The Internet of Things (IoT) depicts a bright future, where any devices having sensorial and computing capabilities can interact with each other. Among all existing technologies, the techniques for the fifth generation (5G) systems are the main driving force for the actualization of IoT concept. However, due to the heterogeneous environment in 5G networks and the broadcast nature of radio propagation, the security assurance against eavesdropping is a vital yet challenging task. In this paper, we focus on the transmission design for secure relay communications in IoT networks, where the communication is exposed to eavesdroppers with unknown number and locations. The randomize-and-forward relay strategy specially designed for secure multi-hop communications is employed in our transmission protocol. First, we consider a single-antenna scenario, where all the devices in the network are equipped with the single antenna. We derive the expression for the secrecy outage probability of the two-hop transmission. Following this, a secrecy-rate-maximization problem subject to a secrecy-outage-probability constraint is formulated. The optimal power allocation and codeword rate design are obtained. Furthermore, we generalize the above analyses to a more generic scenario, where the relay and eavesdroppers are equipped with multiple antennas. Numerical results show that the proper use of relay transmission can enhance the secrecy throughput and extend the secure coverage range.
The Internet of Things (IoT) depicts a bright future, where any devices having sensorial and computing capabilities can interact with each other. Among all existing technologies, the techniques for the fifth generation (5G) systems are the main driving force for the actualization of IoT concept. However, due to the heterogeneous environment in 5G networks and the broadcast nature of radio propagation, the security assurance against eavesdropping is a vital yet challenging task. In this paper, we focus on the transmission design for secure relay communications in IoT networks, where the communication is exposed to eavesdroppers with unknown number and locations. The randomize-and-forward relay strategy specially designed for secure multi-hop communications is employed in our transmission protocol. First, we consider a single-antenna scenario, where all the devices in the network are equipped with the single antenna. We derive the expression for the secrecy outage probability of the two-hop transmission. Following this, a secrecy-rate-maximization problem subject to a secrecy-outage-probability constraint is formulated. The optimal power allocation and codeword rate design are obtained. Furthermore, we generalize the above analyses to a more generic scenario, where the relay and eavesdroppers are equipped with multiple antennas. Numerical results show that the proper use of relay transmission can enhance the secrecy throughput and extend the secure coverage range.
We propose a secure transmission scheme for a relay wiretap channel, where a source communicates with a destination via a decode-and- forward relay in the presence of spatially random- distributed eavesdroppers. We assume that the source is equipped with multiple antennas, whereas the relay, the destination, and the eavesdroppers are equipped with a single antenna each. In the proposed scheme, in addition to information signals, the source transmits artificial noise signals in order to confuse the eavesdroppers. With the target of maximizing the secrecy throughput of the relay wiretap channel, we derive a closed-form expression for the transmission outage probability and an easy-to-compute expression for the secrecy outage probability. Using these expressions, we determine the optimal power allocation factor and wiretap code rates that guarantee the maximum secrecy throughput, while satisfying a secrecy outage probability constraint. Furthermore, we examine the impact of source antenna number on the secrecy throughput, showing that adding extra transmit antennas at the source brings about a significant increase in the secrecy throughput.
Relay transmission can expand the coverage area and improve the communication reliability. However, it may face higher eavesdropping risk due to the additional relay-destination retransmission, which provides eavesdroppers with a second chance to intercept the confidential message. To guarantee the communication secrecy, specially designed transmission strategies are needed. In this paper, we concentrate on the secrecy assurance of a relay network, which is surrounded by colluding eavesdroppers with unknown locations. Specifically, we aim to maximize the secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the power allocation and relay placement. First, we derive the exact expression of the secrecy outage probability. After imposing a constraint on the outage probability, we formulate a secrecy-rate- maximization problem, which is difficult to solve. By using an upper bound, we transform the original problem into a new one, the solution to which is also feasible for the original problem. We then obtain the optimal power allocation between the source and the relay and find the relay's best location to maximize the secrecy rate. It is noted that the derived optimal power allocation is independent of the instantaneous channel state information (CSI), which avoids the frequent change of transmit power and lowers the system complexity. Finally, numerical results are presented to validate our analyses.
Physical layer security is a promising way to secure the wireless communications in the Internet of Things (IoT). Motivated by the fact that the limited feedback resources in the IoT network would degrade the secrecy advantage of the multiple-antenna technique, we attempt to investigate the problem of how many transmit antennas should be utilized to perform secure communications. In particular, we consider the heterogeneous IoT downlink network and design a multiuser secure transmission scheme. In this scheme, the zero-forcing beamforming technique is adopted to serve the IoT legitimate users, and the remaining spatial freedoms are utilized to send artificial noise (AN) for confusing the passive eavesdroppers. Given the secrecy outage constraints, we derive the closed-form expression for the network secrecy throughput and formulate a non-convex optimization problem with multiple parameters, e.g., the number of transmit antennas, the wiretap codes, the feedback bits allocation strategy, and the power allocation ratio between the information bearing signal and the AN. To effectively tackle this problem, we develop an optimization framework involving the block coordinate descent algorithm and the 1-D search method. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed optimization framework and show that the optimal number of transmit antennas increases as the secrecy outage constraints become stricter, or the feedback resources become scarcer.
A secure downlink transmission system which is exposed to multiple eavesdroppers and is appropriate for Internet of Things (IoT) applications is considered. A worst case scenario is assumed, in the sense that, in order to enhance their interception ability all eavesdroppers are located close to each other, near the controller and collude to form joint receive beamforming. For such a system, a novel cooperative nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) secure transmission scheme for which an IoT device with a stronger channel condition acts as an energy harvesting relay in order to assist a second IoT device operating under weaker channel conditions, is proposed and its performance is analyzed and evaluated. A secrecy sum rate (SSR) maximization problem is formulated and solved under three constraints: 1) transmit power; 2) successive interference cancellation; and 3) quality of service. By considering both passive and active eavesdroppers scenarios, two optimization schemes are proposed to improve the overall system SSR. On the one hand, for the passive eavesdropper scenario, an artificial noise-aided secure beamforming scheme is proposed. Since this optimization problem is nonconvex, instead of using traditional but highly complex, brute-force 2-D search, it is conveniently transformed into a convex one by using an epigraph reformulation. On the other hand, for the active multiantennas eavesdroppers’ scenario, the orthogonal-projection-based beamforming scheme is considered, and by employing the successive convex approximation method, a suboptimal solution is proposed. Furthermore, since for single antenna transmission the orthogonal-projection-based scheme may not be applicable a simple power control scheme is proposed. Various performance evaluation results obtained by means of computer simulations have verified that the proposed schemes outperform other benchmark schemes in terms of SSR performance.
In this paper, the radio frequency energy harvesting (EH) and security issues in Internet of Things (IoT) sensor networks with multiple untrusted relays are considered. In particular, the communication protocol is divided into two phases. The first phase is used for EH, in which the IoT sensor nodes (SNs) and relays harvest energy from multiple power transfer stations. The second phase is used for information transmission in two steps: 1) the selected SN uses the harvested energy to broadcast information to the controller and the relays, and 2) the selected relay forwards information to the controller by applying the amplify-and-forward protocol to improve the quality of the communication between the SN and the controller. During information transmission, the controller is at risk of losing information because the relay may act as an eavesdropper (namely, an untrusted relay). Thus, to improve the secrecy performance of the considered system, we propose an optimal scheme, namely, best-sensor-best-untrusted-relay (BSBR) and compare this scheme with random-sensor-random-untrusted-relay and a threshold-based scheme. The closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and secrecy throughput (ST) are obtained and verified through Monte Carlo simulations to confirm the superior performance of our approach. EH time optimization and the target secrecy rate optimization algorithms are also proposed. In addition, the impacts of the EH time, the EH efficiency coefficient, the numbers of SNs and untrusted relays, and the target secrecy rate on the SOP and the ST are investigated. The results indicate that the BSBR generally outperforms the two baseline schemes in terms of the SOP and ST.
The Internet of Things (IoT) depicts a giant network where every “thing” can be interconnected through the communication network. The communication can be initiated between people-people, people-things, and things-things. Meanwhile, the fifth generation (5G) mobile communicating systems are the mainspring to power the IoT concept in the upcoming future. However, the heterogeneous environment in 5G networks as well as the high dependency on radio spectrum have raised deep concerns about the security assurance against network attacks such as eavesdropping. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end security mechanism to ensure the multi-hop relay communications in 5G based IoT networks to stay secured. We design a scenario to explain the insecure multi-hop relay communications which involves Base Station (BS), Subscriber Station (SS) and Relay Station (RS). Next, we utilize Quantum Cryptography between BS to RS and RS to RS as well as adopting Elliptic Curve Cryptography between BS to SS or RS to SS to mitigate the network against typical replay attacks. By using the concept of integrating both cryptographic methods, the secret key that yield from Quantum Cryptography will be used in Elliptic Curve Cryptography to secure the transmission of information across IoT networks. Thereupon, extensive discussion has been carried out and it shows that the suggested mechanism has potential to ensure confidentiality, integrity, availability and non-repudiation in the proposed scenario. In the final part of this paper, we conclude our study by a comparison analysis between the two proposed cryptographic solutions. The comparison analysis illustrates the performance of each proposed strategy in terms of the achievable level of secrecy in IoT networks.