Under both long (infinite) and short (finite) blocklength transmissions, this paper considers physical layer security for a wireless interference network of multiple transmitter-user pairs, which is overheard by multiple eavesdroppers (EVs). The EVs are assumed to have better channel conditions than the legitimate users (UEs), making the conventional transmission unsecured. The paper develops a novel time-fraction based transmission, under which the information is transmitted to the UEs within a fraction of the time slot and artificial noise (AN) is transmitted within the remaining fraction to counter the strong EVs' channels. Based on channel distribution information of UEs and EVs, the joint design of transmit beamforming, time fractions and AN power allocation to maximize the worst users' secrecy rate is formulated in terms of nonconvex problems. Path-following algorithms of low complexity and rapid convergence are proposed for their solution. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the viability of the proposed methodology.
Under both long (infinite) and short (finite) blocklength transmissions, this paper considers physical layer security for a wireless interference network of multiple transmitter-user pairs, which is overheard by multiple eavesdroppers (EVs). The EVs are assumed to have better channel conditions than the legitimate users (UEs), making the conventional transmission unsecured. The paper develops a novel time-fraction based transmission, under which the information is transmitted to the UEs within a fraction of the time slot and artificial noise (AN) is transmitted within the remaining fraction to counter the strong EVs' channels. Based on channel distribution information of UEs and EVs, the joint design of transmit beamforming, time fractions and AN power allocation to maximize the worst users' secrecy rate is formulated in terms of nonconvex problems. Path-following algorithms of low complexity and rapid convergence are proposed for their solution. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the viability of the proposed methodology.
This paper considers a wireless interference network in which the communication between multiple transmitter-user pairs is overheard by multiple eavesdroppers (EVs). Based on knowledge of the channel distribution, the goal is to maximize the worst users' secrecy rate under both long (infinite) blocklength and short (finite) blocklength transmissions. Under long blocklength transmission, the performance of the existing algorithms is unsatisfactory when the wiretapped channels are sufficiently strong. To address this drawback, we adopt a time-fraction based information and artificial noise (AN) transmission, under which first the information is transmitted within the initial fraction of the time slot and then AN is transmitted within the remaining fraction. Accordingly, the problem of join optimization of the time fractions, transmit power, and AN power to maximize the minimum secrecy rate is proposed and computed by a path-following algorithm, which iterates feasible points and converges at least to a locally optimal solution. A similar problem under short blocklength transmission is also proposed and computed. The provided simulations results clearly show the merits of the proposed approach.
A wireless network of multiple transmitter-user pairs overheard by an eavesdropper, where the transmitters are equipped with multiple antennas, while the users and eavesdropper are equipped with a single antenna, is considered. At different levels of wireless channel knowledge, the problem of interest is beamforming to optimize the users' quality-of-service (QoS) in terms of their secrecy throughputs or maximize the network's energy efficiency under users' QoS. All these problems are seen as very difficult optimization problems with many nonconvex constraints and nonlinear equality constraints in beamforming vectors. The paper develops path-following computational procedures of low complexity and rapid convergence for the optimal beamforming solution. Their practicability is demonstrated through numerical examples.
Physical layer security (PLS) aims to protect end users who are equipped with low-complexity receivers for which implementing cryptographic algorithms for security purposes is not practical. This article presents a different approach to PLS and suggests natural and simple ways to achieve security in wireless networks. A practical assumption on the availability of channel state information (CSI) is considered for eavesdroppers (EVs) at the transmitter. Moreover, there is no restriction on EVs' placement, and as such EVs could be in better channel conditions when they are closer to the transmitter. The article describes how the interference channels can be exploited to simultaneously reduce the interference for the users' received signals and amplify the interference at the EV's received signal. It is also shown that when considering communication with energy- constrained nodes, the heterogeneous nature of the transmitted signals is an asset and can be exploited to confuse the eavesdropper. This is because information and energy signals are transmitted over different fractions of a time slot, and the EV can be confused since it does not know the time-fraction when information signal or energy signal is transmitted. Finally, the article also suggests how we can achieve secure information transmission under poor scattering environments, such as unmanned-aerial-vehicle-enabled communications.
In this thesis, we study the physical layer security in downlink multi-user wireless networks. Traditionally, security has been addressed by cryptography at the higher layers of the communication stack. Security at the physical layer has been a major research topic in recent years. We study two different precoder designs alongside artificial noise (AN) to mitigate multi-user interference and deteriorate reception at the eavesdropper (Eve). We study the large scale analysis to calculate the secrecy sum-rate for these two cases and analyze the effect of AN on the system. First, we consider the worst case scenario, when eavesdropper's (Eve's) rate is not deteriorated by the interference caused by the legitimate users. Later, we investigate how interference from legitimate users would affect the large scale security sum rate. At the end, we assume more practical situation where the channel state information at the transmitter is not perfect due to feedback limitation and estimation error. We first study block diagonalization (BD) precoding. We derive the asymptotic secrecy sum-rate of BD for physical layer security in downlink multi-user wireless networks using artificial noise (AN). We first derive the secrecy sum-rate assuming that the channel of the eavesdropper is not known at the transmitter and derive the asymptotic secrecy sum-rate. Then we derive the optimum power allocation for asymptotic secrecy sum-rate. We design the system based on large scale analysis for different special cases. Simulation results show that the proposed precoders outperform channel inversion (CI) and regularized channel inversion (RCI) schemes at all SNRs. We also show that as the number of receive antennas of each user increases, the sum-rate gap between the proposed scheme and existing methods increases. We, then, study two methods of regularized block diagonalization (RBD) precoding using artificial noise (AN) for physical layer security in downlink multi-user MIMO wireless networks. We compare the complexity analysis of these two methods in terms of floating point operations per second (FLOPS). We derive the secrecy and asymptotic secrecy sum-rates for these schemes. We also derive closed form expressions for the asymptotic optimal power allocation to the AN signal and legitimate users. Simulations show RBD precoding outperform regularized channel inversion (RCI) in terms of secrecy sum-rate with a margin of 0.5 bits/s/Hz. Also, simulation results show our closed-form asymptotic secrecy sum-rates matches closely with the simulations for perfect and imperfect CSIT. We also study the effect of interference on BD precoding scheme. In the first two studies the worst case scenarios was considered and the effect of interference was not considered at the eavesdropper. We first derive the closed-form secrecy and asymptotic secrecy sum-rates for this scheme. Then, we derive the optimum power allocation. Using the derived optimum power allocation, we determine the conditions under which adding AN helps. We also investigate the optimum number of users, number of antennas at the eavesdropper, and the number of transmit antennas to fully study the conditions where using AN improves performance. We show that as the number of users increases or the number of receive antennas at the eavesdropper decreases, improved performance is achieved by allocating a smaller fraction of the total power to transmit the AN. The closed form expressions for the secrecy sum rate (SSR) and optimum power allocation closely match our simulation results. In Chapter 5, we study the effect of imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) for each case studied in earlier chapters. We first study the effect of imperfect CSIT for BD precoding in both scenarios when interference does and does not exist at eavesdropper. We show that the imperfect CSI play the same role as interference for the desired users. Then, we study the effect of imperfect CSIT for RBD precoding when interference does not exist at eavesdropper. We show as channel estimation error increases, the secrecy sum-rate decreases. This is due to the fact that channel estimation error just affects the desired users' rate and has no effect on eavesdropper's performance. Finally, in the last chapter, we conclude our thesis and provide some road map for future--Author's abstract
We investigate the physical layer security (PLS) in multi-user interference networks. In particular, we consider secure transmission from a legitimate source (Alice) to a legitimate destination (Bob), coexisting with multiple passive eavesdroppers (Eves), as well as multiple legitimate transceivers. By assuming that only statistical channel state informations (CSIs) of Eves and local CSIs of legitimate users are available, we propose an artificial noise (AN) assisted interference alignment (IA) for security enhancement. Unlike traditional IA based security approaches which may result in secret signal cancellation, we design a modified alternating minimization (AM) scheme to overcome this threat, by incorporating the max-eigenmode beamforming (MEB) for secure transmission. Moreover, by partitioning the IA equation into three independent subsets and their combinations, a much tighter necessary condition for IA feasibility is established. We also provide guiding insights into the practical system designs, including useful guidelines for the selection of the dimension of AN. Furthermore, the power allocation ratio between the secret signal and the AN signal is optimized to minimize the secrecy outage probability (SOP), subject to a minimum secrecy rate constraint. Numerical results demonstrate that our design can enhance both quality and security of the secret signal, and thus is suitable and reliable for PLS in interference networks.
For physical layer security with multiple antennas over wireless channels, we consider an artificial noise-aided secure beamforming system. A transmitter can send the confidential information to the legitimate user more securely without eavesdropping when an artificial jamming signal interfering eavesdroppers is transmitted with the confidential information signal. The transmitter splits its transmit power for both the information and jamming signals with a power splitting factor. Under such a system model, we investigate the impacts on secrecy performance of a power splitting factor, the numbers of antennas and eavesdroppers, and noise variance at the legitimate receivers and eavesdroppers by analyzing the expected secrecy rate. The optimal power splitting factor and limiting secrecy rate with large number of antennas are also derived. Moreover, we examine the expected secrecy rate loss caused by channel variation over time. It is shown that the secrecy rate loss is independent of system parameters like a power splitting factor, the numbers of antennas and eavesdroppers in a high signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) region. In a low SINR region, on the other hand, the secrecy rate loss changes with system parameters. Simulation results verify these observations on ergodic secrecy rate and its loss due to time-varying channels.