We investigate the fundamental communication limits when messages are sent via a Gaussian two-way channel, which must at the same time be kept secret from an external eavesdropper. In this two-way wiretap channel that models two legitimate transceivers and an eavesdropping receiver, there are two techniques to provide confidentiality for the messages: one entails the legitimate nodes to jam the eavesdropper, i.e., cooperative jamming, while the other entails generating keys from the feedback signals received by the two legitimate nodes and using them to encrypt the messages. Previous work has shown that both methods can be used concurrently to improve the secrecy rates of a channel with a degradedness condition. In this work, we consider the general case, and derive a new outer bound for the secrecy capacity region of this channel. A case is identified where the loss in secrecy rate, due to ignoring the backward (feedback) link at each legitimate transmitter from the other, is bounded by a constant which only depends on the channel gains. This is the case when the power of the two legitimate nodes increases proportionally. In all other cases, we show that ignoring feedback signals causes unbounded loss in the secrecy rate. The loss is measured as the gap between the achievable rate when the feedback signals are taken into account, and the upper bound when the feedback is not used, and hence is not affected by the choice of the achievable scheme. This result therefore establishes that, for the Gaussian two-way channel with an external eavesdropper, the encoders need to be designed with memory. This is in contrast to the result for this channel in the absence of an eavesdropper.
We investigate the fundamental communication limits when messages are sent via a Gaussian two-way channel, which must at the same time be kept secret from an external eavesdropper. In this two-way wiretap channel that models two legitimate transceivers and an eavesdropping receiver, there are two techniques to provide confidentiality for the messages: one entails the legitimate nodes to jam the eavesdropper, i.e., cooperative jamming, while the other entails generating keys from the feedback signals received by the two legitimate nodes and using them to encrypt the messages. Previous work has shown that both methods can be used concurrently to improve the secrecy rates of a channel with a degradedness condition. In this work, we consider the general case, and derive a new outer bound for the secrecy capacity region of this channel. A case is identified where the loss in secrecy rate, due to ignoring the backward (feedback) link at each legitimate transmitter from the other, is bounded by a constant which only depends on the channel gains. This is the case when the power of the two legitimate nodes increases proportionally. In all other cases, we show that ignoring feedback signals causes unbounded loss in the secrecy rate. The loss is measured as the gap between the achievable rate when the feedback signals are taken into account, and the upper bound when the feedback is not used, and hence is not affected by the choice of the achievable scheme. This result therefore establishes that, for the Gaussian two-way channel with an external eavesdropper, the encoders need to be designed with memory. This is in contrast to the result for this channel in the absence of an eavesdropper.
Most practical communication links are bidirectional. In these models, since the source node also receives signals, its encoder has the option of computing its output based on the signals it received in the past. On the other hand, from a practical point of view, it would also be desirable to identify the cases where such an encoder design may not improve communication rates. This question is particularly interesting for the case where the transmitted messages and the feedback signals are subject to eavesdropping. In this paper, we investigate the question of how much impact the feedback has on the secrecy capacity by studying two fundamental models. First, we consider the Gaussian two-way wiretap channel and derive an outer bound for its secrecy capacity region. We show that the secrecy rate loss can be unbounded when feedback signals are not utilized except for a special case we identify, and thus conclude that utilizing feedback can be highly beneficial in general. Second, we consider a half-duplex Gaussian two-way relay channel where the relay node is also an eavesdropper, and find that the impact of feedback is less pronounced compared to the previous scenario. Specifically, the loss in secrecy rate, when ignoring the feedback, is quantified to be less than 0.5 bit per channel use when the relay power goes to infinity. This achievable rate region is obtained with simple time sharing along with cooperative jamming, which, with its simplicity and near optimum performance, is a viable alternative to an encoder that utilizes feedback signals.
For bi-directional communication, the most general form of encoders should consider the signals received in the past as inputs. However, in practice, it would also be highly desirable if feedback could be ignored for encoding purposes since this would lead to a simple system design. In this work, we investigate the question of whether and how much loss in secrecy rate would be incurred, if such an approach were taken. To do so, we investigate the role of feedback in secrecy for two three-node two-way channel models. First, we show that feedback is indeed useful for a class of full-duplex two-way wire-tap channels. In this case, when feedback is ignored, the channel is equivalent to a Gaussian degraded relay channel with confidential messages to the relay. The usefulness of feedback is demonstrated by deriving an upper bound for this channel when feedback is ignored, and then proving that, when feedback is used, a secrecy rate higher than this upper bound is achievable. Secondly, we consider the half-duplex Gaussian two-way relay channel where there is an eavesdropper co-located with the relay node, and find that the impact of feedback is less pronounced compared to the previous scenario. Specifically, the loss in secrecy rate, when ignoring the feedback, is quantified to be less than 0.5 bit per channel use when the power of the relay goes to infinity. We also show that this rate region is achievable under a simple time sharing scheme with cooperative jamming, which, with its simplicity and near-optimum performance, is a viable alternative to an encoder using feedback.
We study the secrecy capacity of Gaussian wiretap channel aided by an external jammer/helper. Both the transmitter and the intended receiver are equipped with a single antenna, while the eavesdropper and the jammer are equipped withMandNantennas, respectively. Generally, an analytical form of the secrecy capacity in this scenario is difficult to obtain. Instead, we consider a null-space jamming scheme which totally nulls out the jamming signal at the legitimate receiver, and derive lower and upper bounds on its maximal achievable secrecy rateRN. The relationship between the average secrecy capacityCˉNof Gaussian wiretap channel and the average secrecy rateRˉNachieved by the null-space jamming scheme is investigated, and we prove thatRˉN≤CˉN≤RˉN+1. Based on this inequality and the derived lower and upper bounds onRN, the upper and lower bounds on the average secrecy capacity of Gaussian wiretap channel aided by an external jammer can be obtained, where our result shows that whenN>M, the average secrecy capacity increases linearly with the total transmit power; while whenN≤M−1, there exists a performance ceiling on it.
We study the degraded multi-receiver wiretap channel with public and confidential messages. In this channel, there is a transmitter that wishes to communicate with two legitimate users in the presence of an external eavesdropper. The legitimate users and the eavesdropper satisfy a certain degradation order. In this paper, we study this channel model for the scenario where the transmitter sends a pair of public and confidential messages to each legitimate user. While there are no secrecy constraints on the public messages, confidential messages need to be transmitted in perfect secrecy. First, we obtain an inner bound for the capacity region of the discrete memoryless channel by using an achievable scheme that uses superposition coding and binning. Next, we obtain an outer bound for the capacity region of the degraded discrete memoryless channel. We show that this outer bound partially matches the inner bound. Consequently, we provide a partial characterization of the capacity region of the degraded discrete memoryless channel. Finally, we consider the degraded Gaussian multi-input multi-output (MIMO) wiretap channel with public and confidential messages. We show that, to evaluate both the inner and outer bounds for the Gaussian MIMO case, considering only jointly Gaussian auxiliary random variables and channel input is sufficient. Since the inner and outer bounds provided earlier for the degraded discrete memoryless channel partially match, these sufficiency results provide a partial characterization of the capacity region of the degraded Gaussian MIMO channel.
In this paper, the one-sided secrecy of two-way wiretap channel with feedback is investigated, where the confidential messages of one user through multiple transmissions is guaranteed secure against an external eavesdropper. For one thing, one-sided secrecy satisfies the secure demand of many practical scenarios. For another, the secrecy is measured over many blocks since the correlation between eavesdropper's observation and the confidential messages in successive blocks, instead of secrecy measurement of one block in previous works. Thus, firstly, an achievable secrecy rate region is derived for the general two-way wiretap channel with feedback through multiple transmissions under one-sided secrecy. Secondly, outer bounds on the secrecy capacity region are also obtained. The gap between inner and outer bounds on the secrecy capacity region is explored via the binary input two-way wiretap channels. Most notably, the secrecy capacity regions are established for the XOR channel. Furthermore, the result shows that the achievable rate region with feedback is larger than that without feedback. Therefore, the benefit role of feedback is precisely characterized for two-way wiretap channel with feedback under one-sided secrecy.
We study the multi-receiver wiretap channel with public and confidential messages. In this channel, there is a transmitter that wishes to communicate with two legitimate users in the presence of an external eavesdropper. The transmitter sends a pair of public and confidential messages to each legitimate user. While there are no secrecy constraints on the public messages, confidential messages need to be transmitted in perfect secrecy. We study the discrete memoryless multi-receiver wiretap channel as well as its Gaussian multi-input multi-output (MIMO) instance. First, we consider the degraded discrete memoryless channel, and obtain an inner bound for the capacity region by using an achievable scheme that uses superposition coding and binning. Next, we obtain an outer bound, and show that this outer bound partially matches the inner bound, providing a partial characterization for the capacity region of the degraded channel model. Second, we obtain an inner bound for the general, not necessarily degraded, discrete memoryless channel by using Marton's inner bound, superposition coding, rate-splitting and binning. Third, we consider the degraded Gaussian MIMO channel, and show that, to evaluate both the inner and outer bounds, considering only jointly Gaussian auxiliary random variables and channel input is sufficient. Since the inner and outer bounds partially match, these sufficiency results provide a partial characterization of the capacity region of the degraded Gaussian MIMO channel. Finally, we provide an inner bound for the capacity region of the general, not necessarily degraded, Gaussian MIMO multi-receiver wiretap channel.