The MIMO wiretap channel

We study the MIMO wiretap channel, a MIMO broadcast channel where the transmitter sends some confidential information to one user which is a legitimate receiver, while the other user is an eavesdropper. Perfect secrecy is achieved when the transmitter and the legitimate receiver can communicate at some positive rate, while ensuring that the eavesdropper gets zero bits of information. In this paper, we compute the perfect secrecy capacity of the multiple antenna MIMO broadcast channel, where the number of antennas is arbitrary for both the transmitter and the two receivers. Our technique involves a careful study of a Sato-like upper bound via the solution of a certain algebraic Riccati equation

Secrecy Capacity Region of Fading Broadcast Channels

The fading broadcast channel with confidential messages (BCC) is investigated, where a source node has common information for two receivers (receivers 1 and 2), and has confidential information intended only for receiver 1. The confidential information needs to be kept as secret as possible from receiver 2. The channel state information (CSI) is assumed to be known at both the transmitter and the receivers. The secrecy capacity region is first established for the parallel Gaussian BCC, and the optimal source power allocations that achieve the boundary of the secrecy capacity region are derived. In particular, the secrecy capacity region is established for the Gaussian case of the Csiszar-Korner BCC model. The secrecy capacity results are then applied to give the ergodic secrecy capacity region for the fading BCC.Comment: Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), June 200

Techniques for Enhanced Physical-Layer Security

Information-theoretic security--widely accepted as the strictest notion of security--relies on channel coding techniques that exploit the inherent randomness of propagation channels to strengthen the security of communications systems. Within this paradigm, we explore strategies to improve secure connectivity in a wireless network. We first consider the intrinsically secure communications graph (iS-graph), a convenient representation of the links that can be established with information-theoretic security on a large-scale network. We then propose and characterize two techniques--sectorized transmission and eavesdropper neutralization--which are shown to dramatically enhance the connectivity of the iS-graph.Comment: Pre-print, IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM'10), Miami, FL, Dec. 201

Towards the Secrecy Capacity of the Gaussian MIMO Wire-tap Channel: The 2-2-1 Channel

We find the secrecy capacity of the 2-2-1 Gaussian MIMO wire-tap channel, which consists of a transmitter and a receiver with two antennas each, and an eavesdropper with a single antenna. We determine the secrecy capacity of this channel by proposing an achievable scheme and then developing a tight upper bound that meets the proposed achievable secrecy rate. We show that, for this channel, Gaussian signalling in the form of beam-forming is optimal, and no pre-processing of information is necessary.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Secure Transmission in Amplify-and-Forward Diamond Networks with a Single Eavesdropper

Unicast communication over a network of $M$-parallel relays in the presence of an eavesdropper is considered. The relay nodes, operating under individual power constraints, amplify and forward the signals received at their inputs. The problem of the maximum secrecy rate achievable with AF relaying is addressed. Previous work on this problem provides iterative algorithms based on semidefinite relaxation. However, those algorithms result in suboptimal performance without any performance and convergence guarantees. We address this problem for three specific network models, with real-valued channel gains. We propose a novel transformation that leads to convex optimization problems. Our analysis leads to (i)a polynomial-time algorithm to compute the optimal secure AF rate for two of the models and (ii) a closed-form expression for the optimal secure rate for the other.Comment: 12pt font, 18 pages, 1 figure, conferenc

On the Secrecy Capacity of Fading Channels

We consider the secure transmission of information over an ergodic fading channel in the presence of an eavesdropper. Our eavesdropper can be viewed as the wireless counterpart of Wyner's wiretapper. The secrecy capacity of such a system is characterized under the assumption of asymptotically long coherence intervals. We first consider the full Channel State Information (CSI) case, where the transmitter has access to the channel gains of the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. The secrecy capacity under this full CSI assumption serves as an upper bound for the secrecy capacity when only the CSI of the legitimate receiver is known at the transmitter, which is characterized next. In each scenario, the perfect secrecy capacity is obtained along with the optimal power and rate allocation strategies. We then propose a low-complexity on/off power allocation strategy that achieves near-optimal performance with only the main channel CSI. More specifically, this scheme is shown to be asymptotically optimal as the average SNR goes to infinity, and interestingly, is shown to attain the secrecy capacity under the full CSI assumption. Remarkably, our results reveal the positive impact of fading on the secrecy capacity and establish the critical role of rate adaptation, based on the main channel CSI, in facilitating secure communications over slow fading channels.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to the IEEE Trans. on Information Theor