Joint Relay Selection and Power Allocation in Large-Scale MIMO Systems with Untrusted Relays and Passive Eavesdroppers

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 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 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 (SER) 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.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (In press

Secrecy Enhancement in Cooperative Relaying Systems

Cooperative communications is obviously an evolution in wireless networks due to its noticeable advantages such as increasing the coverage as well as combating fading and shadowing effects. However, the broadcast characteristic of a wireless medium which is exploited in cooperative communications leads to a variety of security vulnerabilities. As cooperative communication networks are globally expanded, they expose to security attacks and threats more than ever. Primarily, researchers have focused on upper layers of network architectures to meet the requirements for secure cooperative transmission while the upper-layer security solutions are incapable of combating a number of security threats, e.g., jamming attacks. To address this issue, physical-layer security has been recommended as a complementary solution in the literature. In this thesis, physical layer attacks of the cooperative communication systems are studied, and corresponding security techniques including cooperative jamming, beamforming and diversity approaches are investigated. In addition, a novel security solution for a two-hop decode-and-forward relaying system is presented where the transmitters insert a random phase shift to the modulated data of each hop. The random phase shift is created based on a shared secret among communicating entities. Thus, the injected phase shift confuses the eavesdropper and secrecy capacity improves. Furthermore, a cooperative jamming strategy for multi-hop decode-and-forward relaying systems is presented where multiple non-colluding illegitimate nodes can overhear the communication. The jamming signal is created by the transmitter of each hop while being sent with the primary signal. The jamming signal is known at the intended receiver as it is according to a secret common knowledge between the communicating entities. Hence, artificial noise misleads the eavesdroppers, and decreases their signal-to-noise-ratio. As a result, secrecy capacity of the system is improved. Finally, power allocation among friendly jamming and main signal is proposed to ensure that suggested scheme enhances secrecy

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