Physical Layer Security of Generalised Pre-coded Spatial Modulation with Antenna Scrambling

We now advocate a novel physical layer security solution that is unique to our previously proposed GPSM scheme with the aid of the proposed antenna scrambling. The novelty and contribution of our paper lies in three aspects: 1/ principle: we introduce a `security key' generated at Alice that is unknown to both Bob and Eve, where the design goal is that the publicly unknown security key only imposes barrier for Eve. 2/ approach: we achieve it by conveying useful information only through the activation of RA indices, which is in turn concealed by the unknown security key in terms of the randomly scrambled symbols used in place of the conventional modulated symbols in GPSM scheme. 3/ design: we consider both Circular Antenna Scrambling (CAS) and Gaussian Antenna Scrambling (GAS) in detail and the resultant security capacity of both designs are quantified and compared

Two High-Performance Amplitude Beamforming Schemes for Secure Precise Communication and Jamming with Phase Alignment

To severely weaken the eavesdropper's ability to intercept confidential message (CM), a precise jamming (PJ) idea is proposed by making use of the concept of secure precise wireless transmission (SPWT). Its basic idea is to focus the transmit energy of artificial noise (AN) onto the neighborhood of eavesdropper (Eve) by using random subcarrier selection (RSS), directional modulation, phase alignment (PA), and amplitude beamforming (AB). By doing so, Eve will be seriously interfered with AN. Here, the conventional joint optimization of phase and amplitude is converted into two independent phase and amplitude optimization problems. Considering PJ and SPWT require PA, the joint optimization problem reduces to an amplitude optimization problem. Then, two efficient AB schemes are proposed: leakage and maximizing receive power(Max-RP). With existing equal AB (EAB) as a performance reference, simulation results show that the proposed Max-RP and leakage AB methods perform much better than conventional method in terms of both bit-error-rate (BER) and secrecy rate (SR) at medium and high signal-to-noise ratio regions. The performance difference between the two proposed leakage and Max-RP amplitude beamformers is trivial. Additionally, we also find the fact that all three AB schemes EA, Max-RP, and leakage can form two main peaks of AN and CM around Eve and the desired receiver (Bob), respectively. This is what we call PJ and SPWT

Two High-performance Schemes of Transmit Antenna Selection for Secure Spatial Modulation

In this paper, a secure spatial modulation (SM) system with artificial noise (AN)-aided is investigated. To achieve higher secrecy rate (SR) in such a system, two high-performance schemes of transmit antenna selection (TAS), leakage-based and maximum secrecy rate (Max-SR), are proposed and a generalized Euclidean distance-optimized antenna selection (EDAS) method is designed. From simulation results and analysis, the four TAS schemes have an decreasing order: Max-SR, leakage-based, generalized EDAS, and random (conventional), in terms of SR performance. However, the proposed Max-SR method requires the exhaustive search to achieve the optimal SR performance, thus its complexity is extremely high as the number of antennas tends to medium and large scale. The proposed leakage-based method approaches the Max-SR method with much lower complexity. Thus, it achieves a good balance between complexity and SR performance. In terms of bit error rate (BER), their performances are in an increasing order: random, leakage-based, Max-SR, and generalized EDAS

Low-Complexity Linear Precoding for Secure Spatial Modulation

In this work, we investigate linear precoding for secure spatial modulation. With secure spatial modulation, the achievable secrecy rate does not have an easy-to-compute mathematical expression, and hence, has to be evaluated numerically, which leads to high complexity in the optimal precoder design. To address this issue, an accurate and analytical approximation of the secrecy rate is derived in this work. Using this approximation as the objective function, two low-complexity linear precoding methods based on gradient descend (GD) and successive convex approximation (SCA) are proposed. The GD-based method has much lower complexity but usually converges to a local optimum. On the other hand, the SCA-based method uses semi-definite relaxation to deal with the non-convexity in the precoder optimization problem and achieves near-optimal solution. Compared with the existing GD-based precoder design in the literature that directly uses the exact and numerically evaluated secrecy capacity as the objective function, the two proposed designs have significantly lower complexity. Our SCA-based design even achieves a higher secrecy rate than the existing GD-based design.Comment: 11pages, 8figure

Imbalanced Beamforming by a Multi-antenna Source for Secure Utilization of an Untrusted Relay

We investigate a relay network where a multiantenna source can potentially utilize an unauthenticated (untrusted) relay to augment its direct transmission of a confidential message to the destination. Since the relay is untrusted, it is desirable to protect the confidential data from it while simultaneously making use of it to increase the reliability of the transmission. We present a low-complexity scheme denoted as imbalanced beamforming based on linear beamforming and constellation mapping that ensures perfect physical-layer security even while utilizing the untrusted relay. Furthermore, the security of the scheme holds even if the relay adopts the conventional decodeand- forward protocol, unlike prior work. Simulation results show that the proposed imbalanced signaling maintains a constant BER of 0.5 at the eavesdropper at any SNR and number of source antennas, while maintaining or improving the detection performance of the destination compared to not utilizing the relay or existing security methods.Comment: To appear, IEEE Communications Letters, 201

Directional Modulation: A Secure Solution to 5G and Beyond Mobile Networks

Directional modulation (DM), as an efficient secure transmission way, offers security through its directive property and is suitable for line-of-propagation (LoP) channels such as millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), satellite communication, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and smart transportation. If the direction angle of the desired received is known, the desired channel gain vector is obtainable. Thus, in advance, the DM transmitter knows the values of directional angles of desired user and eavesdropper, or their direction of arrival (DOAs) because the beamforming vector of confidential messages and artificial noise (AN) projection matrix is mainly determined by directional angles of desired user and eavesdropper. For a DM transceiver, working as a receiver, the first step is to measure the DOAs of desired user and eavesdropper. Then, in the second step, using the measured DOAs, the beamforming vector of confidential messages and AN projection matrix is designed. In this paper, we describe the DOA measurement methods, power allocation, and beamforming in DM networks. A machine learning-based DOA measurement method is proposed to make a substantial SR performance gain compared to single-snapshot measurement without machine learning for a given null-space projection beamforming scheme. However, for a conventional DM network, there still exists a serious secure issue: the eavesdropper moves inside the main beam of the desired user and may intercept the confidential messages intended to the desired users because the beamforming vector of confidential messages and AN projection matrix are only angle-dependence. To address this problem, we present a new concept of secure and precise transmission, where the transmit waveform has two-dimensional even three-dimensional dependence by using DM, random frequency selection, and phase alignment at DM transmitter

Symbol-level and Multicast Precoding for Multiuser Multiantenna Downlink: A Survey, Classification and Challenges

Precoding has been conventionally considered as an effective means of mitigating the interference and efficiently exploiting the available in the multiantenna downlink channel, where multiple users are simultaneously served with independent information over the same channel resources. The early works in this area were focused on transmitting an individual information stream to each user by constructing weighted linear combinations of symbol blocks (codewords). However, more recent works have moved beyond this traditional view by: i) transmitting distinct data streams to groups of users and ii) applying precoding on a symbol-per-symbol basis. In this context, the current survey presents a unified view and classification of precoding techniques with respect to two main axes: i) the switching rate of the precoding weights, leading to the classes of block- and symbol-level precoding, ii) the number of users that each stream is addressed to, hence unicast-/multicast-/broadcast- precoding. Furthermore, the classified techniques are compared through representative numerical results to demonstrate their relative performance and uncover fundamental insights. Finally, a list of open theoretical problems and practical challenges are presented to inspire further research in this area.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial

Secure Transmission with Large Numbers of Antennas and Finite Alphabet Inputs

In this paper, we investigate secure transmission over the large-scale multiple-antenna wiretap channel with finite alphabet inputs. First, we investigate the case where instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of the eavesdropper is known at the transmitter. We show analytically that a generalized singular value decomposition (GSVD) based design, which is optimal for Gaussian inputs, may exhibit a severe performance loss for finite alphabet inputs in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. In light of this, we propose a novel Per-Group-GSVD (PG-GSVD) design which can effectively compensate the performance loss caused by the GSVD design. More importantly, the computational complexity of the PG-GSVD design is by orders of magnitude lower than that of the existing design for finite alphabet inputs in [1] while the resulting performance loss is minimal. Then, we extend the PG-GSVD design to the case where only statistical CSI of the eavesdropper is available at the transmitter. Numerical results indicate that the proposed PG-GSVD design can be efficiently implemented in large-scale multiple-antenna systems and achieves significant performance gains compared to the GSVD design.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Communications. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1612.0832

Regional Robust Secure Precise Wireless Transmission Design for Multi-user UAV Broadcasting System

In this paper, two regional robust secure precise wireless transmission (SPWT) schemes for multi-user unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) :1) regional signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR) and artificial-noise-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (ANLNR) (R-SLNR-ANLNR) maximization and 2) point SLNR and ANLNR (P-SLNR-ANLNR) maximization, are proposed to tackle with the estimation errors of the target users' location. In SPWT system, the estimation error for SPWT can not be ignored. However the conventional robust methods in secure wireless communications optimize the beamforming vector in the desired positions only in statistical means and can not guarantee the security for each symbol. Proposed regional robust schemes are designed for optimizing the secrecy performance in the whole error region around the estimated location. Specifically, with known maximal estimation error, we define target region and wiretap region. Then design an optimal beamforming vector and an artificial noise projection matrix, which achieve the confidential signal in the target area having the maximal power while only few signal power is conserved in the potential wiretap region. Instead of considering the statistical distributions of the estimated errors into optimization, we optimize the SLNR and ANLNR of the whole target area, which significantly decreases the complexity. Moreover, the proposed schemes can ensure that the desired users are located in the optimized region, which are more practical than conventional methods. Simulation results show that our proposed regional robust SPWT design is capable of substantially improving the secrecy rate compared to the conventional non-robust method. The P-SLNR-ANLNR maximization-based method has the comparable secrecy performance with a lower complexity than that of the R-SLNR-ANLNR maximization-based method

Physical Layer Security for RF Satellite Channels in the Finite-length Regime

Secure communications is becoming increasingly relevant in the development of space technology. Well established cryptographic technology is already in place and is expected to continue to be so. On the other hand, information theoretical security emerges as a post-quantum versatile candidate to complement overall security strength. In order to prove such potential, performance analysis methods are needed that consider realistic legitimate and eavesdropper system assumptions and non-asymptotic coding lengths. In this paper we propose the design of secure radio frequency (RF) satellite links with realistic system assumptions. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we propose a wiretap channel model for the finite-length regime. The model includes an stochastic wiretap encoding method using existing practical linear error correcting codes and hash codes. Secrecy is provided with privacy amplification, for which the finite-length secrecy metric is given that upper bounds semantic secrecy. Second, we derive a novel RF (broadcast) satellite wiretap channel model that parameterizes the stochastic degraded channel around the legitimate channel, a necessary condition to enable secure communication. Finally, we show the design of a secure satellite physical layer and finite-length performance evaluation. In doing so, we define as sacrifice rate the fixed fraction of the overall coding rate budget for reliability that needs to be allocated to secrecy. Our methodology does not make use of channel side information of the eavesdropper, only assumes worst case system assumptions. We illustrate our proposed design method with numerical results using practical error correcting codes in current standards of satellite communication.Comment: Submitted to IEEE journal Corrected typo in eq. (18) and its derivation eq. (46). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1610.0725