Improving physical-layer security in wireless communications using diversity techniques

Due to the broadcast nature of radio propagation, wireless transmission can be readily overheard by unauthorized users for interception purposes and is thus highly vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks. To this end, physical-layer security is emerging as a promising paradigm to protect the wireless co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE network 2015-01, Vol.29 (1), p.42-48
Main Authors: Yulong Zou, Jia Zhu, Xianbin Wang, Leung, Victor
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beamforming
Channel capacity
Channels
Communication system security
Communications networks
Data transmission
Eavesdropping
Electric noise
Electronic eavesdropping
Fading
Input output
MIMO
Network security
Networks
Physical layer
Relays
Secrecy aspects
Security
Telecommunication services
Wireless communication
Wireless communications
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Summary:Due to the broadcast nature of radio propagation, wireless transmission can be readily overheard by unauthorized users for interception purposes and is thus highly vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks. To this end, physical-layer security is emerging as a promising paradigm to protect the wireless communications against eavesdropping attacks by exploiting the physical characteristics of wireless channels. This article is focused on the investigation of diversity techniques to improve physical-layer security differently from the conventional artificial noise generation and beamforming techniques, which typically consume additional power for generating artificial noise and exhibit high implementation complexity for beamformer design. We present several diversity approaches to improve wireless physical-layer security, including multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), multiuser diversity, and cooperative diversity. To illustrate the security improvement through diversity, we propose a case study of exploiting cooperative relays to assist the signal transmission from source to destination while defending against eavesdropping attacks. We evaluate the security performance of cooperative relay transmission in Rayleigh fading environments in terms of secrecy capacity and intercept probability. It is shown that as the number of relays increases, both the secrecy capacity and intercept probability of cooperative relay transmission improve significantly, implying there is an advantage in exploiting cooperative diversity to improve physical-layer security against eavesdropping attacks.
ISSN:0890-8044
1558-156X
DOI:10.1109/MNET.2015.7018202