Search

The physical layer security (PLS) of millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems is investigated, where the secure source-to-destination communication is assisted by an untrusted relay selected from a group of them and there are also several passive eavesdroppers (Eves) in the network. In the considered system model, while the distributions of the untrusted relays and Eves follow a homogeneous Poisson Point Process (PPP). To maximize the instantaneous secrecy rate, a novel joint relay selection and power allocation (JRP) method is developed where the destination and source aim for jamming the reception of both the untrusted relays and passive Eves. New expressions of the optimal power allocation (OPA) are derived for both non-colluding Eves (NCE) and colluding Eves (CE). Subsequently, by considering the impact of potential blockages, new closed-form equations are derived for analyzing the system’s ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) for transmission over fading mmWave channels. Finally, numerical examples are provided for demonstrating the superiority of our proposed JRP method over the relevant benchmarks found in the literature. Interestingly, the ESR increases with the density of untrusted relays for both the NCE and CE scenarios, which is a benefit of the improved probability of selecting a relay with a stronger second-hop channel. Furthermore, in the low transmit power regime, employing relatively low mmWave frequencies achieves better ESR, while in the high transmit power regime, high mmWave frequencies provide higher ESR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a light-weight jamming-resistant scheme for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) in 5G networks to ensure high-quality communication in a two-hop cooperative network. In the considered system model, a source communicates with a destination in the presence of an untrusted relay and a powerful multi-antenna adversary jammer. The untrusted relay is an authorized necessary helper who may wiretap the confidential information. Meanwhile, the jammer is an external attacker who tries to damage both the training and transmission phases. Different from traditional frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) techniques that require a pre-determined pattern between communicating nodes, in our scheme, the source and destination enjoy the local observations of the two-hop channels. Then they exploit the measured channel as the source of common randomness to generate shared secret keys. By collecting multiple time slots into a frame, the sequence of channels observed in each frame is utilized to specify the adopted FHSS sequence in the next frame. Based on the derived FHSS sequence from the key generation phase, the source starts to transmit its message supporting by the the destination-assisted cooperative jamming (DACJ) technique which prevents the untrusted relay from discovering the secret message. For the mentioned system model, we present new closed-form expressions for characterizing the achievable secret key rate (SKR) and ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) to highlight the efficiency of our proposed scheme compared to the state-of-the-art. We next determine the optimal power allocation (OPA) between the pilot and data transmission phases that maximizes the ESR performance while escaping from jamming attack. Finally, several numerical examples and discussions are presented to gain engineering insights behind the studied communication scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative relaying can be introduced as a promising approach for data communication in the Internet of Things (IoT), where the source and the destination may be placed far away. In this paper, by taking a variety of realistic hardware imperfections (HWIs) and channels estimation errors (CEEs) into account, the secrecy performance of a three-hop cooperative network with a source, a destination and two consecutive amplify-and-forward (AF) relays is investigated. The relays are considered to be untrusted, i.e., while they are mandatory helpers for data transmission, they may overhear the received signals. We adopt the artificial noise injection scheme, to keep the source message secret from being captured by the untrusted relays. Given this system model, a novel closed-form expression is obtained in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime for the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) performance over Nakagami- $m$ fading. Our simulation results highlight that the secrecy performance of the system is improved when the tolerable HWIs are distributed beneficially across the transmission and reception radio-frequency (RF) front-ends of each node. Our work reveals that unlike the ideal case, the realistic scenario of non-ideal hardware with CEEs faces with the secrecy rate ceiling. Finally, under a constraint on the total energy consumption which is applicable for battery-limited IoT equipment, we maximize the achievable secrecy rate. Our results highlight the importance of the destination’s jamming cooperation and the first relay’s role on the secrecy performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the problem of joint covert communication and secure transmission in untrusted relaying networks when multiple wardens exist in the network. We first consider a system model consisting of one source, one untrusted amplify-and-forward relay, one destination, and one warden. For covert communications, our aim is to prevent the warden from detecting the presence of communications via the source-relay-destination link. For secure transmission, our aim is to prevent the untrusted relay from decoding the source signal. To satisfy these requirements, we propose that the destination and the source inject jamming signals during the source-to-relay and relay-to-destination transmission phases, respectively. For the considered system model, we propose a power allocation strategy to maximize the secrecy rate and satisfy the covert requirements in both of the phases. Given that the proposed optimization problem is non-convex, we employ the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach to derive a tractable solution. To obtain further insights, we generalize our analytical results to consider multiple untrusted relays and multiple wardens. We focus on two scenarios of non-colluding and colluding wardens. Our results highlight that as the number of relays increases, the achievable secrecy rate increases while the average detection error probability decreases. This is a novel observation of a fundamental trade-off between covert requirement and secrecy performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a two-way secure communication scheme where two transceivers exchange confidential messages via a wireless-powered untrusted amplify-and-forward relay in the presence of an external jammer. We take into account both friendly jamming (FJ) and Gaussian noise jamming (GNJ) scenarios. Based on the time switching (TS) architecture at the relay, the data transmission is done in three phases. In the first phase, both the energy-starved nodes, the untrustworthy relay and the jammer, are charged by noninformation radio frequency (RF) signals from the sources. In the second phase, the two sources send their information signals and concurrently, the jammer transmits artificial noise to confuse the curious relay. Finally, the third phase is dedicated to forward a scaled version of the received signal from the relay to the sources. For the proposed secure transmission schemes, we derive new closed-form lower-bound expressions for the ergodic secrecy sum rate (ESSR) in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. We further analyze the asymptotic ESSR to determine the key parameters; the high SNR slope and the high SNR power offset of the jamming based scenarios. To highlight the performance advantage of the proposed FJ, we also examine the scenario of without jamming (WoJ). Finally, numerical examples and discussions are provided to acquire some engineering insights, and to demonstrate the impacts of different system parameters on the secrecy performance of the considered communication scenarios. The numerical results illustrate that the proposed FJ significantly outperforms the traditional one-way communication and the constellation rotation (CR) approach, as well as our proposed benchmarks, the two-way WoJ and GNJ scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By taking a variety of realistic hardware imperfections into consideration, we propose an optimal power allocation (OPA) strategy to maximize the instantaneous secrecy rate of a cooperative wireless network comprised of a source, a destination, and an untrusted amplify-and-forward relay. We assume that either the source or the destination is equipped with a large-scale multiple antennas’ system, while the rest are equipped with a single antenna. To prevent the untrusted relay from intercepting the source message, the destination sends an intended jamming noise to the relay, which is referred to as destination-based cooperative jamming. Given this system model, novel closed-form expressions are presented in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime for the ergodic secrecy rate and the secrecy outage probability. We further improve the secrecy performance of the system by optimizing the associated hardware design. The results reveal that by beneficially distributing the tolerable hardware imperfections across the transmission and reception radio-frequency front ends of each node, the system’s secrecy rate may be improved. The engineering insight is that equally sharing the total imperfections at the relay between the transmitter and the receiver provides the best secrecy performance. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed OPA together with the most appropriate hardware design significantly increases the secrecy rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the secrecy performance of two-way relaying between a large-scale multiple antenna base station (BS) and a single antenna mobile user (MU) in the presence of a multiple antenna external jammer. We consider the untrusted relaying scenario, where an amplify-and-forward relay is both a necessary helper and a potential eavesdropper to the BS and MU transmissions. With the aim of maximizing the instantaneous secrecy sum rate, we derive new closed-form solutions for the optimal power allocation (OPA) under the following three scenarios: 1) without jamming (WoJ) where the jammer is not activated; 2) friendly jamming (FJ) where the jamming signal is known a priori at the BS and MU; and 3) Gaussian noise jamming (GNJ) where the jamming signal is unknown at the BS and MU. Based on our OPA solutions, new closed-form expressions are derived for the ergodic secrecy sum rate (ESSR) with Rayleigh fading channels. Furthermore, we characterize the high signal-to-noise ratio slope and power offset of the ESSR to provide a fundamental comparison of the WoJ, FJ, and GNJ scenarios. Based on our analysis, we propose a simple relay selection criterion for the scenario when the BS and MU are assisted by multiple untrusted relays. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the impact of the jammer’s location, number of antennas and the advantage of the proposed relay selection criterion on the secrecy performance. Our findings highlight that similar to the trusted relaying scenario, the ESSR of all three secure transmission scenarios improve as the number of untrusted relays increases. Moreover, we highlight an interesting insight that the OPA for the GNJ scenario results in the same ESSR performance as the OPA for the WoJ scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a joint relay selection and power allocation (JRP) scheme is proposed to enhance the physical layer security of a cooperative network, where a multiple antennas source communicates with a single-antenna destination in the presence of untrusted relays and passive eavesdroppers (Eves). The objective is to protect the data confidentially while concurrently relying on the untrusted relays as potential Eves to improve both the security and reliability of the network. To realize this objective, we consider cooperative jamming performed by the destination while the JRP scheme is implemented. With the aim of maximizing the instantaneous secrecy rate, we derive a new closed-form solution for the optimal power allocation and propose a simple relay selection criterion under two scenarios of non-colluding Eves (NCE) and colluding Eves (CE). For the proposed scheme, a new closed-form expression is derived for the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and the secrecy outage probability as security metrics, and a new closed-form expression is presented for the average symbol error rate as a reliability measure over Rayleigh fading channels. We further explicitly characterize the high signal-to-noise ratio slope and power offset of the ESR to highlight the impacts of system parameters on the ESR. In addition, we examine the diversity order of the proposed scheme to reveal the achievable secrecy performance advantage. Finally, the secrecy and reliability diversity-multiplexing tradeoff of the optimized network are provided. Numerical results highlight that the ESR performance of the proposed JRP scheme for NCE and CE cases is increased with respect to the number of untrustworthy relays. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors study the transmit power allocation (PA) problem for a network of two multi-antenna terminals (one of which is a massivemultiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) terminal) and a two-way, amplify-and-forward relay. The relay is limited to a single antenna. Using perfect channel state information, the terminals employ beamforming with maximumratio- transmission and maximum-ratio-combining for transmission and reception, respectively. The authors investigate two practical problems, namely; (i) maximising the sum rate subject to a total power constraint (ii) maximising the sumrate when one of the terminals must exceed a target signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For the first case, the authors derive the closed-form optimal PA and for the second, the authors derive a sub-optimal PA. In both cases, the resulting sum rates are a function of instantaneous channel gains. Thus by averaging over the Nakagami-m distribution and exploiting the weak law of large numbers, the authors derive the closed-form ergodic sum rates. Finally, the simulation results validate the theoretical analysis and show the sum-rate improvements over uniform PA. For example, to achieve 4 bit/s/Hz, a uniform allocation needs 1 dB more than the authors' optimal allocation. When one of the SNRs must exceed a target value, the gap between the authors' sub-optimal PA and random PA increases to 2 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To protect data communication from eavesdropper nodes, different techniques have been developed to improve the physical-layer security (PLS) of communications systems. Destination-based cooperative signalling (DBCS) is one of such techniques where the destination sends an intended artificial noise to the untrusted listeners helping to protect the source message from being captured reliably at eavesdroppers. In this study, the authors investigate the application of DBCS to improve the PLS, and as a consequence the secrecy performance of a two-hop amplify-and-forward cooperative system with an untrusted relay. To get the best performance out of DBCS, the transmit power of the source's signal as well as the artificial noise should be carefully adjusted. To address this, they have introduced the optimal power allocation to maximise the secrecy rate of the system under a sum-power constraint at the network nodes. For a system with large-scale antenna arrays at the base station, then then find the closed-form solution for the secrecy outage probability and the ergodic secrecy rate of the optimised system for both uplink and downlink. The presented simulation results validate the authors' theoretical analysis and reveal that the proposed DBCS with optimal power allocation significantly improves the secrecy performance of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors deal with secure transmission in two‐hop amplify‐and‐forward network with untrusted relays. To prevent the untrusted relays from intercepting the source message and to achieve positive secrecy rate, the destination‐based cooperative jamming technique is used. The authors propose joint secure best relay selection (BRS) and optimal power allocation (OPA) for uplink transmission of a cellular network when the base station is equipped with very large‐scale antenna arrays. Then, the common performance metrics such as ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and secrecy outage probability are evaluated for the optimised network. Moreover, the diversity order and diversity‐multiplexing tradeoff of the system are examined. The authors obtain that the diversity order of joint BRS and OPA scenario is equal to number of relays. Finally, some numerical and simulation results are presented to validate the theoretical analysis and to show the advantages offered by the presented systems. They reveal interesting results that, by increasing number of untrusted relay nodes, the system performance improves. For example, for target ESR 2 bits/s/Hz and ten untrusted relay nodes, the optimised network saves about 5 dB for uplink transmission, in comparison with the system applying the BRS and equal power allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]