Physical layer secrecy in wireless networks in the presence of eavesdroppers of unknown location is considered. In contrast to prior schemes, which have expended energy in the form of cooperative jamming to enable secrecy, we develop schemes where multiple transmitters send their signals in a cooperative fashion to confuse the eavesdroppers. Hence, power is not expended on “artificial noise”; rather, the signal of a given transmitter is protected by the aggregate interference produced by the other transmitters. We introduce a two-hop strategy for the case of equal path-loss between all pairs of nodes, and then consider its embedding within a multi-hop approach for the general case of an extended network. In each case, we derive an achievable number of eavesdroppers that can be present in the region while secure communication between all sources and intended destinations is ensured.
Physical layer secrecy in wireless networks in the presence of eavesdroppers of unknown location is considered. In contrast to prior schemes, which have expended energy in the form of cooperative jamming to enable secrecy, we develop schemes where multiple transmitters send their signals in a cooperative fashion to confuse the eavesdroppers. Hence, power is not expended on “artificial noise”; rather, the signal of a given transmitter is protected by the aggregate interference produced by the other transmitters. We introduce a two-hop strategy for the case of equal path-loss between all pairs of nodes, and then consider its embedding within a multi-hop approach for the general case of an extended network. In each case, we derive an achievable number of eavesdroppers that can be present in the region while secure communication between all sources and intended destinations is ensured.
The secure transmission of information in wireless networks without knowledge of eavesdropper channels or locations is considered. Two key mechanisms are employed: artificial noise generation from system nodes other than the transmitter and receiver, and a form of multi-user diversity that allows message reception in the presence of the artificial noise. We determine the maximum number of independently-operating and uniformly distributed eavesdroppers that can be present while the desired secrecy is achieved with high probability in the limit of a large number of system nodes. While our main motivation is considering eavesdroppers of unknown location, we first consider the case where the path-loss is identical between all pairs of nodes. In this case, a number of eavesdroppers that is exponential in the number of systems nodes can be tolerated. In the case of uniformly distributed eavesdroppers of unknown location, any number of eavesdroppers whose growth is sub-linear in the number of system nodes can be tolerated. The proposed approach significantly outperforms a power control approach based on standard multi-user diversity.
Cooperative communications is obviously an evolution in wireless networks due to its noticeable advantages such as increasing the coverage as well as combating fading and shadowing effects. However, the broadcast characteristic of a wireless medium which is exploited in cooperative communications leads to a variety of security vulnerabilities. As cooperative communication networks are globally expanded, they expose to security attacks and threats more than ever. Primarily, researchers have focused on upper layers of network architectures to meet the requirements for secure cooperative transmission while the upper-layer security solutions are incapable of combating a number of security threats, e.g., jamming attacks. To address this issue, physical-layer security has been recommended as a complementary solution in the literature. In this thesis, physical layer attacks of the cooperative communication systems are studied, and corresponding security techniques including cooperative jamming, beamforming and diversity approaches are investigated. In addition, a novel security solution for a two-hop decode-and-forward relaying system is presented where the transmitters insert a random phase shift to the modulated data of each hop. The random phase shift is created based on a shared secret among communicating entities. Thus, the injected phase shift confuses the eavesdropper and secrecy capacity improves. Furthermore, a cooperative jamming strategy for multi-hop decode-and-forward relaying systems is presented where multiple non-colluding illegitimate nodes can overhear the communication. The jamming signal is created by the transmitter of each hop while being sent with the primary signal. The jamming signal is known at the intended receiver as it is according to a secret common knowledge between the communicating entities. Hence, artificial noise misleads the eavesdroppers, and decreases their signal-to-noise-ratio. As a result, secrecy capacity of the system is improved. Finally, power allocation among friendly jamming and main signal is proposed to ensure that suggested scheme enhances secrecy.
Physical (PHY) layer security approaches for wireless communications can prevent eavesdropping without upper layer data encryption. However, they are hampered by wireless channel conditions: absent feedback, they are typically feasible only when the source-destination channel is better than the source-eavesdropper channel. Node cooperation is a means to overcome this challenge and improve the performance of secure wireless communications. This paper addresses secure communications of one source-destination pair with the help of multiple cooperating relays in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers. Three cooperative schemes are considered: decode-and-forward (DF), amplify-and-forward (AF), and cooperative jamming (CJ). For these schemes, the relays transmit a weighted version of a reencoded noise-free message signal (for DF), a received noisy source signal (for AF), or a common jamming signal (for CJ). Novel system designs are proposed, consisting of the determination of relay weights and the allocation of transmit power, that maximize the achievable secrecy rate subject to a transmit power constraint, or, minimize the transmit power subject to a secrecy rate constraint. For DF in the presence of one eavesdropper, closed-form optimal solutions are derived for the relay weights. For other problems, since the optimal relay weights are difficult to obtain, several criteria are considered leading to suboptimal but simple solutions, i.e., the complete nulling of the message signals at all eavesdroppers (for DF and AF), or the complete nulling of jamming signal at the destination (for CJ). Based on the designed relay weights, for DF in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers, and for CJ in the presence of one eavesdropper, the optimal power allocation is obtained in closed-form; in all other cases the optimal power allocation is obtained via iterative algorithms. Numerical evaluation of the obtained secrecy rate and transmit power results show that the proposed design can significantly improve the performance of secure wireless communications.
Cooperative jamming is an approach that has been recently proposed for improving physical layer based security for wireless networks in the presence of an eavesdropper. While the source transmits its message to its destination, a relay node transmits a jamming signal to create interference at the eavesdropper. In this paper, a scenario in which the relay is equipped with multiple antennas is considered. A novel system design is proposed for determining the antenna weights and transmit power of source and relay, so that the system secrecy rate is maximized subject to a total transmit power constraint, or, the transmit power is minimized subject to a secrecy rate constraint. Since the optimal solutions to these problems are difficult to obtain, suboptimal closed-form solutions are proposed that introduce an additional constraint, i.e., the complete nulling of jamming signal at the destination.
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 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.