Directional Modulation via Symbol-Level Precoding: A Way to Enhance Security

Wireless communication provides a wide coverage at the cost of exposing information to unintended users. As an information-theoretic paradigm, secrecy rate derives bounds for secure transmission when the channel to the eavesdropper is known. However, such bounds are shown to be restrictive in practice and may require exploitation of specialized coding schemes. In this paper, we employ the concept of directional modulation and follow a signal processing approach to enhance the security of multi-user MIMO communication systems when a multi-antenna eavesdropper is present. Enhancing the security is accomplished by increasing the symbol error rate at the eavesdropper. Unlike the information-theoretic secrecy rate paradigm, we assume that the legitimate transmitter is not aware of its channel to the eavesdropper, which is a more realistic assumption. We examine the applicability of MIMO receiving algorithms at the eavesdropper. Using the channel knowledge and the intended symbols for the users, we design security enhancing symbol-level precoders for different transmitter and eavesdropper antenna configurations. We transform each design problem to a linearly constrained quadratic program and propose two solutions, namely the iterative algorithm and one based on non-negative least squares, at each scenario for a computationally-efficient modulation. Simulation results verify the analysis and show that the designed precoders outperform the benchmark scheme in terms of both power efficiency and security enhancement.Comment: This manuscript is submitted to IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processin

Symbol-Level Precoding Design Based on Distance Preserving Constructive Interference Regions

In this paper, we investigate the symbol-level precoding (SLP) design problem in the downlink of a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) channel. We consider generic constellations with any arbitrary shape and size, and confine ourselves to one of the main categories of constructive interference regions (CIR), namely, distance preserving CIR (DPCIR). We provide a comprehensive study of DPCIRs and derive some properties for these regions. Using these properties, we first show that any signal in a given DPCIR has a norm greater than or equal to the norm of the corresponding constellation point if and only if the convex hull of the constellation contains the origin. It is followed by proving that the power of the noiseless received signal lying on a DPCIR is a monotonic strictly increasing function of two parameters relating to the infinite Voronoi edges. Using the convex description of DPCIRs and their properties, we formulate two design problems, namely, the SLP power minimization with signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraints, and the SLP SINR balancing problem under max-min fairness criterion. The SLP power minimization based on DPCIRs can straightforwardly be written as a quadratic program (QP). We provide a simplified reformulation of this problem which is less computationally complex. The SLP max-min SINR, however, is non-convex in its original form, and hence difficult to tackle. We propose several alternative optimization approaches, including semidefinite program (SDP) formulation and block coordinate descent (BCD) optimization. We discuss and evaluate the loss due to the proposed alternative methods through extensive simulation results.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, Submitted to IEEE Transactions in Signal Processin

Exploiting constructive interference for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer in multiuser downlink systems

In this paper we propose a power-efficient approach for information and energy transfer in multiple-input single output downlink systems. By means of data-aided precoding, we exploit the constructive part of interference for both information decoding and wireless power transfer. Rather than suppressing interference as in conventional schemes, we take advantage of constructive interference among users, inherent in the downlink, as a source of both useful information signal energy and electrical wireless energy. Specifically, we propose a new precoding design that minimizes the transmit power while guaranteeing the quality of service (QoS) and energy harvesting constraints for generic phase shift keying modulated signals. The QoS constraints are modified to accommodate constructive interference, based on the constructive regions in the signal constellation. Although the resulting problem is nonconvex, several methods are developed for its solution. First we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the feasibility of the considered problem. Then we propose second-order cone programming and semi definite programming algorithms with polynomial complexity that provide upper and lower bounds to the optimal solution and establish the asymptotic optimality of these algorithms when the modulation order and SINR threshold tend to infinity. A practical iterative algorithm is also proposed based on successive linear approximation of the non-convex terms yielding excellent results. More complex algorithms are also proposed to provide tight upper and lower bounds for benchmarking purposes. Simulation results show significant power savings with the proposed data-aided precoding approach compared to the conventional precoding scheme

Faster-than-Nyquist Signaling through Spatio-temporal Symbol-level Precoding for the Multiuser MISO Downlink Channel

This paper deals with the problem of the interference between multiple co-channel transmissions in the downlink of a multi-antenna wireless system. In this framework, symbol-level precoding is a promising technique which is able to constructively exploit the multi-user interference and to transform it into useful power at the receiver side. While previous works on symbol-level precoding were focused on exploiting the multi-user interference, in this paper we extend this concept by jointly handling the interference both in the spatial dimension (multi-user interference) and in the temporal dimension (inter-symbol interference). Accordingly, we propose a novel precoding method, referred to as spatio-temporal symbol-level precoding. In this new precoding paradigm, faster-than-Nyquist signaling can be applied over multi-user MISO systems, and the inter-symbol interference can be tackled at the transmitter side, without additional complexity for the user terminals. While applying faster-than-Nyquist signaling, the proposed optimization strategies perform a sum power minimization with Quality-of-Service constraints. Numerical results are presented in a comparative fashion to show the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, which outperform the state of the art symbol-level precoding schemes in terms of symbol error rate, effective rate, and energy efficiency

Symbol Error Rate Minimization Precoding for Interference Exploitation

This paper investigates a new beamforming approach for interference exploitation, which has recently attracted interest as an alternative to conventional interference-avoidance beamforming for the downlink of multiple-input multiple-output systems. Contrary to existing interference exploitation approaches that focus on signal-to-noise ratio performance, we adopt an approach based on the detection region of the signal constellation. Focusing on quality of service, we then formulate the optimization for minimizing the error probability (EP) for the worst user, subject to power constraints. We do this by employing the knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter, along with all downlink users' data that are readily available at the base station during downlink transmission. In this context, we also show that the detection-region-based beamforming and the worst user EP downlink beamforming are equivalent problems. Finally, we further propose a sum EPs approach and provide an analytic bound of average symbol error rate performance. Our simulations verify that the proposed techniques provide significantly improved performance over conventional downlink beamforming techniques