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Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers (ACSSC)

Physical layer security in massive MIMO systems

Rafael F. Schaefer, Gayan Amarasuriya, H. Vincent Poor

Published Oct 1, 2017• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An overview over secure communication in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is presented. A massive MIMO base-station serves multiple user nodes by provisioning physical layer security techniques to secure the confidential transmissions against an eavesdropper. The eavesdropper can either be passively eavesdropping upon the communication or can actively contaminate the channel estimates. The achievable secrecy rates for these settings are reviewed, and their asymptotic behavior is discussed. Finally, a detection scheme for active pilot contamination attacks is discussed.

DOI
10.1109/acssc.2017.8335124

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International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Iterative Information Processing•Sep 1, 2016•3 citations
An overview over secure communication in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is presented. A massive MIMO base-station serves multiple user nodes by provisioning physical layer security techniques to secure the confidential transmissions against an eavesdropper. The eavesdropper can either be passively eavesdropping upon the communication or can actively contaminate the channel estimates. The achievable secrecy rates for these settings are reviewed, and their asymptotic behavior is discussed. Finally, a detection scheme for active pilot contamination attacks is discussed.
The achievable secrecy rates for a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) in the presence of a single-antenna active eavesdropper are derived and compared with that of co-located massive MIMO. The active eavesdropper contaminates the uplink channel estimates at the access points (APs), and the downlink precoders at the APs are constructed based on this contaminated channel estimates. Hence, the APs inadvertently beamform confidential information towards the active eavesdropper during the downlink transmission. The achievable rates at the legitimate user nodes and the rates leaked into the active eavesdropper are derived for estimated/imperfect channel state information in the finite and infinite regimes of the number of APs. A transmit power allocation algorithm for maximizing the achievable secrecy rate is developed. Our analysis and numerical results reveal that the rate leaked into the eavesdropper can be of significance in the presence of active pilot attacks in cell-free massive MIMO.
In this paper, a secure communication model for cognitive multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with underlay spectrum sharing is investigated. A secondary (cognitive) multi-user massive MIMO system is operated by using underlay spectrum sharing within a primary (licensed) multi-user massive MIMO system. A passive multi-antenna eavesdropper is assumed to be eavesdropping upon either the primary or secondary confidential transmissions. To this end, a physical layer security strategy is provisioned for the primary and secondary transmissions via artificial noise (AN) generation at the primary base-station (PBS) and zero-forcing precoders. Specifically, the precoders are constructed by using the channel estimates with pilot contamination. In order to degrade the interception of confidential transmissions at the eavesdropper, the AN sequences are transmitted at the PBS by exploiting the excess degrees-of-freedom offered by its massive antenna array and by using random AN shaping matrices. The channel estimates at the PBS and secondary base-station (SBS) are obtained by using non-orthogonal pilot sequences transmitted by the primary user nodes (PUs) and secondary user nodes (SUs), respectively. Hence, these channel estimates are affected by intra-cell pilot contamination. In this context, the detrimental effects of intra-cell pilot contamination and channel estimation errors for physical layer secure communication are investigated. For this system set-up, the average and asymptotic achievable secrecy rate expressions are derived in closed-form. Specifically, these performance metrics are studied for imperfect channel state information (CSI) and for perfect CSI, and thereby, the secrecy rate degradation due to inaccurate channel knowledge and intra-cell pilot contamination is quantified. Our analysis reveals that a physical layer secure communication can be provisioned for both primary and secondary massive MIMO systems even with the channel estimation errors and pilot contamination.
In this paper, the detrimental effects of intra-cell pilot contamination for physical layer secure communication in cognitive multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with underlay spectrum sharing are investigated. The channel estimates at the primary base-station (PBS) and secondary base-station are obtained by using non-orthogonal pilot sequences transmitted by the primary user nodes and secondary user nodes, respectively. Hence, these channel estimates are affected by intra-cell pilot contamination. Furthermore, a passive multi-antenna eavesdropper is assumed to be eavesdropping upon either the primary or secondary confidential transmissions. In this context, a physical layer security strategy is provisioned for the primary and secondary transmissions via artificial noise generation at the PBS and zero-forcing precoders. For this system set-up, the average and asymptotic achievable secrecy rate expressions are derived in closed-form, and thereby, the secrecy rate degradation due to intra-cell pilot contamination is quantified. Our analysis reveals that a physical layer secure communication can be provisioned for both primary and secondary massive MIMO systems even with channel estimation errors and pilot contamination.
In this paper, we consider physical layer security provisioning in multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Specifically, we consider secure downlink transmission in a multi-cell massive MIMO system with matched-filter precoding and artificial noise (AN) generation at the base station (BS) in the presence of a passive multi-antenna eavesdropper. We investigate the resulting achievable ergodic secrecy rate and the secrecy outage probability for the cases of perfect training and pilot contamination. Thereby, we consider two different AN shaping matrices, namely, the conventional AN shaping matrix, where the AN is transmitted in the null space of the matrix formed by all user channels, and a random AN shaping matrix, which avoids the complexity associated with finding the null space of a large matrix. Our analytical and numerical results reveal that in multi-cell massive MIMO systems employing matched-filter precoding (1) AN generation is required to achieve a positive ergodic secrecy rate if the user and the eavesdropper experience the same path-loss, (2) even with AN generation secure transmission may not be possible if the number of eavesdropper antennas is too large and not enough power is allocated to channel estimation, (3) for a given fraction of power allocated to AN and a given number of users, in case of pilot contamination, the ergodic secrecy rate is not a monotonically increasing function of the number of BS antennas, and (4) random AN shaping matrices provide a favourable performance/complexity tradeoff and are an attractive alternative to conventional AN shaping matrices.
In this paper, a secure communication system model for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks is investigated. Specifically, physical layer secure transmission is provisioned in multi-user relay networks by employing massive MIMO, linear precoder/detectors and artificial noise generation in the presence of a passive multi-antenna eavesdropper. In particular, the achievable asymptotic secrecy rate for infinitely many relay antennas is derived. The use of random artificial noise shaping matrices is advocated for massive MIMO relays for the sake of reducing the system implementation complexity. The effects of the numbers of antennas at the relay and the eavesdropper in achieving secure communication are investigated by comparing the corresponding achievable secrecy rates.
In this paper, a secure communication model for cognitive multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with underlay spectrum sharing is investigated. A secondary (cognitive) multi-user massive MIMO system is underlaid within a primary (licensed) multi-user massive MIMO system. A passive multi-antenna eavesdropper is eavesdropping upon either the primary or secondary transmission. To this end, physical layer secure transmissions are provisioned for both primary and secondary systems by exploiting linear precoders and artificial noise (AN) generation. The excess degrees-of-freedom at the primary massive MIMO base-station are exploited to transmit the AN sequence by using random AN shaping matrices for the purpose of degrading the signal decodability at the eavesdropper. Achievable asymptotic secrecy rates for infinitely many base-station antennas are derived, and these secrecy rates are shown to be independent of the eavesdropper channels. Moreover, for infinitely many secondary base-station antennas, the secondary system becomes independent of the primary system allowing it to operate at its maximum transmission power without disturbing the primary system.