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Equivocation Analysis Across Continuous and Discrete Memoryless Channels

Munibun Billah

Published Jul 22, 2026• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Physical-layer security uses the noise already present in the channel to keep a message secret without making any assumption about the eavesdropper's computing power. In Wyner's wiretap channel model, coset coding uses randomness to map the message to many codewords and protects against information leakage from an active eavesdropper. The secrecy provided by such codes is measured by their equivocation, which is the eavesdropper's remaining uncertainty about the message after she observes her channel. So computing equivocation is an important aspect of analyzing the wiretap channel model. Many channels of practical interest have no closed-form expression for equivocation, and exact calculation has been limited to a few specific channels. This dissertation studies the equivocation analysis of coset codes along two complementary directions. When a channel offers no closed-form solution, we estimate the information leakage with a neural network called the mutual information neural estimator (MINE). And for a discrete memoryless channel, we derive a general framework for the exact equivocation. The first study builds coset codes from short Reed-Muller codes and tests them over the air in a real indoor environment with software-defined radios. In this study, the secrecy is estimated using MINE, and short coset codes are shown to provide a secrecy advantage. The second study proposes a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code that injects artificial noise by flipping a chosen set of coded bits over a Gaussian wiretap channel. The third study moves from estimation to exact analysis. It examines coset coding over the Ghost Modulation wiretap channel, which is modeled as an asymmetric binary crossover erasure channel (ABCEC). Then it derives exact expressions for both the equivocation and the secrecy capacity. The final study generalizes the exact analysis to any discrete memoryless channel and verifies the framework against well-studied channels. Finally, it applies the developed framework to the asymmetric Z-channel with an efficient formulation that greatly reduces the computational cost.

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On Secure Communications Over Gaussian Wiretap Channels via Finite-Length Codes

Alireza Nooraiepour, Sina Rezaei Aghdam, Tolga M. Duman

Practical codes for the Gaussian wiretap channel are designed aiming at satisfying information-theoretic metrics to ensure security against a passive eavesdropper (Eve). Specifically, a design criterion is introduced for the coset coding scheme in order to satisfy a strong secrecy condition described with the mutual information between the secret message and Eve's observation. In addition, mutual information neural estimation (MINE) powered from deep learning tools is applied in order to directly compute the information-theoretic security constraint, and verify the proposed solutions. It is shown that finite-length coset codes can indeed ensure secure transmission from an information-theoretic perspective.

IEEE Communications Letters•May 14, 2020•13 citations

On the Computation of the Rate-Equivocation Region for Wyner's Wire-tap Channels

Meena Gangula

In a wire tap channel, the transmitter Alice communicates with the legitimate receiver, Bob, in the presence of another receiver, Eve. The goal is to keep the wiretapper, Eve, as ignorant as possible about the information sent to Bob. For communication channels where the adversary, Eve, eavesdrops on the information sent between the legitimate users by wiretapping at the Bob's end, Wyner introduced secure encoding schemes and showed that non zero reliable transmission rate is possible in perfect secrecy. Wyner also obtained the information theoretic achievable rate equivocation region (Rb, DeltaK) for discrete memoryless wire tap channels. The rate equivocation region (Rb, DeltaK) is a trade off between the rate Rb at which information is sent by Alice to Bob, and the level of equivocation (confusion) DeltaK at the wiretapper Eve about this information. In this dissertation, we propose an iterative algorithm to compute the rate equivocation region (Rb, DeltaK) for any finite input finite output discrete memoryless wiretap channels in Wyners model. First, we investigate the achievable region of Wyner's wire tap channel in both Wyners and Csiszar Korner form. We analyze the general form of the achievable region in both forms and show that both forms are equivalent. We also show that calculating the rate equivocation region can be reduced to the computing of a function Gamma Rb defined by Wyner. Computing the function Gamma Rb involves convex programming and there exists no analytic closed form solution. We transform the function Gamma Rb into a minimax problem and obtain the function Gamma Rb in its parametric form. Calculating the parametric expressions in terms of the Lagrange multiplier yields a point on the Gamma Rb curve. Next, we propose an iterative algorithm for computing the parametric expressions. The iterative procedure can be viewed as a generalization of the Arimoto Blahut method. We prove the convergence of the algorithm and derive upper and lower bounds on the optimum value as a stopping criteria of the iterative algorithm. We provide simulation results about the computation of the parametric expressions from the proposed algorithm and of the achievable rate equivocation region. We also analyze the speed of the convergence of the proposed algorithm. We further propose an accelerated iterative algorithm to compute the parametric expressions with improved performance. The iterative procedure can be regarded as a generalization of the accelerated Arimoto Blahut algorithm. We obtain a sufficient condition of the weighted parameter

Civil War Book Review•Apr 4, 2018•0 citations

Information-theoretic Secrecy in Multi-user Channels

Ersen Ekrem

Inherent openness of the wireless medium imposes stronger challenges on the security of wireless communications. Information-theoretic security addresses these challenges at the physical layer by using tools from wireless communication theory, signal processing and information theory. In information-theoretic security, physical layer communication is intelligently designed to exploit the characteristics of the wireless medium, such as fading, interference, cooperation, and multi-dimensional signaling, in order to provide or improve security. In this dissertation, we study the security of several fundamental wireless network configurations from an information-theoretic perspective. First, we study the Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel. In this channel, the transmitter sends a common message to both the legitimate user and the eavesdropper. In addition to the common message, a private message is sent only to the legitimate user, which needs to be kept hidden as much as possible from the eavesdropper. We obtain the entire capacity-equivocation region for this channel model. In particular, we show the sufficiency of jointly Gaussian auxiliary random variables and channel input to evaluate the existing single-letter description of the capacity-equivocation region due to Csiszar-Korner. Next, we study the secure broadcasting problem, where a transmitter wants to have secure communication with multiple legitimate users in the presence of an external eavesdropper. We study several special cases of the secure broadcasting problem. First, we consider the degraded multi-receiver wiretap channel, and establish its secrecy capacity region. Second, we consider the parallel less noisy multi-receiver wiretap channel, and obtain its common message secrecy capacity and sum secrecy capacity. Third, we consider the parallel degraded multi-receiver wiretap channel for the two-user and two-sub-channel case, and obtain its entire secrecy capacity region. Finally, we consider a parallel channel model with two sub-channels, where the transmitter can use only one of the subchannels at any time, and characterize its secrecy capacity region. Then, we study the two-user Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel with common and confidential messages. In this channel model, the transmitter sends a common message to both users, and a confidential message to each user which needs to be kept perfectly secret from the other user. We obtain the entire capacity region of this channel. We also explore the connections between this channel model and its non-confidential counterpart, i.e., the Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel with common and private message. Next, we consider the Gaussian MIMO multi-receiver wiretap channel and obtain its secrecy capacity region for the most general case. We first show that even for the single-input single-output (SISO) case, existing converse techniques fall short of proving the secrecy capacity region, to emphasize the need for a new proof technique, which we develop by using the relationships between the Fisher information and the differential entropy. Using this new proof technique, we obtain the secrecy capacity region of the degraded MIMO channel. We then establish the secrecy capacity region of the general MIMO channel by using the channel enhancement technique in conjunction with the capacity result we obtained for the degraded MIMO channel. For the general MIMO channel, we show that dirty-paper coding (DPC) combined with stochastic encoding attains the entire secrecy capacity region. Then, we study the multi-receiver wiretap channel for a more general scenario, where, in addition to confidential messages, the transmitter sends public messages to the legitimate users, on which there are no secrecy constraints. First, we consider the degraded discrete memoryless channel, and obtain inner and outer bounds for the capacity region. These inner and outer bounds match for certain cases, providing the capacity region. Second, we obtain an inner bound for the general discrete memoryless channel by using Marton's inner bound. Third, we consider the degraded Gaussian MIMO channel, and show that jointly Gaussian auxiliary random variables and channel input are sufficient to exhaust the inner and outer bounds. Finally, we provide an inner bound for the capacity region of the general Gaussian MIMO channel. Next, we focus on the multiple access wiretap (MAC-WT) channel whose capacity region is unknown. We consider a special class of MAC-WT channels which we call the weak eavesdropper class, where each user's link to the legitimate receiver is stronger than its link to the eavesdropper. For this class of channels, we develop an outer bound for the secrecy capacity region, which partially matches the achievable region in an n-letter form. We evaluate a looser version of our outer bound for the Gaussian case, and show that our outer bound is within 0.5 bits/channel use of the achievable rates along the individual secrecy rates for all weak eavesdropper Gaussian MAC-WT. Then, we investigate the effects of user cooperation on the secrecy of broadcast channels by considering the cooperative relay broadcast channel (CRBC). We propose an achievable scheme that combines Marton's coding scheme for broadcast channels and Cover and El Gamal's compress-and-forward (CAF) scheme for relay channels. For the Gaussian CRBC, we show that both users can have positive secrecy rates, which is not possible for scalar Gaussian broadcast channels without cooperation. We further investigate the effects of user cooperation on secrecy by considering the multiple access channel with generalized feedback (MAC-GF), which can be viewed as the MAC-dual of the CRBC. We propose a CAF-based achievable secrecy rate region for the MAC-GF. Specializing our results to a Gaussian MAC-GF, we present numerical results which demonstrate that cooperation can improve secrecy for the MAC-GF. Next, we study the two-user one-eavesdropper discrete memoryless compound wiretap channel, and provide the best known lower bound for the secrecy capacity of this compound channel. We evaluate this achievable secrecy rate for the Gaussian MIMO case by using DPC. We show that this achievable secrecy rate achieves at least half of the secrecy capacity of this Gaussian MIMO compound wiretap channel, and also attains the secrecy capacity when the eavesdropper is degraded with respect to one of the two users. Then, we study the degraded compound multi-receiver wiretap channel (DCMRWC), which, in addition to a group of eavesdroppers, has two groups of users, namely the stronger group and the weaker group. We study two different communication scenarios for this channel. In the first scenario, there is only one eavesdropper, and the transmitter sends a confidential message to each group of legitimate users while keeping both messages secret from the eavesdropper. In the second scenario, we study the DCMRWC with layered messages without any restriction on the number of eavesdroppers. For both scenarios, we obtain the secrecy capacity region for the discrete memoryless channel, the parallel channel, and the Gaussian parallel channel. For the Gaussian MIMO channel, we obtain the secrecy capacity region when there is only one user in the second group. Next, we study the two-user fading broadcast channel and obtain its ergodic secrecy capacity region. We show that, thanks to fading, both users can have simultaneous secure communication with the transmitter, although this is not possible in the scalar non-fading Gaussian broadcast channel where only one user can have secure communication. This simultaneous secrecy of both users is achieved by an opportunistic communication scheme, in which, at each time instant, the transmitter communicates with the user having a better channel gain. Then, we study the secure lossy transmission of a vector Gaussian source to a legitimate user in the presence of an eavesdropper, where both the legitimate user and the eavesdropper have vector Gaussian side information. We obtain an outer bound for the rate, equivocation and distortion region. Moreover, we obtain the maximum equivocation at the eavesdropper when there is no constraint on the transmission rate. By using this maximum equivocation result, we show two facts. First, for this problem, in general, Wyner-Ziv scheme is suboptimal, although, it is optimal in the absence of an eavesdropper. And, second, even when there is no transmission rate constraint, an uncoded transmission scheme is suboptimal; the presence of an eavesdropper necessitates the use of a coded scheme to attain the maximum equivocation. Finally, we revisit the secure lossy source coding problem. In all works on this problem, either the equivocation of the source at the eavesdropper or the equivocation of the legitimate user's reconstruction of the source at the eavesdropper is used to measure secrecy. We first propose the relative equivocation of the source at the eavesdropper with respect to the legitimate user as a new secrecy measure. We argue that this new secrecy measure is the one that corresponds to the natural generalization of the equivocation in a wiretap channel to the context of secure lossy source coding. Under this new secrecy measure, we provide a single-letter description of the rate, relative equivocation and distortion region, as well as its specializations to degraded and reversely degraded cases. We investigate the relationships between the optimal scheme that attains this region and the Wyner-Ziv scheme.

•Jan 1, 2012•0 citations

Feasibility of short blocklength Reed-Muller codes for physical layer security in real environment

Munibun Billah, Tyler Sweat, Willie K. Harrison

In this paper, we investigate the application of Reed-Muller (RM) codes for Physical-layer security in a real world wiretap channel scenario. Utilizing software-defined radios (SDRs) in a real indoor environment, we implement a coset coding scheme that leverages the hierarchical structure of RM codes to secure data transmission. The generator matrix of the RM code is used to partition codewords into cosets in the usual way, where each message corresponds to a unique coset, and auxiliary bits select specific codewords within each coset. This approach enables the legitimate receiver (Bob) can decode the transmitted message with minimal information leakage to eavesdropper (Eve) thus protecting the confidentiality of the communication with the help of coset structure. Mutual information neural estimation (MINE) is used to quantify information leakage and validate the effectiveness of the scheme. Experimental results indicate that RM codes can achieve robust security even in practical environments affected by real-world channel impairments. These findings demonstrate the potential of RM codes as an efficient solution for physical-layer security, particularly for applications that require low latency and short blocklengths.

arXiv:2501.03449•Jan 7, 2025•0 citations

Achieving the Secrecy Capacity of Wiretap Channels Using Polar Codes

Hessam Mahdavifar, Alexander Vardy

Suppose Alice wishes to send messages to Bob through a communication channel C_1, but her transmissions also reach an eavesdropper Eve through another channel C_2. The goal is to design a coding scheme that makes it possible for Alice to communicate both reliably and securely. Reliability is measured in terms of Bob's probability of error in recovering the message, while security is measured in terms of Eve's equivocation ratio. Wyner showed that the situation is characterized by a single constant C_s, called the secrecy capacity, which has the following meaning: for all $ε> 0$, there exist coding schemes of rate $R \ge C_s - ε$ that asymptotically achieve both the reliability and the security objectives. However, his proof of this result is based upon a nonconstructive random-coding argument. To date, despite a considerable research effort, the only case where we know how to construct coding schemes that achieve secrecy capacity is when Eve's channel C_2 is an erasure channel, or a combinatorial variation thereof. Polar codes were recently invented by Arikan; they approach the capacity of symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels with low encoding and decoding complexity. Herein, we use polar codes to construct a coding scheme that achieves the secrecy capacity for a wide range of wiretap channels. Our construction works for any instantiation of the wiretap channel model, as long as both C_1 and C_2 are symmetric and binary-input, and C_2 is degraded with respect to C_1. Moreover, we show how to modify our construction in order to provide strong security, in the sense defined by Maurer, while still operating at a rate that approaches the secrecy capacity. In this case, we cannot guarantee that the reliability condition will be satisfied unless the main channel C_1 is noiseless, although we believe it can be always satisfied in practice.

arXiv:1001.0210•Jan 1, 2010•0 citations

Information-Theoretical Security for Several Models of Multiple-Access Channel

Bin Dai, A. J. Han Vinck, Zhuojun Zhuang +1 more

Several security models of multiple-access channel (MAC) are investigated. First, we study the degraded MAC with confidential messages, where two users transmit their confidential messages (no common message) to a destination, and each user obtains a degraded version of the output of the MAC. Each user views the other user as a eavesdropper, and wishes to keep its confidential message as secret as possible from the other user. Measuring each user's uncertainty about the other user's confidential message by equivocation, the inner and outer bounds on the capacity-equivocation region for this model have been provided. The result is further explained via the binary and Gaussian examples. Second, the discrete memoryless multiple-access wiretap channel (MAC-WT) is studied, where two users transmit their corresponding confidential messages (no common message) to a legitimate receiver, while an additional wiretapper wishes to obtain the messages via a wiretap channel. This new model is considered into two cases: the general MAC-WT with cooperative encoders, and the degraded MAC-WT with non-cooperative encoders. The capacity-equivocation region is totally determined for the cooperative case, and inner and outer bounds on the capacity-equivocation region are provided for the non-cooperative case. For both cases, the results are further explained via the binary examples.

arXiv:1208.1697•Aug 8, 2012•1 citation
Physical-layer security uses the noise already present in the channel to keep a message secret without making any assumption about the eavesdropper's computing power. In Wyner's wiretap channel model, coset coding uses randomness to map the message to many codewords and protects against information leakage from an active eavesdropper. The secrecy provided by such codes is measured by their equivocation, which is the eavesdropper's remaining uncertainty about the message after she observes her channel. So computing equivocation is an important aspect of analyzing the wiretap channel model. Many channels of practical interest have no closed-form expression for equivocation, and exact calculation has been limited to a few specific channels. This dissertation studies the equivocation analysis of coset codes along two complementary directions. When a channel offers no closed-form solution, we estimate the information leakage with a neural network called the mutual information neural estimator (MINE). And for a discrete memoryless channel, we derive a general framework for the exact equivocation. The first study builds coset codes from short Reed-Muller codes and tests them over the air in a real indoor environment with software-defined radios. In this study, the secrecy is estimated using MINE, and short coset codes are shown to provide a secrecy advantage. The second study proposes a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code that injects artificial noise by flipping a chosen set of coded bits over a Gaussian wiretap channel. The third study moves from estimation to exact analysis. It examines coset coding over the Ghost Modulation wiretap channel, which is modeled as an asymmetric binary crossover erasure channel (ABCEC). Then it derives exact expressions for both the equivocation and the secrecy capacity. The final study generalizes the exact analysis to any discrete memoryless channel and verifies the framework against well-studied channels. Finally, it applies the developed framework to the asymmetric Z-channel with an efficient formulation that greatly reduces the computational cost.
Practical codes for the Gaussian wiretap channel are designed aiming at satisfying information-theoretic metrics to ensure security against a passive eavesdropper (Eve). Specifically, a design criterion is introduced for the coset coding scheme in order to satisfy a strong secrecy condition described with the mutual information between the secret message and Eve's observation. In addition, mutual information neural estimation (MINE) powered from deep learning tools is applied in order to directly compute the information-theoretic security constraint, and verify the proposed solutions. It is shown that finite-length coset codes can indeed ensure secure transmission from an information-theoretic perspective.
In a wire tap channel, the transmitter Alice communicates with the legitimate receiver, Bob, in the presence of another receiver, Eve. The goal is to keep the wiretapper, Eve, as ignorant as possible about the information sent to Bob. For communication channels where the adversary, Eve, eavesdrops on the information sent between the legitimate users by wiretapping at the Bob's end, Wyner introduced secure encoding schemes and showed that non zero reliable transmission rate is possible in perfect secrecy. Wyner also obtained the information theoretic achievable rate equivocation region (Rb, DeltaK) for discrete memoryless wire tap channels. The rate equivocation region (Rb, DeltaK) is a trade off between the rate Rb at which information is sent by Alice to Bob, and the level of equivocation (confusion) DeltaK at the wiretapper Eve about this information. In this dissertation, we propose an iterative algorithm to compute the rate equivocation region (Rb, DeltaK) for any finite input finite output discrete memoryless wiretap channels in Wyners model. First, we investigate the achievable region of Wyner's wire tap channel in both Wyners and Csiszar Korner form. We analyze the general form of the achievable region in both forms and show that both forms are equivalent. We also show that calculating the rate equivocation region can be reduced to the computing of a function Gamma Rb defined by Wyner. Computing the function Gamma Rb involves convex programming and there exists no analytic closed form solution. We transform the function Gamma Rb into a minimax problem and obtain the function Gamma Rb in its parametric form. Calculating the parametric expressions in terms of the Lagrange multiplier yields a point on the Gamma Rb curve. Next, we propose an iterative algorithm for computing the parametric expressions. The iterative procedure can be viewed as a generalization of the Arimoto Blahut method. We prove the convergence of the algorithm and derive upper and lower bounds on the optimum value as a stopping criteria of the iterative algorithm. We provide simulation results about the computation of the parametric expressions from the proposed algorithm and of the achievable rate equivocation region. We also analyze the speed of the convergence of the proposed algorithm. We further propose an accelerated iterative algorithm to compute the parametric expressions with improved performance. The iterative procedure can be regarded as a generalization of the accelerated Arimoto Blahut algorithm. We obtain a sufficient condition of the weighted parameter
Inherent openness of the wireless medium imposes stronger challenges on the security of wireless communications. Information-theoretic security addresses these challenges at the physical layer by using tools from wireless communication theory, signal processing and information theory. In information-theoretic security, physical layer communication is intelligently designed to exploit the characteristics of the wireless medium, such as fading, interference, cooperation, and multi-dimensional signaling, in order to provide or improve security. In this dissertation, we study the security of several fundamental wireless network configurations from an information-theoretic perspective. First, we study the Gaussian multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel. In this channel, the transmitter sends a common message to both the legitimate user and the eavesdropper. In addition to the common message, a private message is sent only to the legitimate user, which needs to be kept hidden as much as possible from the eavesdropper. We obtain the entire capacity-equivocation region for this channel model. In particular, we show the sufficiency of jointly Gaussian auxiliary random variables and channel input to evaluate the existing single-letter description of the capacity-equivocation region due to Csiszar-Korner. Next, we study the secure broadcasting problem, where a transmitter wants to have secure communication with multiple legitimate users in the presence of an external eavesdropper. We study several special cases of the secure broadcasting problem. First, we consider the degraded multi-receiver wiretap channel, and establish its secrecy capacity region. Second, we consider the parallel less noisy multi-receiver wiretap channel, and obtain its common message secrecy capacity and sum secrecy capacity. Third, we consider the parallel degraded multi-receiver wiretap channel for the two-user and two-sub-channel case, and obtain its entire secrecy capacity region. Finally, we consider a parallel channel model with two sub-channels, where the transmitter can use only one of the subchannels at any time, and characterize its secrecy capacity region. Then, we study the two-user Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel with common and confidential messages. In this channel model, the transmitter sends a common message to both users, and a confidential message to each user which needs to be kept perfectly secret from the other user. We obtain the entire capacity region of this channel. We also explore the connections between this channel model and its non-confidential counterpart, i.e., the Gaussian MIMO broadcast channel with common and private message. Next, we consider the Gaussian MIMO multi-receiver wiretap channel and obtain its secrecy capacity region for the most general case. We first show that even for the single-input single-output (SISO) case, existing converse techniques fall short of proving the secrecy capacity region, to emphasize the need for a new proof technique, which we develop by using the relationships between the Fisher information and the differential entropy. Using this new proof technique, we obtain the secrecy capacity region of the degraded MIMO channel. We then establish the secrecy capacity region of the general MIMO channel by using the channel enhancement technique in conjunction with the capacity result we obtained for the degraded MIMO channel. For the general MIMO channel, we show that dirty-paper coding (DPC) combined with stochastic encoding attains the entire secrecy capacity region. Then, we study the multi-receiver wiretap channel for a more general scenario, where, in addition to confidential messages, the transmitter sends public messages to the legitimate users, on which there are no secrecy constraints. First, we consider the degraded discrete memoryless channel, and obtain inner and outer bounds for the capacity region. These inner and outer bounds match for certain cases, providing the capacity region. Second, we obtain an inner bound for the general discrete memoryless channel by using Marton's inner bound. Third, we consider the degraded Gaussian MIMO channel, and show that jointly Gaussian auxiliary random variables and channel input are sufficient to exhaust the inner and outer bounds. Finally, we provide an inner bound for the capacity region of the general Gaussian MIMO channel. Next, we focus on the multiple access wiretap (MAC-WT) channel whose capacity region is unknown. We consider a special class of MAC-WT channels which we call the weak eavesdropper class, where each user's link to the legitimate receiver is stronger than its link to the eavesdropper. For this class of channels, we develop an outer bound for the secrecy capacity region, which partially matches the achievable region in an n-letter form. We evaluate a looser version of our outer bound for the Gaussian case, and show that our outer bound is within 0.5 bits/channel use of the achievable rates along the individual secrecy rates for all weak eavesdropper Gaussian MAC-WT. Then, we investigate the effects of user cooperation on the secrecy of broadcast channels by considering the cooperative relay broadcast channel (CRBC). We propose an achievable scheme that combines Marton's coding scheme for broadcast channels and Cover and El Gamal's compress-and-forward (CAF) scheme for relay channels. For the Gaussian CRBC, we show that both users can have positive secrecy rates, which is not possible for scalar Gaussian broadcast channels without cooperation. We further investigate the effects of user cooperation on secrecy by considering the multiple access channel with generalized feedback (MAC-GF), which can be viewed as the MAC-dual of the CRBC. We propose a CAF-based achievable secrecy rate region for the MAC-GF. Specializing our results to a Gaussian MAC-GF, we present numerical results which demonstrate that cooperation can improve secrecy for the MAC-GF. Next, we study the two-user one-eavesdropper discrete memoryless compound wiretap channel, and provide the best known lower bound for the secrecy capacity of this compound channel. We evaluate this achievable secrecy rate for the Gaussian MIMO case by using DPC. We show that this achievable secrecy rate achieves at least half of the secrecy capacity of this Gaussian MIMO compound wiretap channel, and also attains the secrecy capacity when the eavesdropper is degraded with respect to one of the two users. Then, we study the degraded compound multi-receiver wiretap channel (DCMRWC), which, in addition to a group of eavesdroppers, has two groups of users, namely the stronger group and the weaker group. We study two different communication scenarios for this channel. In the first scenario, there is only one eavesdropper, and the transmitter sends a confidential message to each group of legitimate users while keeping both messages secret from the eavesdropper. In the second scenario, we study the DCMRWC with layered messages without any restriction on the number of eavesdroppers. For both scenarios, we obtain the secrecy capacity region for the discrete memoryless channel, the parallel channel, and the Gaussian parallel channel. For the Gaussian MIMO channel, we obtain the secrecy capacity region when there is only one user in the second group. Next, we study the two-user fading broadcast channel and obtain its ergodic secrecy capacity region. We show that, thanks to fading, both users can have simultaneous secure communication with the transmitter, although this is not possible in the scalar non-fading Gaussian broadcast channel where only one user can have secure communication. This simultaneous secrecy of both users is achieved by an opportunistic communication scheme, in which, at each time instant, the transmitter communicates with the user having a better channel gain. Then, we study the secure lossy transmission of a vector Gaussian source to a legitimate user in the presence of an eavesdropper, where both the legitimate user and the eavesdropper have vector Gaussian side information. We obtain an outer bound for the rate, equivocation and distortion region. Moreover, we obtain the maximum equivocation at the eavesdropper when there is no constraint on the transmission rate. By using this maximum equivocation result, we show two facts. First, for this problem, in general, Wyner-Ziv scheme is suboptimal, although, it is optimal in the absence of an eavesdropper. And, second, even when there is no transmission rate constraint, an uncoded transmission scheme is suboptimal; the presence of an eavesdropper necessitates the use of a coded scheme to attain the maximum equivocation. Finally, we revisit the secure lossy source coding problem. In all works on this problem, either the equivocation of the source at the eavesdropper or the equivocation of the legitimate user's reconstruction of the source at the eavesdropper is used to measure secrecy. We first propose the relative equivocation of the source at the eavesdropper with respect to the legitimate user as a new secrecy measure. We argue that this new secrecy measure is the one that corresponds to the natural generalization of the equivocation in a wiretap channel to the context of secure lossy source coding. Under this new secrecy measure, we provide a single-letter description of the rate, relative equivocation and distortion region, as well as its specializations to degraded and reversely degraded cases. We investigate the relationships between the optimal scheme that attains this region and the Wyner-Ziv scheme.
In this paper, we investigate the application of Reed-Muller (RM) codes for Physical-layer security in a real world wiretap channel scenario. Utilizing software-defined radios (SDRs) in a real indoor environment, we implement a coset coding scheme that leverages the hierarchical structure of RM codes to secure data transmission. The generator matrix of the RM code is used to partition codewords into cosets in the usual way, where each message corresponds to a unique coset, and auxiliary bits select specific codewords within each coset. This approach enables the legitimate receiver (Bob) can decode the transmitted message with minimal information leakage to eavesdropper (Eve) thus protecting the confidentiality of the communication with the help of coset structure. Mutual information neural estimation (MINE) is used to quantify information leakage and validate the effectiveness of the scheme. Experimental results indicate that RM codes can achieve robust security even in practical environments affected by real-world channel impairments. These findings demonstrate the potential of RM codes as an efficient solution for physical-layer security, particularly for applications that require low latency and short blocklengths.
Suppose Alice wishes to send messages to Bob through a communication channel C_1, but her transmissions also reach an eavesdropper Eve through another channel C_2. The goal is to design a coding scheme that makes it possible for Alice to communicate both reliably and securely. Reliability is measured in terms of Bob's probability of error in recovering the message, while security is measured in terms of Eve's equivocation ratio. Wyner showed that the situation is characterized by a single constant C_s, called the secrecy capacity, which has the following meaning: for all ε>0ε> 0ε>0, there exist coding schemes of rate R≥Cs−εR \ge C_s - εR≥Cs​−ε that asymptotically achieve both the reliability and the security objectives. However, his proof of this result is based upon a nonconstructive random-coding argument. To date, despite a considerable research effort, the only case where we know how to construct coding schemes that achieve secrecy capacity is when Eve's channel C_2 is an erasure channel, or a combinatorial variation thereof. Polar codes were recently invented by Arikan; they approach the capacity of symmetric binary-input discrete memoryless channels with low encoding and decoding complexity. Herein, we use polar codes to construct a coding scheme that achieves the secrecy capacity for a wide range of wiretap channels. Our construction works for any instantiation of the wiretap channel model, as long as both C_1 and C_2 are symmetric and binary-input, and C_2 is degraded with respect to C_1. Moreover, we show how to modify our construction in order to provide strong security, in the sense defined by Maurer, while still operating at a rate that approaches the secrecy capacity. In this case, we cannot guarantee that the reliability condition will be satisfied unless the main channel C_1 is noiseless, although we believe it can be always satisfied in practice.
Several security models of multiple-access channel (MAC) are investigated. First, we study the degraded MAC with confidential messages, where two users transmit their confidential messages (no common message) to a destination, and each user obtains a degraded version of the output of the MAC. Each user views the other user as a eavesdropper, and wishes to keep its confidential message as secret as possible from the other user. Measuring each user's uncertainty about the other user's confidential message by equivocation, the inner and outer bounds on the capacity-equivocation region for this model have been provided. The result is further explained via the binary and Gaussian examples. Second, the discrete memoryless multiple-access wiretap channel (MAC-WT) is studied, where two users transmit their corresponding confidential messages (no common message) to a legitimate receiver, while an additional wiretapper wishes to obtain the messages via a wiretap channel. This new model is considered into two cases: the general MAC-WT with cooperative encoders, and the degraded MAC-WT with non-cooperative encoders. The capacity-equivocation region is totally determined for the cooperative case, and inner and outer bounds on the capacity-equivocation region are provided for the non-cooperative case. For both cases, the results are further explained via the binary examples.