Wireless Physical Layer Security with Imperfect Channel State Information: A Survey

Physical layer security is an emerging technique to improve the wireless communication security, which is widely regarded as a complement to cryptographic technologies. To design physical layer security techniques under practical scenarios, the uncertainty and imperfections in the channel knowledge need to be taken into consideration. This paper provides a survey of recent research and development in physical layer security considering the imperfect channel state information (CSI) at communication nodes. We first present an overview of the main information-theoretic measures of the secrecy performance with imperfect CSI. Then, we describe several signal processing enhancements in secure transmission designs, such as secure on-off transmission, beamforming with artificial noise, and secure communication assisted by relay nodes or in cognitive radio systems. The recent studies of physical layer security in large-scale decentralized wireless networks are also summarized. Finally, the open problems for the on-going and future research are discussed

Secure Transmission with Artificial Noise over Fading Channels: Achievable Rate and Optimal Power Allocation

We consider the problem of secure communication with multi-antenna transmission in fading channels. The transmitter simultaneously transmits an information bearing signal to the intended receiver and artificial noise to the eavesdroppers. We obtain an analytical closed-form expression of an achievable secrecy rate, and use it as the objective function to optimize the transmit power allocation between the information signal and the artificial noise. Our analytical and numerical results show that equal power allocation is a simple yet near optimal strategy for the case of non-colluding eavesdroppers. When the number of colluding eavesdroppers increases, more power should be used to generate the artificial noise. We also provide an upper bound on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) above which the achievable secrecy rate is positive and show that the bound is tight at low SNR. Furthermore, we consider the impact of imperfect channel state information (CSI) at both the transmitter and the receiver and find that it is wise to create more artificial noise to confuse the eavesdroppers than to increase the signal strength for the intended receiver if the CSI is not accurately obtained.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technolog

On the Monetary Loss Due to Passive and Active Attacks on MIMO Smart Grid Communications

We consider multiple source nodes (consumers) communicating wirelessly their energy demands to the meter data-management system (MDMS) over the subarea gateway(s). We quantify the impacts of passive and active security attacks on the wireless communications system's reliability and security as well as the energy-demand estimation-error cost in dollars paid by the utility. We adopt a multiple-input multiple-output multi-antenna-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channel model. To secure the MIMO wireless communication system, the legitimate nodes generate artificial noise (AN) vectors to mitigate the effect of the passive eavesdropping attacks. In addition, we propose a redundant design where multiple gateways are assumed to coexist in each subarea to forward the consumers' energy-demand messages. We quantify the redundant designs impact on the communication reliability between the consumers and the MDMS and on the energy-demand estimation-error cost

Optimal Power Allocation for Artificial Noise under Imperfect CSI against Spatially Random Eavesdroppers

In this correspondence, we study the secure multiantenna transmission with artificial noise (AN) under imperfect channel state information in the presence of spatially randomly distributed eavesdroppers. We derive the optimal solutions of the power allocation between the information signal and the AN for minimizing the secrecy outage probability (SOP) under a target secrecy rate and for maximizing the secrecy rate under a SOP constraint, respectively. Moreover, we provide an interesting insight that channel estimation error affects the optimal power allocation strategy in opposite ways for the above two objectives. When the estimation error increases, more power should be allocated to the information signal if we aim to decrease the rate-constrained SOP, whereas more power should be allocated to the AN if we aim to increase the SOP-constrained secrecy rate.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Secure Directional Modulation to Enhance Physical Layer Security in IoT Networks

In this work, an adaptive and robust null-space projection (AR-NSP) scheme is proposed for secure transmission with artificial noise (AN)-aided directional modulation (DM) in wireless networks. The proposed scheme is carried out in three steps. Firstly, the directions of arrival (DOAs) of the signals from the desired user and eavesdropper are estimated by the Root Multiple Signal Classificaiton (Root-MUSIC) algorithm and the related signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) are estimated based on the ratio of the corresponding eigenvalue to the minimum eigenvalue of the covariance matrix of the received signals. In the second step, the value intervals of DOA estimation errors are predicted based on the DOA and SNR estimations. Finally, a robust NSP beamforming DM system is designed according to the afore-obtained estimations and predictions. Our examination shows that the proposed scheme can significantly outperform the conventional non-adaptive robust scheme and non-robust NSP scheme in terms of achieving a much lower bit error rate (BER) at the desired user and a much higher secrecy rate (SR). In addition, the BER and SR performance gains achieved by the proposed scheme relative to other schemes increase with the value range of DOA estimation error.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, Io

Secure Massive MIMO Transmission with an Active Eavesdropper

In this paper, we investigate secure and reliable transmission strategies for multi-cell multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with a multi-antenna active eavesdropper. We consider a time-division duplex system where uplink training is required and an active eavesdropper can attack the training phase to cause pilot contamination at the transmitter. This forces the precoder used in the subsequent downlink transmission phase to implicitly beamform towards the eavesdropper, thus increasing its received signal power. Assuming matched filter precoding and artificial noise (AN) generation at the transmitter, we derive an asymptotic achievable secrecy rate when the number of transmit antennas approaches infinity. For the case of a single-antenna active eavesdropper, we obtain a closed-form expression for the optimal power allocation policy for the transmit signal and the AN, and find the minimum transmit power required to ensure reliable secure communication. Furthermore, we show that the transmit antenna correlation diversity of the intended users and the eavesdropper can be exploited in order to improve the secrecy rate. In fact, under certain orthogonality conditions of the channel covariance matrices, the secrecy rate loss introduced by the eavesdropper can be completely mitigated.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1505.0123

A Survey on MIMO Transmission with Discrete Input Signals: Technical Challenges, Advances, and Future Trends

Multiple antennas have been exploited for spatial multiplexing and diversity transmission in a wide range of communication applications. However, most of the advances in the design of high speed wireless multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) systems are based on information-theoretic principles that demonstrate how to efficiently transmit signals conforming to Gaussian distribution. Although the Gaussian signal is capacity-achieving, signals conforming to discrete constellations are transmitted in practical communication systems. As a result, this paper is motivated to provide a comprehensive overview on MIMO transmission design with discrete input signals. We first summarize the existing fundamental results for MIMO systems with discrete input signals. Then, focusing on the basic point-to-point MIMO systems, we examine transmission schemes based on three most important criteria for communication systems: the mutual information driven designs, the mean square error driven designs, and the diversity driven designs. Particularly, a unified framework which designs low complexity transmission schemes applicable to massive MIMO systems in upcoming 5G wireless networks is provided in the first time. Moreover, adaptive transmission designs which switch among these criteria based on the channel conditions to formulate the best transmission strategy are discussed. Then, we provide a survey of the transmission designs with discrete input signals for multiuser MIMO scenarios, including MIMO uplink transmission, MIMO downlink transmission, MIMO interference channel, and MIMO wiretap channel. Additionally, we discuss the transmission designs with discrete input signals for other systems using MIMO technology. Finally, technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of transmission designs with discrete input signals are addressed.Comment: 110 pages, 512 references, submit to Proceedings of the IEE

Data-Aided Secure Massive MIMO Transmission under the Pilot Contamination Attack

In this paper, we study the design of secure communication for time division duplex multi-cell multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with active eavesdropping. We assume that the eavesdropper actively attacks the uplink pilot transmission and the uplink data transmission before eavesdropping the downlink data transmission of the users. We exploit both the received pilots and the received data signals for uplink channel estimation. We show analytically that when the number of transmit antennas and the length of the data vector both tend to infinity, the signals of the desired user and the eavesdropper lie in different eigenspaces of the received signal matrix at the base station provided that their signal powers are different. This finding reveals that decreasing (instead of increasing) the desired user's signal power might be an effective approach to combat a strong active attack from an eavesdropper. Inspired by this observation, we propose a data-aided secure downlink transmission scheme and derive an asymptotic achievable secrecy sum-rate expression for the proposed design. For the special case of a single-cell single-user system with independent and identically distributed fading, the obtained expression reveals that the secrecy rate scales logarithmically with the number of transmit antennas. This is the same scaling law as for the achievable rate of a single-user massive MIMO system in the absence of eavesdroppers. Numerical results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves significant secrecy rate gains compared to alternative approaches based on matched filter precoding with artificial noise generation and null space transmission.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1801.0707

Power-Efficient and Secure WPCNs with Hardware Impairments and Non-Linear EH Circuit

In this paper, we design a robust resource allocation algorithm for a wireless-powered communication network (WPCN) taking into account residual hardware impairments (HWIs) at the transceivers, the imperfectness of the channel state information, and the non-linearity of practical radio frequency energy harvesting circuits. In order to ensure power-efficient secure communication, physical layer security techniques are exploited to deliberately degrade the channel quality of a multiple-antenna eavesdropper. The resource allocation algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem for minimization of the total consumed power in the network, while guaranteeing the quality of service of the information receivers in terms of secrecy rate. The globally optimal solution of the optimization problem is obtained via a two-dimensional search and semidefinite programming relaxation. To strike a balance between computational complexity and system performance, a low-complexity iterative suboptimal resource allocation algorithm is then proposed. Numerical results demonstrate that both the proposed optimal and suboptimal schemes can significantly reduce the total system power consumption required for guaranteeing secure communication, and unveil the impact of HWIs on the system performance: (1) residual HWIs create a system performance bottleneck in the high transmit/receive power regimes; (2) increasing the number of transmit antennas can effectively reduce the system power consumption and alleviate the performance degradation due to residual HWIs; (3) imperfect CSI increases the system power consumption and exacerbates the impact of residual HWIs.Comment: Submitted for possible journal publicatio

Multi-Objective Optimization for Robust Power Efficient and Secure Full-Duplex Wireless Communication Systems

In this paper, we investigate the power efficient resource allocation algorithm design for secure multiuser wireless communication systems employing a full-duplex (FD) base station (BS) for serving multiple half-duplex (HD) downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) users simultaneously. We propose a multi-objective optimization framework to study two conflicting yet desirable design objectives, i.e., total DL transmit power minimization and total UL transmit power minimization. To this end, the weighed Tchebycheff method is adopted to formulate the resource allocation algorithm design as a multi-objective optimization problem (MOOP). The considered MOOP takes into account the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of all legitimate users for guaranteeing secure DL and UL transmission in the presence of potential eavesdroppers. Thereby, secure UL transmission is enabled by the FD BS and would not be possible with an HD BS. The imperfectness of the channel state information of the eavesdropping channels and the inter-user interference channels is incorporated for robust resource allocation algorithm design. Although the considered MOOP is non-convex, we solve it optimally by semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation. Simulation results not only unveil the trade-off between the total DL transmit power and the total UL transmit power, but also confirm the robustness of the proposed algorithm against potential eavesdroppers.Comment: Submitted for possible journal publicatio