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

Full-duplex wireless communications: challenges, solutions and future research directions

The family of conventional half-duplex (HD) wireless systems relied on transmitting and receiving in different time-slots or frequency sub-bands. Hence the wireless research community aspires to conceive full-duplex (FD) operation for supporting concurrent transmission and reception in a single time/frequency channel, which would improve the attainable spectral efficiency by a factor of two. The main challenge encountered in implementing an FD wireless device is the large power difference between the self-interference (SI) imposed by the device’s own transmissions and the signal of interest received from a remote source. In this survey, we present a comprehensive list of the potential FD techniques and highlight their pros and cons. We classify the SI cancellation techniques into three categories, namely passive suppression, analog cancellation and digital cancellation, with the advantages and disadvantages of each technique compared. Specifically, we analyse the main impairments (e.g. phase noise, power amplifier nonlinearity as well as in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance, etc.) that degrading the SI cancellation. We then discuss the FD based Media Access Control (MAC)-layer protocol design for the sake of addressing some of the critical issues, such as the problem of hidden terminals, the resultant end-to-end delay and the high packet loss ratio (PLR) due to network congestion. After elaborating on a variety of physical/MAC-layer techniques, we discuss potential solutions conceived for meeting the challenges imposed by the aforementioned techniques. Furthermore, we also discuss a range of critical issues related to the implementation, performance enhancement and optimization of FD systems, including important topics such as hybrid FD/HD scheme, optimal relay selection and optimal power allocation, etc. Finally, a variety of new directions and open problems associated with FD technology are pointed out. Our hope is that this treatise will stimulate future research efforts in the emerging field of FD communication

Modified quasi-orthogonal space-time block coding in distributed wireless networks

Cooperative networks have developed as a useful technique that can achieve the same advantage as multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) wireless systems such as spatial diversity, whilst resolving the difficulties of co-located multiple antennas at individual nodes and avoiding the effect of path-loss and shadowing. Spatial diversity in cooperative networks is known as cooperative diversity, and can enhance system reliability without sacrificing the scarce bandwidth resource or consuming more transmit power. It enables single-antenna terminals in a wireless relay network to share their antennas to form a virtual antenna array on the basis of their distributed locations. However, there remain technical challenges to maximize the benefit of cooperative communications, e.g. data rate, asynchronous transmission and outage. In this thesis, therefore, firstly, a modified distributed quasi-orthogonal space-time block coding (M-D-QO-STBC) scheme with increased code gain distance (CGD) for one-way and two-way amplify-and-forward wireless relay networks is proposed. This modified code is designed from set partitioning a larger codebook formed from two quasi-orthogonal space time block codes with different signal rotations then the subcodes are combined and pruned to arrive at the modified codebook with the desired rate in order to increase the CGD. Moreover, for higher rate codes the code distance is maximized by using a genetic algorithm to search for the optimum rotation matrix. This scheme has very good performance and significant coding gain over existing codes such as the open-loop and closed-loop QO-STBC schemes. In addition, the topic of outage probability analysis in the context of multi-relay selection from $N$ available relay nodes for one-way amplify-and-forward cooperative relay networks is considered together with the best relay selection, the $N^{th}$ relay selection and best four relay selection in two-way amplify-and-forward cooperative relay networks. The relay selection is performed either on the basis of a max-min strategy or one based on maximizing exact end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, in this thesis, robust schemes for cooperative relays based on the M-D-QO-STBC scheme for both one-way and two-way asynchronous cooperative relay networks are considered to overcome the issue of a synchronism in wireless cooperative relay networks. In particular, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) data structure is employed with cyclic prefix (CP) insertion at the source in the one-way cooperative relay network and at the two terminal nodes in the two-way cooperative network to combat the effects of time asynchronism. As such, this technique can effectively cope with the effects of timing errors. Finally, outage probability performance of a proposed amplify-and-forward cooperative cognitive relay network is evaluated and the cognitive relays are assumed to exploit an overlay approach. A closed form expression for the outage probability for multi-relay selection cooperation over Rayleigh frequency flat fading channels is derived for perfect and imperfect spectrum acquisitions. Furthermore, the M-QO-STBC scheme is also proposed for use in wireless cognitive relay networks. MATLAB and Maple software based simulations are employed throughout the thesis to support the analytical results and assess the performance of new algorithms and methods