Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

On the Ergodic Achievable Rates of Spectrum Sharing Networks with Finite Backlogged Primary Users and an Interference Indicator Signal

Spectrum sharing networks are communication setups in which unlicensed secondary users (SUs) are permitted to work within the spectrum resources of licensed primary users (PUs). This paper aims to study the ergodic achievable rates of spectrum sharing networks with finite backlogged primary user and an interference indicator signal. Here, in contrast to the standard interference-avoiding schemes, the secondary user activity is not restricted within the primary user inactive periods. Considering both fading and nonfading channels, the unlicensed user ergodic achievable rate is obtained for different unlicensed user transmission power and licensed user received interference power or signal-to-interference-and-noise (SINR) constraints. In the case of fading channels, the results are obtained for both short-and long-term primary user quality-of-service requirements. Further, the results are generalized to the case of multiple interfering users. In terms of unlicensed user ergodic achievable rate, analytical results indicate that while the standard interference-avoiding approach is the optimal transmission scheme at low secondary user or high primary user transmission powers, higher rates can be achieved via simultaneous transmission at high secondary user SINRs. Moreover, numerical results show that, using an interference indicator signal, there is considerable potential for data transmission of unlicensed users under different licensed users quality-of-service requirements

Multiple Access in Aerial Networks: From Orthogonal and Non-Orthogonal to Rate-Splitting

Recently, interest on the utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has aroused. Specifically, UAVs can be used in cellular networks as aerial users for delivery, surveillance, rescue search, or as an aerial base station (aBS) for communication with ground users in remote uncovered areas or in dense environments requiring prompt high capacity. Aiming to satisfy the high requirements of wireless aerial networks, several multiple access techniques have been investigated. In particular, space-division multiple access(SDMA) and power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) present promising multiplexing gains for aerial downlink and uplink. Nevertheless, these gains are limited as they depend on the conditions of the environment. Hence, a generalized scheme has been recently proposed, called rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA), which is capable of achieving better spectral efficiency gains compared to SDMA and NOMA. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of key multiple access technologies adopted for aerial networks, where aBSs are deployed to serve ground users. Since there have been only sporadic results reported on the use of RSMA in aerial systems, we aim to extend the discussion on this topic by modelling and analyzing the weighted sum-rate performance of a two-user downlink network served by an RSMA-based aBS. Finally, related open issues and future research directions are exposed.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Journa