We consider a cooperative wireless network in the presence of one or more eavesdroppers, and exploit node cooperation for achieving physical (PHY) layer based security. Two different cooperation schemes are considered. In the first scheme, cooperating nodes retransmit a weighted version of the source signal in a decode-and-forward (DF) fashion. In the second scheme, referred to as cooperative jamming (CJ), while the source is transmitting, cooperating nodes transmit weighted noise to confound the eavesdropper. We investigate two objectives: i) maximization of the achievable secrecy rate subject to a total power constraint and ii) minimization of the total power transmit power under a secrecy rate constraint. For the first design objective, we obtain the exact solution for the DF scheme for the case of a single or multiple eavasdroppers, while for the CJ scheme with a single eavesdropper we reduce the multivariate problem to a problem of one variable. For the second design objective, existing work introduces additional constraints in order to reduce the degree of difficulty, thus resulting in suboptimal solutions. Our work raises those constraints, and obtains either an analytical solution for the DF scheme with a single eavesdropper, or reduces the multivariate problem to a problem of one variable for the CJ scheme with a single eavesdropper. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the proposed results and compare them to existing work.
@cite_16: This paper establishes the utility of user cooperation in facilitating secure wireless communications. In particular, the four-terminal relay-eavesdropper channel is introduced and an outer-bound on the optimal rate-equivocation region is derived. Several cooperation strategies are then devised and the corresponding achievable rate-equivocation region are characterized. Of particular interest is the novel noise-forwarding (NF) strategy, where the relay node sends codewords independent of the source message to confuse the eavesdropper. This strategy is used to illustrate the deaf helper phenomenon, where the relay is able to facilitate secure communications while being totally ignorant of the transmitted messages. Furthermore, NF is shown to increase the secrecy capacity in the reversely degraded scenario, where the relay node fails to offer performance gains in the classical setting. The gain offered by the proposed cooperation strategies is then proved theoretically and validated numerically in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel.
@cite_13: The general Gaussian multiple-access wiretap channel (GGMAC-WT) and the Gaussian two-way wiretap channel (GTW-WT) are considered. In the GGMAC-WT, multiple users communicate with an intended receiver in the presence of an eavesdropper who receives their signals through another GMAC. In the GTW-WT, two users communicate with each other over a common Gaussian channel, with an eavesdropper listening through a GMAC. A secrecy measure that is suitable for this multiterminal environment is defined, and achievable secrecy rate regions are found for both channels. For both cases, the power allocations maximizing the achievable secrecy sum rate are determined. It is seen that the optimum policy may prevent some terminals from transmission in order to preserve the secrecy of the system. Inspired by this construct, a new scheme cooperative jamming is proposed, where users who are prevented from transmitting according to the secrecy sum rate maximizing power allocation policy ldquojamrdquo the eavesdropper, thereby helping the remaining users. This scheme is shown to increase the achievable secrecy sum rate. Overall, our results show that in multiple-access scenarios, users can help each other to collectively achieve positive secrecy rates. In other words, cooperation among users can be invaluable for achieving secrecy for the system.
Our work falls under the general scenario where the source-destination communication is aided by a relay or a helper. Relevant results include the work of @cite_13 , where multiple users communicate with a common receiver in the presence of an eavesdropper, and the transmit power allocation policy is determined that maximizes the secrecy sum-rate. In @cite_16 , a source, destination, eavesdropper and relay model is considered, in which the relay transmits a noise signal in order to jam the eavesdropper. The rate-equivocation region is derived to show gains and applicable scenarios for cooperation, with the equivocation denoting the uncertainty of the eavesdropper about the source message.