Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

Advanced interference management techniques for future generation cellular networks

The demand for mobile wireless network resources is constantly on the rise, pushing for new communication technologies that are able to support unprecedented rates. In this thesis we address the issue by considering advanced interference management techniques to exploit the available resources more efficiently under relaxed channel state information (CSI) assumptions. While the initial studies focus on current half-duplex (HD) technology, we then move on to full-duplex (FD) communication due to its inherent potential to improve spectral efficiency. Work in this thesis is divided into four main parts as follows. In the first part, we focus on the two-cell two-user-per-cell interference broadcast channel (IBC) and consider the use of topological interference management (TIM) to manage inter-cell interference in an alternating connectivity scenario. Within this context we derive novel outer bounds on the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) for different system configurations, namely, single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input single-output (MISO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Additionally, we propose new transmission schemes based on joint coding across states that exploit global topological information at the transmitter to increase achievable DoF. Results show that when a single state has a probability of occurrence equal to one, the derived bounds are tight with up to a twofold increase in achievable DoF for the best case scenario. Additionally, when all alternating connectivity states are equiprobable: the SISO system gains 11/16 DoF, achieving 96:4% of the derived outer bound; while the MISO/MIMO scenario has a gain of 1/2 DoF, achieving the outer bound itself. In the second part, we consider a general G-cell K-user-per-cell MIMO IBC and analyse the performance of linear interference alignment (IA) under imperfect CSI. Having imperfect channel knowledge impacts the effectiveness of the IA beamformers, and leads to a significant amount of residual leakage interference. Understanding the extent of this impact is a fundamental step towards obtaining a performance characterisation that is more relevant to practical scenarios. The CSI error model used is highly versatile, allowing the error to be treated either as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or as independent of it. Based on this error model, we derive a novel upper bound on the asymptotic mean sum rate loss and quantify the DoF loss due to imperfect CSI. Furthermore, we propose a new version of the maximum signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (Max-SINR) algorithm which takes into account statistical knowledge of the CSI error in order to improve performance over the naive counterpart in the presence of CSI mismatch. In the third part, we shift our attention to FD systems and consider weighted sum rate (WSR) maximisation for multi-user multi-cell networks where FD base-stations (BSs) communicate with HD downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) users. Since WSR problems are non-convex we transform them into weighted minimum mean squared error (WMMSE) ones that are proven to converge. Our analysis is first carried out for perfect CSI and then expanded to cater for imperfect CSI under two types of error models, namely, a norm-bounded error model and a stochastic error model. Additionally, we propose an algorithm that maximises the total DL rate subject to each UL user achieving a desired target rate. Results show that the use of FD BSs provides significant gains in achievable rate over the use of HD BSs, with a gain of 1:92 for the best case scenario under perfect CSI. They also demonstrate the robust performance of the imperfect CSI designs, and confirm that FD outperforms HD even under CSI mismatch conditions. Finally, the fourth part considers the use of linear IA to manage interference in a multi-user multi-cell network with FD BSs and HD users under imperfect CSI. The number of interference links present in such a system is considerably greater than that present in the HD network counterpart; thus, understanding the impact of residual leakage interference on performance is even more important for FD enabled networks. Using the same generalised CSI error model from the second part, we study the performance of IA by characterising the sum rate and DoF losses incurred due to imperfect CSI. Additionally, we propose two novel IA algorithms applicable to this network; the first one is based on minimising the mean squared error (MMSE), while the second is based on Max-SINR. The proposed algorithms exploit statistical knowledge of the CSI error variance in order to improve performance. Moreover, they are shown to be equivalent under certain conditions, even though the MMSE based one has lower computational complexity. Furthermore for the multi-cell case, we also derive the proper condition for IA feasibility

Hybrid Processing Design for Multipair Massive MIMO Relaying with Channel Spatial Correlation

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) avails of simple transceiver design which can tackle many drawbacks of relay systems in terms of complicated signal processing, latency, and noise amplification. However, the cost and circuit complexity of having one radio frequency (RF) chain dedicated to each antenna element are prohibitive in practice. In this paper, we address this critical issue in amplify-and-forward (AF) relay systems using a hybrid analog and digital (A/D) transceiver structure. More specifically, leveraging the channel long-term properties, we design the analog beamformer which aims to minimize the channel estimation error and remain invariant over a long timescale. Then, the beamforming is completed by simple digital signal processing, i.e., maximum ratio combining/maximum ratio transmission (MRC/MRT) or zero-forcing (ZF) in the baseband domain. We present analytical bounds on the achievable spectral efficiency taking into account the spatial correlation and imperfect channel state information at the relay station. Our analytical results reveal that the hybrid A/D structure with ZF digital processor exploits spatial correlation and offers a higher spectral efficiency compared to the hybrid A/D structure with MRC/MRT scheme. Our numerical results showcase that the hybrid A/D beamforming design captures nearly 95% of the spectral efficiency of a fully digital AF relaying topology even by removing half of the RF chains. It is also shown that the hybrid A/D structure is robust to coarse quantization, and even with 2-bit resolution, the system can achieve more than 93% of the spectral efficiency offered by the same hybrid A/D topology with infinite resolution phase shifters.Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communication