Cooperation with an Untrusted Relay: A Secrecy Perspective

We consider the communication scenario where a source-destination pair wishes to keep the information secret from a relay node despite wanting to enlist its help. For this scenario, an interesting question is whether the relay node should be deployed at all. That is, whether cooperation with an untrusted relay node can ever be beneficial. We first provide an achievable secrecy rate for the general untrusted relay channel, and proceed to investigate this question for two types of relay networks with orthogonal components. For the first model, there is an orthogonal link from the source to the relay. For the second model, there is an orthogonal link from the relay to the destination. For the first model, we find the equivocation capacity region and show that answer is negative. In contrast, for the second model, we find that the answer is positive. Specifically, we show by means of the achievable secrecy rate based on compress-and-forward, that, by asking the untrusted relay node to relay information, we can achieve a higher secrecy rate than just treating the relay as an eavesdropper. For a special class of the second model, where the relay is not interfering itself, we derive an upper bound for the secrecy rate using an argument whose net effect is to separate the eavesdropper from the relay. The merit of the new upper bound is demonstrated on two channels that belong to this special class. The Gaussian case of the second model mentioned above benefits from this approach in that the new upper bound improves the previously known bounds. For the Cover-Kim deterministic relay channel, the new upper bound finds the secrecy capacity when the source-destination link is not worse than the source-relay link, by matching with the achievable rate we present.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, submitted October 2008, revised October 2009. This is the revised versio

Partial Strong Converse for the Non-Degraded Wiretap Channel

We prove the partial strong converse property for the discrete memoryless \emph{non-degraded} wiretap channel, for which we require the leakage to the eavesdropper to vanish but allow an asymptotic error probability $\epsilon \in [0,1)$ to the legitimate receiver. We show that when the transmission rate is above the secrecy capacity, the probability of correct decoding at the legitimate receiver decays to zero exponentially. Therefore, the maximum transmission rate is the same for $\epsilon \in [0,1)$, and the partial strong converse property holds. Our work is inspired by a recently developed technique based on information spectrum method and Chernoff-Cramer bound for evaluating the exponent of the probability of correct decoding

Distributed secrecy for information theoretic sensor network models

This dissertation presents a novel problem inspired by the characteristics of sensor networks. The basic setup through-out the dissertation is that a set of sensor nodes encipher their data without collaboration and without any prior shared secret materials. The challenge is dealt by an eavesdropper who intercepts a subset of the enciphered data and wishes to gain knowledge of the uncoded data. This problem is challenging and novel given that the eavesdropper is assumed to know everything, including secret cryptographic keys used by both the encoders and decoders. We study the above problem using information theoretic models as a necessary first step towards an understanding of the characteristics of this system problem. This dissertation contains four parts. The first part deals with noiseless channels, and the goal is for sensor nodes to both source code and encipher their data. We derive inner and outer regions of the capacity region (i.e the set of all source coding and equivocation rates) for this problem under general distortion constraints. The main conclusion in this part is that unconditional secrecy is unachievable unless the distortion is maximal, rendering the data useless. In the second part we thus provide a practical coding scheme based on distributed source coding using syndromes (DISCUS) that provides secrecy beyond the equivocation measure, i.e. secrecy on each symbol in the message. The third part deals with discrete memoryless channels, and the goal is for sensor nodes to both channel code and encipher their data. We derive inner and outer regions to the secrecy capacity region, i.e. the set of all channel coding rates that achieve (weak) unconditional secrecy. The main conclusion in this part is that interference allows (weak) unconditional secrecy to be achieved in contrast with the first part of this dissertation. The fourth part deals with wireless channels with fading and additive Gaussian noise. We derive a general outer region and an inner region based on an equal SNR assumption, and show that the two are partially tight when the maximum available user powers are admissible

Vehicle Communication using Secrecy Capacity

We address secure vehicle communication using secrecy capacity. In particular, we research the relationship between secrecy capacity and various types of parameters that determine secrecy capacity in the vehicular wireless network. For example, we examine the relationship between vehicle speed and secrecy capacity, the relationship between the response time and secrecy capacity of an autonomous vehicle, and the relationship between transmission power and secrecy capacity. In particular, the autonomous vehicle has set the system modeling on the assumption that the speed of the vehicle is related to the safety distance. We propose new vehicle communication to maintain a certain level of secrecy capacity according to various parameters. As a result, we can expect safer communication security of autonomous vehicles in 5G communications.Comment: 17 Pages, 12 Figure

Optimal Power Allocation for A Massive MIMO Relay Aided Secure Communication

In this paper, we address the problem of optimal power allocation at the relay in two-hop secure communications under practical conditions. To guarantee secure communication during the long-distance transmission, the massive MIMO (M-MIMO) relaying techniques are explored to significantly enhance wireless security. The focus of this paper is on the analysis and design of optimal power assignment for a decode-and-forward (DF) M-MIMO relay, so as to maximize the secrecy outage capacity and minimize the interception probability, respectively. Our study reveals the condition for a nonnegative the secrecy outage capacity, obtains closed-form expressions for optimal power, and presents the asymptotic characteristics of secrecy performance. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes