Physical Layer Service Integration in 5G: Potentials and Challenges

High transmission rate and secure communication have been identified as the key targets that need to be effectively addressed by fifth generation (5G) wireless systems. In this context, the concept of physical-layer security becomes attractive, as it can establish perfect security using only the characteristics of wireless medium. Nonetheless, to further increase the spectral efficiency, an emerging concept, termed physical-layer service integration (PHY-SI), has been recognized as an effective means. Its basic idea is to combine multiple coexisting services, i.e., multicast/broadcast service and confidential service, into one integral service for one-time transmission at the transmitter side. This article first provides a tutorial on typical PHY-SI models. Furthermore, we propose some state-of-the-art solutions to improve the overall performance of PHY-SI in certain important communication scenarios. In particular, we highlight the extension of several concepts borrowed from conventional single-service communications, such as artificial noise (AN), eigenmode transmission etc., to the scenario of PHY-SI. These techniques are shown to be effective in the design of reliable and robust PHY-SI schemes. Finally, several potential research directions are identified for future work.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Artificial Noise-Aided Biobjective Transmitter Optimization for Service Integration in Multi-User MIMO Gaussian Broadcast Channel

This paper considers an artificial noise (AN)-aided transmit design for multi-user MIMO systems with integrated services. Specifically, two sorts of service messages are combined and served simultaneously: one multicast message intended for all receivers and one confidential message intended for only one receiver and required to be perfectly secure from other unauthorized receivers. Our interest lies in the joint design of input covariances of the multicast message, confidential message and artificial noise (AN), such that the achievable secrecy rate and multicast rate are simultaneously maximized. This problem is identified as a secrecy rate region maximization (SRRM) problem in the context of physical-layer service integration. Since this bi-objective optimization problem is inherently complex to solve, we put forward two different scalarization methods to convert it into a scalar optimization problem. First, we propose to prefix the multicast rate as a constant, and accordingly, the primal biobjective problem is converted into a secrecy rate maximization (SRM) problem with quality of multicast service (QoMS) constraint. By varying the constant, we can obtain different Pareto optimal points. The resulting SRM problem can be iteratively solved via a provably convergent difference-of-concave (DC) algorithm. In the second method, we aim to maximize the weighted sum of the secrecy rate and the multicast rate. Through varying the weighted vector, one can also obtain different Pareto optimal points. We show that this weighted sum rate maximization (WSRM) problem can be recast into a primal decomposable form, which is amenable to alternating optimization (AO). Then we compare these two scalarization methods in terms of their overall performance and computational complexity via theoretical analysis as well as numerical simulation, based on which new insights can be drawn.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Outage Constrained Robust Secure Transmission for MISO Wiretap Channels

In this paper we consider the robust secure beamformer design for MISO wiretap channels. Assume that the eavesdroppers' channels are only partially available at the transmitter, we seek to maximize the secrecy rate under the transmit power and secrecy rate outage probability constraint. The outage probability constraint requires that the secrecy rate exceeds certain threshold with high probability. Therefore including such constraint in the design naturally ensures the desired robustness. Unfortunately, the presence of the probabilistic constraints makes the problem non-convex and hence difficult to solve. In this paper, we investigate the outage probability constrained secrecy rate maximization problem using a novel two-step approach. Under a wide range of uncertainty models, our developed algorithms can obtain high-quality solutions, sometimes even exact global solutions, for the robust secure beamformer design problem. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithms

Secure Beamforming For MIMO Broadcasting With Wireless Information And Power Transfer

This paper considers a basic MIMO information-energy (I-E) broadcast system, where a multi-antenna transmitter transmits information and energy simultaneously to a multi-antenna information receiver and a dual-functional multi-antenna energy receiver which is also capable of decoding information. Due to the open nature of wireless medium and the dual purpose of information and energy transmission, secure information transmission while ensuring efficient energy harvesting is a critical issue for such a broadcast system. Assuming that physical layer security techniques are applied to the system to ensure secure transmission from the transmitter to the information receiver, we study beamforming design to maximize the achievable secrecy rate subject to a total power constraint and an energy harvesting constraint. First, based on semidefinite relaxation, we propose global optimal solutions to the secrecy rate maximization (SRM) problem in the single-stream case and a specific full-stream case where the difference of Gram matrices of the channel matrices is positive semidefinite. Then, we propose a simple iterative algorithm named inexact block coordinate descent (IBCD) algorithm to tackle the SRM problem of general case with arbitrary number of streams. We proves that the IBCD algorithm can monotonically converge to a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) solution to the SRM problem. Furthermore, we extend the IBCD algorithm to the joint beamforming and artificial noise design problem. Finally, simulations are performed to validate the performance of the proposed beamforming algorithms.Comment: Submitted to journal for possible publication. First submission to arXiv Mar. 14 201

A Survey of Physical Layer Security Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Challenges Ahead

Physical layer security which safeguards data confidentiality based on the information-theoretic approaches has received significant research interest recently. The key idea behind physical layer security is to utilize the intrinsic randomness of the transmission channel to guarantee the security in physical layer. The evolution towards 5G wireless communications poses new challenges for physical layer security research. This paper provides a latest survey of the physical layer security research on various promising 5G technologies, including physical layer security coding, massive multiple-input multiple-output, millimeter wave communications, heterogeneous networks, non-orthogonal multiple access, full duplex technology, etc. Technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of physical layer security in 5G and beyond are discussed.Comment: To appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication

Content delivery over multi-antenna wireless networks

The past few decades have witnessed unprecedented advances in information technology, which have significantly shaped the way we acquire and process information in our daily lives. Wireless communications has become the main means of access to data through mobile devices, resulting in a continuous exponential growth in wireless data traffic, mainly driven by the demand for high quality content. Various technologies have been proposed by researchers to tackle this growth in 5G and beyond, including the use of increasing number of antenna elements, integrated point-to-multipoint delivery and caching, which constitute the core of this thesis. In particular, we study non-orthogonal content delivery in multiuser multiple-input-single-output (MISO) systems. First, a joint beamforming strategy for simultaneous delivery of broadcast and unicast services is investigated, based on layered division multiplexing (LDM) as a means of superposition coding. The system performance in terms of minimum required power under prescribed quality-of-service (QoS) requirements is examined in comparison with time division multiplexing (TDM). It is demonstrated through simulations that the non-orthogonal delivery strategy based on LDM significantly outperforms the orthogonal strategy based on TDM in terms of system throughput and reliability. To facilitate efficient implementation of the LDM-based beamforming design, we further propose a dual decomposition-based distributed approach. Next, we study an efficient multicast beamforming design in cache-aided multiuser MISO systems, exploiting proactive content placement and coded delivery. It is observed that the complexity of this problem grows exponentially with the number of subfiles delivered to each user in each time slot, which itself grows exponentially with the number of users in the system. Therefore, we propose a low-complexity alternative through time-sharing that limits the number of subfiles that can be received by a user in each time slot. Moreover, a joint design of content delivery and multicast beamforming is proposed to further enhance the system performance, under the constraint on maximum number of subfiles each user can decode in each time slot. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Chapter 5, followed by an outlook for future works.Open Acces