the physical-layer secrecy rate. Simulation results show that the proposed non-linear precoders outperform existing precoders in terms of BER and secrecy-rate performance.
In this thesis, we study the physical layer security in downlink multi-user wireless networks. Traditionally, security has been addressed by cryptography at the higher layers of the communication stack. Security at the physical layer has been a major research topic in recent years. We study two different precoder designs alongside artificial noise (AN) to mitigate multi-user interference and deteriorate reception at the eavesdropper (Eve). We study the large scale analysis to calculate the secrecy sum-rate for these two cases and analyze the effect of AN on the system. First, we consider the worst case scenario, when eavesdropper's (Eve's) rate is not deteriorated by the interference caused by the legitimate users. Later, we investigate how interference from legitimate users would affect the large scale security sum rate. At the end, we assume more practical situation where the channel state information at the transmitter is not perfect due to feedback limitation and estimation error. We first study block diagonalization (BD) precoding. We derive the asymptotic secrecy sum-rate of BD for physical layer security in downlink multi-user wireless networks using artificial noise (AN). We first derive the secrecy sum-rate assuming that the channel of the eavesdropper is not known at the transmitter and derive the asymptotic secrecy sum-rate. Then we derive the optimum power allocation for asymptotic secrecy sum-rate. We design the system based on large scale analysis for different special cases. Simulation results show that the proposed precoders outperform channel inversion (CI) and regularized channel inversion (RCI) schemes at all SNRs. We also show that as the number of receive antennas of each user increases, the sum-rate gap between the proposed scheme and existing methods increases. We, then, study two methods of regularized block diagonalization (RBD) precoding using artificial noise (AN) for physical layer security in downlink multi-user MIMO wireless networks. We compare the complexity analysis of these two methods in terms of floating point operations per second (FLOPS). We derive the secrecy and asymptotic secrecy sum-rates for these schemes. We also derive closed form expressions for the asymptotic optimal power allocation to the AN signal and legitimate users. Simulations show RBD precoding outperform regularized channel inversion (RCI) in terms of secrecy sum-rate with a margin of 0.5 bits/s/Hz. Also, simulation results show our closed-form asymptotic secrecy sum-rates matches closely with the simulations for perfect and imperfect CSIT. We also study the effect of interference on BD precoding scheme. In the first two studies the worst case scenarios was considered and the effect of interference was not considered at the eavesdropper. We first derive the closed-form secrecy and asymptotic secrecy sum-rates for this scheme. Then, we derive the optimum power allocation. Using the derived optimum power allocation, we determine the conditions under which adding AN helps. We also investigate the optimum number of users, number of antennas at the eavesdropper, and the number of transmit antennas to fully study the conditions where using AN improves performance. We show that as the number of users increases or the number of receive antennas at the eavesdropper decreases, improved performance is achieved by allocating a smaller fraction of the total power to transmit the AN. The closed form expressions for the secrecy sum rate (SSR) and optimum power allocation closely match our simulation results. In Chapter 5, we study the effect of imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) for each case studied in earlier chapters. We first study the effect of imperfect CSIT for BD precoding in both scenarios when interference does and does not exist at eavesdropper. We show that the imperfect CSI play the same role as interference for the desired users. Then, we study the effect of imperfect CSIT for RBD precoding when interference does not exist at eavesdropper. We show as channel estimation error increases, the secrecy sum-rate decreases. This is due to the fact that channel estimation error just affects the desired users' rate and has no effect on eavesdropper's performance. Finally, in the last chapter, we conclude our thesis and provide some road map for future--Author's abstract
This paper proposes a physical layer security technique using Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems under the presence of a passive eavesdropper. In the proposed scheme, a transmitter performs THP considering both the channel for the legitimate receiver and the randomly generated channel for an imaginary receiver which does not exist actually. Since the imaginary receiver's channel is arbitrarily generated at the transmitter, the eavesdropper cannot estimate it. Therefore, the proposed scheme can provide secure communications. Moreover, in THP, the transmitter performs the precoding so that the diversity can be obtained at the receiver. Therefore, the proposed scheme can achieve a higher mutual information. From simulation results, we show that the proposed scheme achieves a better mutual information compared to the existing artificial fast fading schemes.
We consider a low-complexity transceiver design for secure communications of a multiuser multi-antenna system with an external multi-antenna eavesdropper. We propose to employ Tomlinson–Harashima precoder (THP) to simultaneously transmit message-bearing signals and artificial noise (AN) according to the quantized channel state information (CSI). Based on random vector quantization of the channel vectors, we obtain analytical approximations of the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) of each legitimate receiver (LR) and the ergodic secrecy sum rate of the system with arbitrary system parameters. Based on the obtained analytical results, the near-optimal power allocation to the information signals and AN can be obtained using a numerical method. We show using an information-theoretical method that, besides the advantage in the ESR over the linear precoding scheme, THP can reduce the supported rate of the eavesdropper’s channel by preventing the eavesdropper from obtaining the legitimate channels’ (quantized) CSI. The ESR loss of each LR compared with the perfect CSI case will increase without bound for a fixed number of feedback bits. We also derive a feedback bit scaling law to solve this problem. Finally, numerical results are provided to verify our analytical results and also the advantage of the proposed secure nonlinear transceiver over the corresponding linear scheme.
The joint design of secure precoding and artificial noise (AN) transmission scheme is promising to improve secrecy performance. However, in downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems with multiple eavesdroppers, joint design of secure precoding and AN structure involves several challenges: an objective function is non-convex and non-smooth, and a precoding matrix and AN matrix have different design principles. Classically, to jointly design precoding and AN covariance matrix, an alternating optimization approach is used which has limitations in terms of the secrecy rate performance since it does not offer joint and simultaneous optimization of the precoding and AN covariance matrices. In this paper, we propose a novel optimization framework that optimizes the precoder and the AN covariance matrix jointly and simultaneously to maximize the secrecy rate. First, we approximate the objective function to a tractable non-convex form. Next, we derive the first-order optimality condition by leveraging the nonlinear eigenvalue problem (NEP) form. Finally, we utilize an efficient technique with low computational complexity for identifying the major eigenvector of the NEP which corresponds to the best stationary point. Simulations illustrate that the proposed methods enhance the secrecy rate performance compared to the existing secure precoding methods.
In this paper, we propose regularized block diagonalization (RBD) precoding using artificial noise (AN) for physical layer security in downlink multi-user MIMO wireless networks. We derive secrecy sum rate and asymptotic secrecy sum rate for the proposed scheme. The optimum power allocation for legitimate users and the AN signal are derived in closed form for optimal asymptotic secrecy sum rate. Our analysis shows that to achieve best performance, it is more efficient to degrade the performance of the eavesdropper than improving legitimate users' rates. We also study the impact of error in channel estimation on the system and derive closed-form SINR and secrecy sum-rate expressions for this case. Simulations show that the secrecy sum rate of RBD precoding outperforms the secrecy sum rate of regularized channel inversion by 0.5 bits/s/Hz. We also show that in the presence of channel estimation error, our approximate closed forms for secrecy sum rate are very closed to the actual secrecy sum rate over a wide range of SNR and channel estimation error values.
We derive the asymptotic secrecy sum-rate of block diagonalization (BD) precoding for physical layer security in downlink multi-user wireless networks using artificial noise (AN). We first derive the secrecy sum-rate assuming that the channel of the eavesdropper is not known at the transmitter and then the asymptotic secrecy sum-rate is derived. The optimum power allocation for asymptotic secrecy sum-rate is derived after that. Simulation results show that the proposed precoders outperform channel inversion (CI) and regularized channel inversion (RCI) schemes in terms of the secrecy sum-rate at all SNRs. We also show that as the number of receive antennas of each user increases, the sum-rate gap between the proposed scheme and existing methods increases.