A physical layer approach to security for wireless networks is considered. In single-antenna wireless systems, such approaches are hampered by channel conditions in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers. Cooperation has the potential to overcome this problem and improve the security of of wireless communications. In this paper, an amplify-and-forward based cooperative protocol is proposed. Assuming availability of global channel state information, system design that maximizes the secrecy capacity is considered. Since the optimal solution to this problem is intractable, suboptimal closed-form solutions are proposed that optimize bounds on secrecy capacity for the case of a single eavesdropper, or that introduce additional constraints, such as nulling of signals at all eavesdroppers, for the case of multiple eavesdroppers.
A physical layer approach to security for wireless networks is considered. In single-antenna wireless systems, such approaches are hampered by channel conditions in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers. Cooperation has the potential to overcome this problem and improve the security of of wireless communications. In this paper, an amplify-and-forward based cooperative protocol is proposed. Assuming availability of global channel state information, system design that maximizes the secrecy capacity is considered. Since the optimal solution to this problem is intractable, suboptimal closed-form solutions are proposed that optimize bounds on secrecy capacity for the case of a single eavesdropper, or that introduce additional constraints, such as nulling of signals at all eavesdroppers, for the case of multiple eavesdroppers.
The feasibility of physical-layer-based security approaches for wireless communications in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers is hampered by channel conditions. In this paper, cooperation is investigated as an approach to overcome this problem and improve the performance of secure communications. In particular, a decode-and-forward (DF) based cooperative protocol is considered, and the objective is to design the system for secrecy capacity maximization or transmit power minimization. System design for the DF-based cooperative protocol is first studied by assuming the availability of global channel state information (CSI). For the case of one eavesdropper, an iterative scheme is proposed to obtain the optimal solution for the problem of transmit power minimization. For the case of multiple eavesdroppers, the problem of secrecy capacity maximization or transmit power minimization is in general intractable. Suboptimal system design is proposed by adding an additional constraint, i.e., the complete nulling of signals at all eavesdroppers, which yields simple closed-form solutions for the aforementioned two problems. Then, the impact of imperfect CSI of eavesdroppers on system design is studied, in which the ergodic secrecy capacity is of interest.
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.
Wireless communications system designs are sought that rely on the potential of the physical (PHY) layer to allow a transmitter-receiver pair communicate securely in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers. Communication is performed with the help of multiple trusted relays, via the decode-and-forward (DF) protocol, and assuming knowledge of global channel state information (CSI). Instead of dealing with information-theoretic security, we assume that eavesdroppers have bounded resources, and therefore we need to assure that the transmitted information is computationally secure; this is shown to impose constraints on the maximum power of the signals received by the eavesdroppers. The optimal relay weights that maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) difference SNRd- SNRebetween the destination and the eavesdroppers are determined under various (transmit, security, reliability) power constraints. Closed-form solutions are obtained in some problem formulations for one eavesdropper, whereas an iterative algorithm is proposed if more eavesdroppers are present. Simulation results indicate that a higher SNR value (compared to the non-cooperative case) is attained at the destination, while satisfying the security constraints.
We employed node cooperation in a cooperative wireless network to achieve physical layer- based security. The case of a source-destination pair that works with the assistance of multiple cooperating nodes in the presence of an eavesdropper was considered in this study to improve the performance of secure wireless communications. A novel cooperative scheme, called the decode-and-forward plus cooperative jamming (DFCJ), was proposed. In this scheme, relay nodes transmit a weighted version of the source signals plus a common weighted jamming signal to confound the eavesdropper. The novel system design was proposed to determine cooperative node weights and transmit power allocation. In DFCJ, a closed-form solution is obtained to minimize the total transmit power that is subjected to a secrecy rate constraint under complete nulling of jamming signals at the destination. The results of the numerical evaluation of the transmit power and the obtained secrecy rate show that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the performance of wireless physical layer security compared with the original decode-and-forward scheme.
We consider a cooperative wireless network in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers, and exploit node cooperation for achieving physical (PHY) layer based security. Two different cooperation schemes are considered. In the first scheme, cooperating nodes retransmit a weighted version of the source signal in a decode-and-forward (DF) fashion. In the second scheme, referred to as cooperative jamming (CJ), while the source is transmitting, cooperating nodes transmit weighted noise to confound the eavesdropper. We investigate two objectives: i) maximization of the achievable secrecy rate subject to a total power constraint and ii) minimization of the total power transmit power under a secrecy rate constraint. For the first design objective, we obtain the exact solution for the DF scheme for the case of a single or multiple eavasdroppers, while for the CJ scheme with a single eavesdropper we reduce the multivariate problem to a problem of one variable. For the second design objective, existing work introduces additional constraints in order to reduce the degree of difficulty, thus resulting in suboptimal solutions. Our work raises those constraints, and obtains either an analytical solution for the DF scheme with a single eavesdropper, or reduces the multivariate problem to a problem of one variable for the CJ scheme with a single eavesdropper. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the proposed results and compare them to existing work.