This work investigates the security issue of the energy-constrained untrusted relay network with imperfect channel reciprocity, where the relay without the built-in power supply can only scavenge energy from radio-frequency signals radiated by the source and destination. A hybrid power-splitting (PS)- and time-switching (TS)-based relaying (HPTR) protocol is presented to improve the degraded secrecy performance due to the incomplete self-interference cancellation at the destination. To evaluate the secrecy throughput (ST) of the studied system, the analytical expression of the secrecy outage probability under the delay-limited transmission mode and the closed-form lower bound of the ergodic secrecy capacity under delay-tolerant transmission mode are derived. Both linear and nonlinear models for the energy harvester at the relay are compared. The optimal PS and TS ratios are evaluated numerically. The theoretical derivations are validated by numerical results, revealing that the residual jamming has a negative effect on the secrecy performance of untrusted relay networks, which can be alleviated by the HPTR protocol. Besides, we compare the ST performance of the HPTR protocol with that of the PS and TS relaying schemes, and the results show that the HPTR protocol outperforms both PS and TS relaying protocols in terms of the ST.
This work investigates the security issue of the energy-constrained untrusted relay network with imperfect channel reciprocity, where the relay without the built-in power supply can only scavenge energy from radio-frequency signals radiated by the source and destination. A hybrid power-splitting (PS)- and time-switching (TS)-based relaying (HPTR) protocol is presented to improve the degraded secrecy performance due to the incomplete self-interference cancellation at the destination. To evaluate the secrecy throughput (ST) of the studied system, the analytical expression of the secrecy outage probability under the delay-limited transmission mode and the closed-form lower bound of the ergodic secrecy capacity under delay-tolerant transmission mode are derived. Both linear and nonlinear models for the energy harvester at the relay are compared. The optimal PS and TS ratios are evaluated numerically. The theoretical derivations are validated by numerical results, revealing that the residual jamming has a negative effect on the secrecy performance of untrusted relay networks, which can be alleviated by the HPTR protocol. Besides, we compare the ST performance of the HPTR protocol with that of the PS and TS relaying schemes, and the results show that the HPTR protocol outperforms both PS and TS relaying protocols in terms of the ST.
The broadcast nature of the wireless medium allows unintended users to eavesdrop on confidential information transmission. In this regard, we investigate the problem of secure communication between a source and a destination via a wireless energy harvesting untrusted node that acts as a helper to relay the information; however, the source and destination nodes wish to keep the information confidential from the relay node. To realize the positive secrecy rate, we use destination-assisted jamming. Being an energy-starved node, the untrusted relay harvests energy from the received radio-frequency (RF) signals, which include the source's information signal and the destination's jamming signal. Thus, we utilize the jamming signal efficiently by leveraging it as a useful energy source. At the relay, to enable energy harvesting and information processing, we adopt power splitting (PS) and time switching (TS) policies. To evaluate the secrecy performance of this proposed scenario, we derive analytical expressions for two important metrics, viz., the secrecy outage probability and the ergodic secrecy rate. The numerical analysis reveals design insights into the effects of different system parameters such as PS ratio, energy harvesting time, target secrecy rate, transmit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), relay location, and energy conversion efficiency factor, on secrecy performance. Specifically, the PS policy achieves better optimal secrecy outage probability and optimal ergodic secrecy rate than that of the TS policy at higher target secrecy rate and transmit SNR, respectively.
We investigate the effect of outdated channel state information (CSI) on the secrecy performance of wireless-powered untrusted relay networks, in which the relay is a potential eavesdropper. To keep the information secret from this untrusted relay, the destination sends a jamming signal to the relay when the source transmits an information signal. At the same time, the relay harvests energy from the radio-frequency power, and forwards the received signals to the destination using this harvested energy. To determine the proportions of energy harvesting and information processing, the relay makes use of relaying based on power splitting or time switching policy. Although the destination tries to remove the jamming signal from the relaying signal, it cannot cancel out the jamming signal perfectly due to imperfect channel reciprocity caused by the outdated CSI; this residual jamming signal therefore has a negative impact on secrecy performance. In this scenario, we derive the closed-form expressions for the outage probability and average secrecy rate, and find the jamming power ratio, power splitting ratio, and time switching ratio to optimize these secrecy performance metrics. The numerical results demonstrate the accuracy of our analysis, and show that the proposed secure relaying protocols achieve a near-optimal secrecy performance, as well as outperforming the conventional scheme without the jamming power control.
In this paper, we consider secure communication via a wireless-powered untrusted relay with outdated channel state information (CSI). The low security clearance of the relay means that both the source and destination wish to keep information confidential from it. To prevent the relay from decoding the source information, the destination emits a jamming signal to the relay during data transmission by the source. The wireless-powered relay uses both the data and the jamming signals as valuable sources of energy for the amplify-and-forward relaying process. In addition, it can adopt either a power splitting or a time switching policy to determine the proportions of energy harvesting and information processing. However, when the CSI of the relay-to-destination link is outdated, the destination cannot remove the jamming signal completely from the relaying signal due to imperfect channel reciprocity. To evaluate the effect of outdated CSI on the secrecy performance, we derive the analytical expressions of two performance metrics, outage probability (Pout) for delay-limited transmission and ergodic secrecy rate (R̅) for delay-tolerant transmission. The results of the analysis also allow us to find the jamming power level and energy harvesting ratio to optimize Poutand R̅, respectively. Numerical simulations are used to verify the precision of our analysis, and confirm that the proposed secure relaying protocols accomplish near-optimal secrecy performances. Our results indicate that there is a need to reduce the jamming power level to ensure secure communication when the channel is severely outdated, while outdated CSI has a relatively low impact on the energy harvesting ratio.
To solve security vulnerability and energy scarcity problems in relay, we propose two secure relaying protocols, power splitting-based relaying (PSR) and time switching-based relaying (TSR), in a wireless-powered relay network with destination-assisted cooperative jamming. In these protocols, the relay adaptively controls the amount of energy harvested from the received signals using PS or TS policy, considering information leakage to the eavesdropper. We first prove the convexity of the secrecy outage probability with respect to the PS ratio ($\rho )andTSratio(\alpha ),andthenderivetheclosed−formexpressionsoftheoptimal\rho and\alpha forminimizingsecrecyoutageunderthesignal−to−noiseratio(SNR)assumption.NumericalresultsrevealthattheproposedPSRandTSRprotocolsusingthederived\rho and\alpha canachievenear−optimalperformanceintermsofsecrecyoutage.Itisobservedthattheoptimal\rho and\alpha $do not depend on the eavesdropping channels in a high SNR regime such that the near-optimal secrecy outage can be achieved practically without knowledge of the eavesdropper location. Furthermore, intensive simulations reveal that it is advantageous to allocate more power to energy harvesting for PSR, whereas more time to signal processing for TSR to minimize secrecy outage.
This article studies a secure communication of a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system in which an energy-constrained untrusted relay, which harvests energy from the wireless signals, helps the communication between the source and destination and is able to decode the source’s confidential signal. Additionally, the source’s confidential signal is also overheard by a passive eavesdropper. To create positive secrecy capacity, a destination-assisted jamming signal that is completely cancelled at the destination is adopted. Moreover, the jamming signal is also exploited as an additional energy source. To evaluate the secrecy performance, analytical expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the average secrecy capacity are derived. Moreover, a high-power approximation for the SOP is presented. The accuracy of the analytical results is verified by Monte Carlo simulations. Numerical results provide valuable insights into the effect of various system parameters, such as the energy-harvesting efficiency, secrecy rate threshold, power-splitting ratio, transmit powers, and locations of the relay and eavesdropper, on the secrecy performance.
In this paper, we consider a non-regenerative relay network supporting simultaneous wireless information and power transfer, in which the energy harvesting relay is powered by radio-frequency signals from the source node. Assuming imperfect channel state information from the source/relay to the destination/eavesdropper, we investigate the artificial noise-aided secure robust beamformer that minimize the transmission power at the relay, while guaranteeing the secrecy rate constraint and the transmit power constraint at the relay. In particular, two types of energy harvesting strategies are considered termed power splitting (PS) and time switching (TS), respectively. These constraints make the optimization problems formulated non-convex and challenging, which are efficiently solved by using the S-procedure and semidefinite relaxation techniques to formulate a tractable approximated version of the original problems. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed robust beamforming schemes. Furthermore, the PS strategy performs better than the TS strategy.