Outage Analysis of Multi-Relay Selection for Cognitive Radio with Imperfect Spectrum Sensing

In this paper, we examine the outage performance of a cognitive relay network, which is comprised of a secondary transmitter (ST), multiple decode-and-forward (DF) relays and a secondary destination (SD). We propose a multi-relay selection scheme for the cognitive relay network, where multiple relays are selected and used to participate in forwarding the secondary transmission from ST to SD. A closed-form expression of the outage probability for the proposed multi-relay selection under imperfect spectrum sensing is derived in Rayleigh fading environments. For comparison purposes, the conventional direct transmission and the best-relay selection are also considered as benchmarks. Numerical results show that as the spectrum sensing performance improves with an increasing detection probability and/or a decreasing false alarm probability, the outage probabilities of the proposed multi-relay selection as well as the direct transmission and the best-relay selection schemes all decrease accordingly. It is also demonstrated that the proposed multi-relay selection significantly outperforms the conventional approaches in terms of the outage probability.Comment: 5 page

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

Beacon-Assisted Spectrum Access with Cooperative Cognitive Transmitter and Receiver

Spectrum access is an important function of cognitive radios for detecting and utilizing spectrum holes without interfering with the legacy systems. In this paper we propose novel cooperative communication models and show how deploying such cooperations between a pair of secondary transmitter and receiver assists them in identifying spectrum opportunities more reliably. These cooperations are facilitated by dynamically and opportunistically assigning one of the secondary users as a relay to assist the other one which results in more efficient spectrum hole detection. Also, we investigate the impact of erroneous detection of spectrum holes and thereof missing communication opportunities on the capacity of the secondary channel. The capacity of the secondary users with interference-avoiding spectrum access is affected by 1) how effectively the availability of vacant spectrum is sensed by the secondary transmitter-receiver pair, and 2) how correlated are the perceptions of the secondary transmitter-receiver pair about network spectral activity. We show that both factors are improved by using the proposed cooperative protocols. One of the proposed protocols requires explicit information exchange in the network. Such information exchange in practice is prone to wireless channel errors (i.e., is imperfect) and costs bandwidth loss. We analyze the effects of such imperfect information exchange on the capacity as well as the effect of bandwidth cost on the achievable throughput. The protocols are also extended to multiuser secondary networks.Comment: 36 pages, 6 figures, To appear in IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computin

Secrecy Outage and Diversity Analysis of Cognitive Radio Systems

In this paper, we investigate the physical-layer security of a multi-user multi-eavesdropper cognitive radio system, which is composed of multiple cognitive users (CUs) transmitting to a common cognitive base station (CBS), while multiple eavesdroppers may collaborate with each other or perform independently in intercepting the CUs-CBS transmissions, which are called the coordinated and uncoordinated eavesdroppers, respectively. Considering multiple CUs available, we propose the round-robin scheduling as well as the optimal and suboptimal user scheduling schemes for improving the security of CUs-CBS transmissions against eavesdropping attacks. Specifically, the optimal user scheduling is designed by assuming that the channel state information (CSI) of all links from CUs to CBS, to primary user (PU) and to eavesdroppers are available. By contrast, the suboptimal user scheduling only requires the CSI of CUs-CBS links without the PU's and eavesdroppers' CSI. We derive closed-form expressions of the secrecy outage probability of these three scheduling schemes in the presence of the coordinated and uncoordinated eavesdroppers. We also carry out the secrecy diversity analysis and show that the round-robin scheduling achieves the diversity order of only one, whereas the optimal and suboptimal scheduling schemes obtain the full secrecy diversity, no matter whether the eavesdroppers collaborate or not. In addition, numerical secrecy outage results demonstrate that for both the coordinated and uncoordinated eavesdroppers, the optimal user scheduling achieves the best security performance and the round-robin scheduling performs the worst. Finally, upon increasing the number of CUs, the secrecy outage probabilities of the optimal and suboptimal user scheduling schemes both improve significantly.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted to appear, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 201

Relay Selection Strategies for Multi-hop Cooperative Networks

In this dissertation we consider several relay selection strategies for multi-hop cooperative networks. The relay selection strategies we propose do not require a central controller (CC). Instead, the relay selection is on a hop-by-hop basis. As such, these strategies can be implemented in a distributed manner. Therefore, increasing the number of hops in the network would not increase the complexity or time consumed for the relay selection procedure of each hop. We first investigate the performance of a hop-by-hop relay selection strategy for multi-hop decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative networks. In each relay cluster, relays that successfully receive and decode the message from the previous hop form a decoding set for relaying, and the relay which has the highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) link to the next hop is then selected for retransmission. We analyze the performance of this method in terms of end-to-end outage probability, and we derive approximations for the ergodic capacity and the effective ergodic capacity of this strategy. Next we propose a novel hop-by-hop relay selection strategy where the relay in the decoding set with the largest number of ``good\u27\u27 channels to the next stage is selected for retransmission. We analyze the performance of this method in terms of end-to-end outage probability in the case of perfect and imperfect channel state information (CSI). We also investigate relay selection strategies in underlay spectrum sharing cognitive relay networks. We consider a two-hop DF cognitive relay network with a constraint on the interference to the primary user. The outage probability of the secondary user and the interference probability at the primary user are analyzed under imperfect CSI scenario. Finally we introduce a hop-by-hop relay selection strategy for underlay spectrum sharing multi-hop relay networks. Relay selection in each stage is only based on the CSI in that hop. It is shown that in terms of outage probability, the performance of this method is nearly optimal

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