The growth of wireless networks has been considerable over the last decades. Due to the broadcast nature of these networks, security issues have taken a critical role in today’s communications. A promising direction towards achieving secure communications is information theoretic secrecy, which is an approach exploiting the randomness of the channels to ensure secrecy. Based on this approach, there has been a recent surge of interest in a potential cooperation between users to enhance the secrecy of communications. In this thesis we investigate the interaction between cooperation and secrecy. In particular the contributions of the thesis can be divided into two parts. In the first part, we study cooperative strategies for secrecy for wireless channels. Our goal is to evaluate the effect of fading and limited CSI on the eavesdropper’s channels. In that purpose we consider a scenario where a helper aims at increasing the secrecy of the communication between a source and destination in the presence of an eavesdropper. Several strategies are discussed for the helper, namely decode-and-forward, amplify-and-forward, and cooperative jamming. We introduce the secrecy outage probability, the conditional secrecy outage probability and the secure throughput as secrecy measures. For each measure, we investigate and compare the secrecy performance of cooperation. We furthermore elaborate a system optimization in terms of strategy selection, node positioning, power allocation and rate design. In the second part, we consider cooperation in the 4-node scenario against a more sophisticated adversary: an active eavesdropper, which can either passively eavesdrop, or jam the transmission. A game-theoretic perspective is a natural way to analyze the competitive interaction between the helper and the eavesdropper. Therefore we define several secrecy games, for which we find the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria as well as the corresponding secrecy rate outcomes. Another important consideration in this scenario is the interaction between the source and the helper, which we model and solve as a Stackelberg game, and we illustrate its impact on the achievable secrecy rates.
The growth of wireless networks has been considerable over the last decades. Due to the broadcast nature of these networks, security issues have taken a critical role in today’s communications. A promising direction towards achieving secure communications is information theoretic secrecy, which is an approach exploiting the randomness of the channels to ensure secrecy. Based on this approach, there has been a recent surge of interest in a potential cooperation between users to enhance the secrecy of communications. In this thesis we investigate the interaction between cooperation and secrecy. In particular the contributions of the thesis can be divided into two parts. In the first part, we study cooperative strategies for secrecy for wireless channels. Our goal is to evaluate the effect of fading and limited CSI on the eavesdropper’s channels. In that purpose we consider a scenario where a helper aims at increasing the secrecy of the communication between a source and destination in the presence of an eavesdropper. Several strategies are discussed for the helper, namely decode-and-forward, amplify-and-forward, and cooperative jamming. We introduce the secrecy outage probability, the conditional secrecy outage probability and the secure throughput as secrecy measures. For each measure, we investigate and compare the secrecy performance of cooperation. We furthermore elaborate a system optimization in terms of strategy selection, node positioning, power allocation and rate design. In the second part, we consider cooperation in the 4-node scenario against a more sophisticated adversary: an active eavesdropper, which can either passively eavesdrop, or jam the transmission. A game-theoretic perspective is a natural way to analyze the competitive interaction between the helper and the eavesdropper. Therefore we define several secrecy games, for which we find the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria as well as the corresponding secrecy rate outcomes. Another important consideration in this scenario is the interaction between the source and the helper, which we model and solve as a Stackelberg game, and we illustrate its impact on the achievable secrecy rates.
The study of the physical layer has offered a new perspective to the problem of communication security. This led to the development of a vast set of ideas and techniques rooted in information theory which can be employed in practice to provide unbreakable security. The information-theoretic approach relies mainly on the physical nature of the communication medium. In a wireless medium, the unique features of the wireless communication channel, such as its fading and broadcast nature, can be exploited to achieve higher secure information rates. In this dissertation, we study the secure transmission problem in wireless channels from an information-theoretic perspective. We first consider the fading multiple access wiretap channel. We give two new achievable schemes that use the time-varying (fading) nature of the channel to align the interference from different users at the eavesdropper perfectly in a one-dimensional space while creating a higher-dimensional space for the interfering signals at the legitimate receiver hence allowing for better chance of recovery. While we achieve this alignment through signal scaling at the transmitters in our first scheme (scaling based alignment), we let nature provide this alignment through the ergodicity of the channel coefficients in the second scheme (ergodic secret alignment). For each scheme, we show that the achievable secrecy rates scale logarithmically with the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Next, we study the security gains that can be achieved in a wireless network by employing cooperation among the nodes which is possible due to the broadcast nature of the wireless channel. We investigate the role of passive (also known as deaf) cooperation in improving the achievable secrecy rates in a Gaussian multiple relay network with an external eavesdropper. We distinguish between two modes of deaf cooperation, namely, cooperative jamming (CJ) and noise forwarding (NF). We derive the conditions in which each mode of deaf cooperation achieves secrecy rates that are higher than the secrecy capacity of the original Gaussian wiretap channel. As a result, we show that a deaf helper cannot be a useful cooperative jammer and noise forwarder at the same time. We derive the optimal power control policy for each mode. We consider the deaf helper selection problem where a fixed-size set of deaf helpers (possibly operating in different modes) are to be selected from the set of available relays so that the achievable secrecy rate is maximized. We propose a simple and efficient suboptimal strategy for selection which is shown to be optimal when only one helper is selected. Furthermore, we study the role of a multi-antenna deaf helper. Unlike the single antenna case, we show that, in general, it is useful to split the helper's power between cooperative jamming and noise forwarding. Hence, we propose a deaf cooperation strategy for this model and derive its optimal power control policy. We also show, for specific class of relay-eavesdropper channels, that a simple cooperative jamming strategy yields a secrecy rate that approaches the secrecy capacity as the helper's power is increased. Finally, we consider the role of active cooperation for secrecy in the multiple relay networks. We propose several relaying strategies for secure communication and derive the achievable secrecy rate for each strategy. In our strategies the relays decode the source signal and then forward it to the destination either in a single-hop or a multi-hop fashion. Each relay scales its transmitted signal in a way that ensures that signal components from different relays are canceled out at the eavesdropper.
In this paper, we investigate a four single-antenna node network, constituted of a transmitter, a receiver, a cooperative node and a wiretapper. The wiretapper has the ability to eavesdrop the communication or disrupt the transmission by jamming. This results in both cases in the decrease of the secrecy rate. The cooperative node on the other hand aims to improve secrecy by either relaying or jamming. We investigate the secrecy performance of the decode-and-forward and cooperative jamming strategies against this kind of adversary. To model the interaction between the helper and the wiretapper, we define an extensive form game, for which we derive the pure and mixed strategies equilibria. Finally, we compare the performance of the schemes and we analyze the equilibrium outcomes through simulation results.
This paper investigates cooperative security in wireless networks, where a source (Alice) intends to transmit a confidential message to a legitimate destination (Bob), with the help of a cooperative jammer (Charlie), coexisting with multiple passive eavesdroppers (Eves). In particular, by assuming knowledge of Bob's perfect channel state information (CSI) but only Eves’ statistical CSIs, secrecy beamforming with artificial noise (AN) is utilized for secure transmission, and cooperative jamming (CJ) is explored to further enhance secrecy. We first derive an accurate closed-form expression for the secrecy outage probability (SOP), and establish the condition under which positive secrecy rate is achievable. Then, we provide a secure transmit design for maximizing the SOP constrained secrecy rate. Moreover, based on a strict mathematical analysis, we characterize the impact of the main channel quality and the number of Eves on transmit design and secrecy performance. Specifically, optimal power allocation ratio between the information-bearing signal and the AN signal increases as the main channel quality improves, and decreases with the number of Eves. Numerical results confirm that our design achieves performance improvement in terms of both secrecy rate and secure energy efficiency, as compared to the approach without CJ.
The growing demand for wireless communications systems makes security an important and difficult design task. Therefore, in this thesis we approached different studies at physical layer security considering different scenarios of partial secrecy requirements, multiple antennas and finite blocklenghts. With respect to the partial secrecy regime, we evaluate the secure energy efficiency (SEE) of a cooperative network subject to partial secrecy requirements, implemented through a fractional equivocation parameter θ ϵ (0, 1] that allows partial secrecy when θ < 1. We assume that only the channel state information (CSI) of the legitimate channel is available, while the CSI with respect to the eavesdropper is unknown. Then, we propose a CSI-Aided Decode-and-Forward (DF) scheme, in which the transmitter uses the available CSI in order to choose between direct and cooperative paths. Moreover, the relay employs either Repetition Coding (CSI-RC), i.e., source and relay use the same codebook, or Parallel Coding (CSI-PC), when different codebooks are used. By resorting to the Dinkelbach algorithm, we propose a joint power allocation scheme, which also optimizes θ to maximize the SEE. Our schemes are compared with the traditional DF, Amplify-and-Forward (AF), and Cooperative Jamming (CJ). Extending the previous analysis, we also study the SEE in a cooperative scenario where all nodes are equipped with multiple antennas. Moreover, we employ secrecy rate and power allocation at Alice and at the relay in order to maximize the SEE, subjected to a constraint in terms of a minimal required secrecy outage probability. Considering this MIMO scenario in which only the CSI with respect to the legitimate nodes is available at Alice, we compare the Artificial-Noise (AN) scheme with CSI-Aided Decode-and-Forward (CSI-DF). Lastly, considering a more restrictive scenario with respect to the CSI, but more realistic, in which the legitimate transmitter has no knowledge of the instantaneous channel state information with respect to neither the legitimate receiver nor the eavesdropper, we investigate the secure throughput in a delay-critical scenario, such as in some applications of machine-to-machine communications, so that users communicate with a finite blocklength. In this approach, the performance of direct and selective decode-and-forward cooperative communication strategies are compared.
This dissertation investigates the physical layer security of wireless communication networks using game-theoretic and optimization models. Considered is a wireless network of parallel channels that may be under eavesdropping attack. Game models are played between a friendly interferer (he) who can broadcast artificial noise and a strategic eavesdropper (she). The friendly interferer wants to maximize the secrecy level of the wireless communication network by decreasing the eavesdropper's listening capability with intentionally generated noise signals, while the eavesdropper wants to maximize her own capability and avoid interference. The game-theoretic models reflect the strategic confrontation between the friendly interferer and the eavesdropper in different communication environments. These models address some of the limitations in literature. Most existing resource allocation strategies for friendly interference adopt the conservative assumption that all parallel channels are under attack. Game-theoretic approaches provide more efficient strategies to the friendly interferer by anticipating the channels to be attacked by the eavesdropper. The first model considers the case in which the friendly interferer can flexibly allocate cooperative jamming power to all communication channels in the network under a total power constraint. When all channels used for secret communication are under the threat of eavesdropping attacks, the optimal power allocation policy results from solving a convex optimization problem. In this case, the optimal policy is unique and can be obtained via a water-filling scheme. When the eavesdropper can not attack all channels, the eavesdropper should behave strategically and may select the targets probabilistically. In this case, a non-zero-sum game helps the friendly interferer predict and concentrate on the targets selected by the eavesdropper. When the eavesdropper can only attack a single channel, an analytical form of the NE strategies is presented; while an iterative numerical method that guarantees the convergence to NE strategies is proposed if the eavesdropper can attack multiple channels. Compared to naive power allocation strategies, such as splitting the power equally to each channel, the game-theoretic power allocation strategy always delivers better expected total secrecy capacity. Next, an extension of the power allocation game for cooperative jamming models the case in which the state information of the eavesdropping channels may not be known completely. New utility functions for the friendly interferer and the eavesdropper are designed to include the distributional information of eavesdropping channels' state information. A non-zero sum game using the new utility functions is analyzed between the friendly interferer and the strategic eavesdropper who can only attack a limited number of channels. Note that the friendly interferer may not have the capability to send cooperative jamming signals to multiple channels simultaneously. For such a friendly interferer, a probabilistic cooperative jamming scheme is devised such that the defender focuses on protecting randomly selected channels. In the mean time, the eavesdropper selects the most vulnerable channels to attack. A linearly constrained non-zero-sum bimatrix game models the competition between the defender and the eavesdropper. The Nash equilibrium is shown to be equivalent to the solution of a quadratic programming problem. A closed form solution is derived for the special case in which the eavesdropper can only attack a single channel. We show that there exists a cut-off index determining the set of channels that will be covered in the equilibrium strategies. Furthermore, the adverse effect of the interference signal plays an important role in the value of the cut-off index and it represents the vulnerability of wireless communication networks against eavesdroppers Wireless communication networks of parallel channels actually share a lot of similarities with general cyber networks. Thus, the final model in this dissertation is a cost-efficient network security game for defensive resource allocation in a heterogeneous cyber network of N nodes. A defender, by allocating defensive resources to a networked node, can decrease the node's vulnerabilities. At the same time, the cost of using defensive resources is taken into consideration. Two non-zero-sum Nash games model the competition between the defender and two types of attackers, respectively. The first type tries to maximize damage based on the value of security assets related to networked nodes, while the second type aims at infiltrating the network. Consideration of the case that the defender does not know the attacker's type leads to a Bayesian game. For all three games, we derive conditions for the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium (NE), and obtain the equilibria and the value functions in closed form.
The prominence of the wireless communication has been urging the monotonically increasing demand of security and privacy. In wireless systems, the notion of perfect secrecy of information with respect to illegitimate nodes can be ensured via physical layer security (PLS) techniques. Unfortunately, they can be made less effective if source- eavesdropper wiretap channel is better than the main source-receiver channel. The various node cooperation schemes can be employed to combat this limitation where a relay node assists the communication to improve the performance significantly. In this paper, a four node wireless communication system consisting of a source, a destination, a relay and an eavesdropper as wire-tapper has been considered. The performance of the traditional cooperation schemes in terms of secrecy rate has been investigated with a different scenario where relay node helps the eavesdropper to deteriorate the secrecy rate. In addition, since legitimate receiver can overhear the transmission of relay, it favours the achievable secrecy rate. We formulate an analytical expression of conditional secrecy outage probability for the investigated system. From the obtained simulation results, it has been observed that secrecy rate is monotonically increases with path loss index. Furthermore, the proper selection of the system parameters leads to enhance the secrecy performance of the system even if relay pertains to degrade the performance. Amplify-and-forward, cooperation, decode-and-Forward, secrecy rate, relay.