Cost-Effective Signal Processing Algorithms for Physical-Layer Security in Wireless Networks

Data privacy in traditional wireless communications is accomplished by cryptography techniques at the upper layers of the protocol stack. This thesis aims at contributing to the critical security issue residing in the physical-layer of wireless networks, namely, secrecy rate in various transmission environments. Physical-layer security opens the gate to the exploitation of channel characteristics to achieve data secure transmission. Precoding techniques, as a critical aspect in pre-processing signals prior to transmission has become an effective approach and recently drawn significant attention in the literature. In our research, novel non-linear precoders are designed focusing on the improvement of the physical-layer secrecy rate with consideration of computational complexity as well as the Bit Error Ratio (BER) performance. In the process of designing the precoder, strategies such as Lattice Reduction (LR) and Artificial Noise (AN) are employed to achieve certain design requirements. The deployment and allocation of resources such as relays to assist the transmission also have gained significant interest. In multiple-antenna relay networks, we examine various relay selection criteria with arbitrary knowledge of the channels to the users and the eavesdroppers. Furthermore, we provide novel effective relay selection criteria that can achieve a high secrecy rate performance. More importantly they do not require knowledge of the channels of the eavesdroppers and the interference. Combining the jamming technique with resource allocation of relay networks, we investigate an opportunistic relaying and jamming scheme for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) buffer-aided downlink relay networks. More specifically, a novel Relaying and Jamming Function Selection (RJFS) algorithm as well as a buffer-aided RJFS algorithm are developed along with their ability to achieve a higher secrecy rate. Relying on the proposed relay network, we detail the characteristics of the system, under various relay selection criteria, develop exhaustive search and greedy search-based algorithms, with or without inter-relay Interference Cancellation (IC)

Relay Selection with Network Coding in Two-Way Relay Channels

In this paper, we consider the design of joint network coding (NC)and relay selection (RS) in two-way relay channels. In the proposed schemes, two users first sequentially broadcast their respective information to all the relays. We propose two RS schemes, a single relay selection with NC and a dual relay selection with NC. For both schemes, the selected relay(s) perform NC on the received signals sent from the two users and forward them to both users. The proposed schemes are analyzed and the exact bit error rate (BER) expressions are derived and verified through Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the dual relay selection with NC outperforms other considered relay selection schemes in two-way relay channels. The results also reveal that the proposed NC relay selection schemes provide a selection gain compared to a NC scheme with no relay selection, and a network coding gain relative to a conventional relay selection scheme with no NC.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

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