A visible light communication (VLC) broadcast channel is considered, in which a transmitter communicates with two receivers in the presence of an external eavesdropper. Trusted cooperative half-duplex relays are deployed to aid with securing the transmitted data. Transmission is amplitude-constrained to maintain operation within the light emitting diodes (LEDs) dynamic range. Achievable secrecy rate regions are derived under such amplitude constraints for this multi receiver wiretap channel, first for direct transmission without the relays, and then for cooperative jamming, decode-and-forward, and amplify-and-forward relaying schemes. Superposition coding with uniform signaling is used for transmission, along with secure beamforming at the relays. Superiority of the secure relaying schemes over direct transmission is shown, with performance depending on how far the eavesdropper is from the transmitter and the relays.
A visible light communication (VLC) broadcast channel is considered, in which a transmitter communicates with two receivers in the presence of an external eavesdropper. Trusted cooperative half-duplex relays are deployed to aid with securing the transmitted data. Transmission is amplitude-constrained to maintain operation within the light emitting diodes (LEDs) dynamic range. Achievable secrecy rate regions are derived under such amplitude constraints for this multi receiver wiretap channel, first for direct transmission without the relays, and then for cooperative jamming, decode-and-forward, and amplify-and-forward relaying schemes. Superposition coding with uniform signaling is used for transmission, along with secure beamforming at the relays. Superiority of the secure relaying schemes over direct transmission is shown, with performance depending on how far the eavesdropper is from the transmitter and the relays.
A visible light communication broadcast channel is considered, in which a transmitter luminaire communicates with two legitimate receivers in the presence of an external eavesdropper. A number of trusted cooperative half-duplex relay luminaires are deployed to aid with securing the transmitted data. Transmitters are equipped with single light fixtures, containing multiple light emitting diodes, and receiving nodes are equipped with single photo-detectors, rendering the considered setting as a single-input single-output system. Transmission is amplitude-constrained to maintain operation within the light emitting diodes' dynamic range. Achievable secrecy rate regions are derived under such amplitude constraints for this multi-receiver wiretap channel, first for direct transmission without the relays, and then for multiple relaying schemes: cooperative jamming, decode-and-forward, and amplify-and-forward. Superposition coding with uniform signaling is used at the transmitter and the relays. Further, for each relaying scheme, secure beamforming vectors are carefully designed at the relay nodes in order to hurt the eavesdropper and/or benefit the legitimate receivers. Superiority of the proposed relaying schemes, with secure beamforming, is shown over direct transmission. It is also shown that the best relaying scheme depends on how far the eavesdropper is located from the transmitter and the relays, the number of relays, and their geometric layout.
A visible light communication (VLC) system with an improved noise model applied to physical layer security (PLS) is investigated, where secure beamforming signals with superposition coding are used. In the improved model, the output signal follows Gaussian distribution, but its variance is signal-dependent. Two different methods are proposed to obtain lower and upper bounds on the secrecy rate of the strong user for direct transmission. Under some constraints, closed-form expressions of the lower and upper bounds on secrecy rate regions for various (trusted cooperative half-duplex) relaying schemes are derived. Moreover, the scenarios of blockage/outside coverage are included, and the relevant security performances are discussed. Numerical results show that the lower and upper bounds on secrecy rate regions are tight enough, and the cooperative jamming is superior over other relaying schemes.
Despite offering higher security than radio frequency (RF) channels, the broadcast nature of the visible light communication (VLC) channel makes VLC links inherently susceptible to eavesdropping by unauthorized users. In this work, we consider the physical-layer security of VLC links aided by friendly jamming. The jammer has multiple light sources, but does not have access to the data transmitted. The eavesdropper's reception is degraded by a jamming signal that causes no interference to the legitimate receiver. Due to the limited dynamic range of typical light-emitting diodes (LEDs), both the data and jamming signals are subject to amplitude constraints. Therefore, we begin with deriving a closed-form secrecy rate expression for the corresponding wiretap channel, and adopt secrecy rate as the performance measure. Then, we formulate a linear programming problem to maximize the secrecy rate when the eavesdropper's channel is accurately known to the jammer. Finally, we consider robust beamforming to maximize the worst-case secrecy rate when information about the eavesdropper's channel is uncertain due to location uncertainty. The robust scheme makes use of simple linear programming, making real-time implementation feasible in a variety of real-world scenarios.
This paper considers improving the confidentiality of visible light communication (VLC) links within the framework of physical-layer security. We study a VLC scenario with one transmitter, one legitimate receiver, and one eavesdropper. The transmitter has multiple light sources, while the legitimate and unauthorized receivers have a single photodetector, each. We characterize secrecy rates achievable via transmit beamforming over the multiple-input, single-output (MISO) VLC wiretap channel. For VLC systems, intensity modulation (IM) via light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is the most practical transmission scheme. Because of the limited dynamic range of typical LEDs, the modulating signal must satisfy certain amplitude constraints. Hence, we begin with deriving lower and upper bounds on the secrecy capacity of the scalar Gaussian wiretap channel subject to amplitude constraints. Then, we utilize beamforming to obtain a closed-form secrecy rate expression for the MISO wiretap channel. Finally, we propose a robust beamforming scheme to consider the scenario wherein information about the eavesdropper's channel is imperfect due to location uncertainty. A typical application of the proposed scheme is to secure the communication link when the eavesdropper is expected to exist within a specified area. The performance is measured in terms of the worst-case secrecy rate guaranteed under all admissible realizations of the eavesdropper's channel.
In this paper, we propose an innovative relay-aided physical layer security scheme leveraging cooperative transmission and jamming that operates effectively in time-division-multiple-access-based multi-user visible light communication (MuVLC) systems with obstructed communication links. First, to circumvent obstacles between the light source (LS) and legal receivers, we utilize a transmission relay (TR) to forward information signals from the LS to the receiver plane. Subsequently, to ensure communication security, we select a jamming relay to enlarge the channel capacity gap between eavesdroppers and legal receivers through cooperative jamming. Using stochastic geometry, we derive closed-form expressions for key performance metrics, including the cumulative distribution function of secrecy capacity, security outage probability, and their lower and upper bounds, both with and without relay cooperation. To further enhance system security, we introduce a disk-shaped security-protected zone around the TR. All analytical expressions are numerically verified through Monte Carlo simulations, serving as benchmarks to evaluate security performance. Numerical results confirm that our proposed scheme can ensure continuous signal reception and high-level security. Furthermore, while relay cooperation modestly enhances system security, the introduction of a security-protected zone around the TR yields substantial security improvement, which offers practical insights for designing secure time-division-multiple-access-based MuVLC where communication links are obstructed.
Visible light communication (VLC) is a new enabling communication technology that exploits illumination devices, mostly high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs), to establish high-speed short-range wireless communication links. VLC is a promising technology that has gained significant interest in the last decade due to its high data rates and low cost of deployment. Although VLC systems are less susceptible to eavesdropping than RF systems since light does not penetrate through walls, they become as vulnerable as their radio-frequency (RF) counterparts when their nodes are deployed in public areas and/or when there are large windows. Thus, security for VLC systems is as important as it is for RF systems. Security in wireless communication systems may be enhanced by introducing physical layer security (PLS) techniques. In fact, PLS has been applied to a wide range of RF applications in an effort to improve the overall security by complementing existing cryptography-based security techniques. The potential of PLS stems from its ability of leveraging features of the surrounding environments via sophisticated encoding techniques at the physical layer. Indeed, PLS schemes can be applied in the same spirit to VLC systems. \n \nThere exist many specificities that characterize VLC systems, leading to major differences compared to RF systems. Specifically, VLC channels are quasi-static and real valued channels, which seemingly simplify the application of PLS techniques. However, due to the limited dynamic range of the LEDs, VLC systems impose an amplitude constraint on the channel input, which makes unbounded inputs not admissible. As a result, the performance of PLS schemes must be revised in the VLC context due to its different operating constraints. \n \nWe propose in this thesis enhancing the secrecy performance of VLC systems through PLS techniques. Firstly, we consider the degraded single-input single-output (SISO) VLC system. We derive achievable secrecy rates using continuous and discrete input distributions and we demonstrate the substantial improvement in the secrecy performance by using discrete distributions. Secondly, we consider the multiple-input single-output (MISO) VLC systems. We consider at first the case of randomly located eavesdroppers, in which we develop an associated achievable secrecy rate and we develop a beamforming-based precoding scheme that enhances the secrecy performance of this class of systems. In the second part, we consider the multi-user (MU) MISO broadcast system with confidential messages and we develop linear precoding schemes that enhance typical secrecy performance measures, including the max-min fairness and the weighted fairness. Finally, we consider the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) VLC system. We derive achievable secrecy rates using continuous and discrete distributions and we develop linear precoding schemes that improve its secrecy performance.