Towards a Realistic Assessment of Multiple Antenna HCNs: Residual Additive Transceiver Hardware Impairments and Channel Aging

Given the critical dependence of broadcast channels by the accuracy of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), we develop a general downlink model with zero-forcing (ZF) precoding, applied in realistic heterogeneous cellular systems with multiple antenna base stations (BSs). Specifically, we take into consideration imperfect CSIT due to pilot contamination, channel aging due to users relative movement, and unavoidable residual additive transceiver hardware impairments (RATHIs). Assuming that the BSs are Poisson distributed, the main contributions focus on the derivations of the upper bound of the coverage probability and the achievable user rate for this general model. We show that both the coverage probability and the user rate are dependent on the imperfect CSIT and RATHIs. More concretely, we quantify the resultant performance loss of the network due to these effects. We depict that the uplink RATHIs have equal impact, but the downlink transmit BS distortion has a greater impact than the receive hardware impairment of the user. Thus, the transmit BS hardware should be of better quality than user's receive hardware. Furthermore, we characterise both the coverage probability and user rate in terms of the time variation of the channel. It is shown that both of them decrease with increasing user mobility, but after a specific value of the normalised Doppler shift, they increase again. Actually, the time variation, following the Jakes autocorrelation function, mirrors this effect on coverage probability and user rate. Finally, we consider space division multiple access (SDMA), single user beamforming (SU-BF), and baseline single-input single-output (SISO) transmission. A comparison among these schemes reveals that the coverage by means of SU-BF outperforms SDMA in terms of coverage.Comment: accepted in IEEE TV

Optimal Power Allocation by Imperfect Hardware Analysis in Untrusted Relaying Networks

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 (AF) relay. We assume that either the source or the destination is equipped with a large-scale multiple antennas (LSMA) 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 (DBCJ). Given this system model, novel closed-form expressions are presented in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime for the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and the secrecy outage probability (SOP). 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 (RF) 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.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures, Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Secure Massive MIMO Communication with Low-resolution DACs

In this paper, we investigate secure transmission in a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system adopting low-resolution digital-to-analog converters (DACs). Artificial noise (AN) is deliberately transmitted simultaneously with the confidential signals to degrade the eavesdropper's channel quality. By applying the Bussgang theorem, a DAC quantization model is developed which facilitates the analysis of the asymptotic achievable secrecy rate. Interestingly, for a fixed power allocation factor $\phi$, low-resolution DACs typically result in a secrecy rate loss, but in certain cases they provide superior performance, e.g., at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Specifically, we derive a closed-form SNR threshold which determines whether low-resolution or high-resolution DACs are preferable for improving the secrecy rate. Furthermore, a closed-form expression for the optimal $\phi$ is derived. With AN generated in the null-space of the user channel and the optimal $\phi$, low-resolution DACs inevitably cause secrecy rate loss. On the other hand, for random AN with the optimal $\phi$, the secrecy rate is hardly affected by the DAC resolution because the negative impact of the quantization noise can be compensated for by reducing the AN power. All the derived analytical results are verified by numerical simulations.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Secrecy performance of TAS/SC-based multi-hop harvest-to-transmit cognitive WSNs under joint constraint of interference and hardware imperfection

In this paper, we evaluate the secrecy performance of multi-hop cognitive wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In the secondary network, a source transmits its data to a destination via the multi-hop relaying model using the transmit antenna selection (TAS)/selection combining (SC) technique at each hop, in the presence of an eavesdropper who wants to receive the data illegally. The secondary transmitters, including the source and intermediate relays, have to harvest energy from radio-frequency signals of a power beacon for transmitting the source data. Moreover, their transmit power must be adjusted to satisfy the quality of service (QoS) of the primary network. Under the joint impact of hardware imperfection and interference constraint, expressions for the transmit power for the secondary transmitters are derived. We also derive exact and asymptotic expressions of secrecy outage probability (SOP) and probability of non-zero secrecy capacity (PNSC) for the proposed protocol over Rayleigh fading channel. The derivations are then verified by Monte Carlo simulations.Web of Science195art. no. 116

Hardware Impairments Aware Transceiver Design for Bidirectional Full-Duplex MIMO OFDM Systems

In this paper we address the linear precoding and decoding design problem for a bidirectional orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) communication system, between two multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) full-duplex (FD) nodes. The effects of hardware distortion as well as the channel state information error are taken into account. In the first step, we transform the available time-domain characterization of the hardware distortions for FD MIMO transceivers to the frequency domain, via a linear Fourier transformation. As a result, the explicit impact of hardware inaccuracies on the residual selfinterference (RSI) and inter-carrier leakage (ICL) is formulated in relation to the intended transmit/received signals. Afterwards, linear precoding and decoding designs are proposed to enhance the system performance following the minimum-mean-squarederror (MMSE) and sum rate maximization strategies, assuming the availability of perfect or erroneous CSI. The proposed designs are based on the application of alternating optimization over the system parameters, leading to a necessary convergence. Numerical results indicate that the application of a distortionaware design is essential for a system with a high hardware distortion, or for a system with a low thermal noise variance.Comment: Submitted to IEEE for publicatio

A Survey of Physical Layer Security Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Challenges Ahead

Physical layer security which safeguards data confidentiality based on the information-theoretic approaches has received significant research interest recently. The key idea behind physical layer security is to utilize the intrinsic randomness of the transmission channel to guarantee the security in physical layer. The evolution towards 5G wireless communications poses new challenges for physical layer security research. This paper provides a latest survey of the physical layer security research on various promising 5G technologies, including physical layer security coding, massive multiple-input multiple-output, millimeter wave communications, heterogeneous networks, non-orthogonal multiple access, full duplex technology, etc. Technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of physical layer security in 5G and beyond are discussed.Comment: To appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication