Adaptive Modulation and Coding and Cooperative ARQ in a Cognitive Radio System

In this paper, a joint cross-layer design of adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) and cooperative automatic repeat request (C-ARQ) scheme is proposed for a secondary user in a shared-spectrum environment. First, based on the statistical descriptions of the channel, closed-form expressions of the average spectral efficiency (SE) and the average packet loss rate (PLR) are presented. Then, the cross-layer scheme is designed, with the aim of maximizing the average SE while maintaining the average PLR under a prescribed level. An optimization problem is formed, and a sub-optimal solution is found: the target packet error rates (PER) for the secondary system channels are obtained and the corresponding sub-optimal AMC rate adaptation policy is derived based on the target PERs. Finally, the average SE and the average PLR performance of the proposed scheme are presented

Optimal Real-time Spectrum Sharing between Cooperative Relay and Ad-hoc Networks

Optimization based spectrum sharing strategies have been widely studied. However, these strategies usually require a great amount of real-time computation and significant signaling delay, and thus are hard to be fulfilled in practical scenarios. This paper investigates optimal real-time spectrum sharing between a cooperative relay network (CRN) and a nearby ad-hoc network. Specifically, we optimize the spectrum access and resource allocation strategies of the CRN so that the average traffic collision time between the two networks can be minimized while maintaining a required throughput for the CRN. The development is first for a frame-level setting, and then is extended to an ergodic setting. For the latter setting, we propose an appealing optimal real-time spectrum sharing strategy via Lagrangian dual optimization. The proposed method only involves a small amount of real-time computation and negligible control delay, and thus is suitable for practical implementations. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed strategies.Comment: One typo in the caption of Figure 5 is correcte

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201