Generalized Interference Alignment --- Part I: Theoretical Framework

Interference alignment (IA) has attracted enormous research interest as it achieves optimal capacity scaling with respect to signal to noise ratio on interference networks. IA has also recently emerged as an effective tool in engineering interference for secrecy protection on wireless wiretap networks. However, despite the numerous works dedicated to IA, two of its fundamental issues, i.e., feasibility conditions and transceiver design, are not completely addressed in the literature. In this two part paper, a generalised interference alignment (GIA) technique is proposed to enhance the IA's capability in secrecy protection. A theoretical framework is established to analyze the two fundamental issues of GIA in Part I and then the performance of GIA in large-scale stochastic networks is characterized to illustrate how GIA benefits secrecy protection in Part II. The theoretical framework for GIA adopts methodologies from algebraic geometry, determines the necessary and sufficient feasibility conditions of GIA, and generates a set of algorithms that can solve the GIA problem. This framework sets up a foundation for the development and implementation of GIA.Comment: Minor Revision at IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

On the Throughput Cost of Physical Layer Security in Decentralized Wireless Networks

This paper studies the throughput of large-scale decentralized wireless networks with physical layer security constraints. In particular, we are interested in the question of how much throughput needs to be sacrificed for achieving a certain level of security. We consider random networks where the legitimate nodes and the eavesdroppers are distributed according to independent two-dimensional Poisson point processes. The transmission capacity framework is used to characterize the area spectral efficiency of secure transmissions with constraints on both the quality of service (QoS) and the level of security. This framework illustrates the dependence of the network throughput on key system parameters, such as the densities of legitimate nodes and eavesdroppers, as well as the QoS and security constraints. One important finding is that the throughput cost of achieving a moderate level of security is quite low, while throughput must be significantly sacrificed to realize a highly secure network. We also study the use of a secrecy guard zone, which is shown to give a significant improvement on the throughput of networks with high security requirements.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Multiuser Diversity for Secrecy Communications Using Opportunistic Jammer Selection -- Secure DoF and Jammer Scaling Law

In this paper, we propose opportunistic jammer selection in a wireless security system for increasing the secure degrees of freedom (DoF) between a transmitter and a legitimate receiver (say, Alice and Bob). There is a jammer group consisting of $S$ jammers among which Bob selects $K$ jammers. The selected jammers transmit independent and identically distributed Gaussian signals to hinder the eavesdropper (Eve). Since the channels of Bob and Eve are independent, we can select the jammers whose jamming channels are aligned at Bob, but not at Eve. As a result, Eve cannot obtain any DoF unless it has more than $KN_j$ receive antennas, where $N_j$ is the number of jammer's transmit antenna each, and hence $KN_j$ can be regarded as defensible dimensions against Eve. For the jamming signal alignment at Bob, we propose two opportunistic jammer selection schemes and find the scaling law of the required number of jammers for target secure DoF by a geometrical interpretation of the received signals.Comment: Accepted with minor revisions, IEEE Trans. on Signal Processin