A secret-key generation scheme based on a layered broadcasting strategy is introduced for slow-fading channels. In the model considered, Alice wants to share a key with Bob while keeping the key secret from Eve, who is a passive eavesdropper. Both Al
ice-Bob and Alice-Eve channels are assumed to undergo slow fading, and perfect channel state information (CSI) is assumed to be known only at the receivers during the transmission. In each fading slot, Alice broadcasts a continuum of coded layers and, hence, allows Bob to decode at the rate corresponding to the fading state (unknown to Alice). The index of a reliably decoded layer is sent back from Bob to Alice via a public and error-free channel and used to generate a common secret key. In this paper, the achievable secrecy key rate is first derived for a given power distribution over coded layers. The optimal power distribution is then characterized. It is shown that layered broadcast coding can increase the secrecy key rate significantly compared to single-level coding.
Wireless communication is susceptible to eavesdropping attacks because of its broadcast nature. This paper illustrates how interference can be used to counter eavesdropping and assist secrecy. In particular, a wire-tap channel with a helping interfer
er (WT-HI) is considered. Here, a transmitter sends a confidential message to its intended receiver in the presence of a passive eavesdropper and with the help of an independent interferer. The interferer, which does not know the confidential message, helps in ensuring the secrecy of the message by sending an independent signal. An achievable secrecy rate and several computable outer bounds on the secrecy capacity of the WT-HI are given for both discrete memoryless and Gaussian channels.
Due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, wireless communication is susceptible to adversarial eavesdropping. This paper describes how eavesdropping can potentially be defeated by exploiting the superposition nature of the wireless medium.
A Gaussian wire-tap channel with a helping interferer (WTC-HI) is considered in which a transmitter sends confidential messages to its intended receiver in the presence of a passive eavesdropper and with the help of an interferer. The interferer, which does not know the confidential message assists the confidential message transmission by sending a signal that is independent of the transmitted message. An achievable secrecy rate and a Sato-type upper bound on the secrecy capacity are given for the Gaussian WTC-HI. Through numerical analysis, it is found that the upper bound is close to the achievable secrecy rate when the interference is weak for symmetric interference channels, and under more general conditions for asymmetric Gaussian interference channels.
Wireless communication is susceptible to adversarial eavesdropping due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. In this paper it is shown how eavesdropping can be alleviated by exploiting the superposition property of the wireless medium. A wi
retap channel with a helping interferer (WT-HI), in which a transmitter sends a confidential message to its intended receiver in the presence of a passive eavesdropper, and with the help of an independent interferer, is considered. The interferer, which does not know the confidential message, helps in ensuring the secrecy of the message by sending independent signals. An achievable secrecy rate for the WT-HI is given. The results show that interference can be exploited to assist secrecy in wireless communications. An important example of the Gaussian case, in which the interferer has a better channel to the intended receiver than to the eavesdropper, is considered. In this situation, the interferer can send a (random) codeword at a rate that ensures that it can be decoded and subtracted from the received signal by the intended receiver but cannot be decoded by the eavesdropper. Hence, only the eavesdropper is interfered with and the secrecy level of the confidential message is increased.
The focus of this paper is an information-theoretic study of retransmission protocols for reliable packet communication under a secrecy constraint. The hybrid automatic retransmission request (HARQ) protocol is revisited for a block-fading wire-tap c
hannel, in which two legitimate users communicate over a block-fading channel in the presence of a passive eavesdropper who intercepts the transmissions through an independent block-fading channel. In this model, the transmitter obtains a 1-bit ACK/NACK feedback from the legitimate receiver via an error-free public channel. Both reliability and confidentiality of secure HARQ protocols are studied by the joint consideration of channel coding, secrecy coding, and retransmission protocols. In particular, the error and secrecy performance of repetition time diversity (RTD) and incremental redundancy (INR) protocols are investigated based on good Wyner code sequences, which ensure that the confidential message is decoded successfully by the legitimate receiver and is kept in total ignorance by the eavesdropper for a given set of channel realizations. This paper first illustrates that there exists a good rate-compatible Wyner code family which ensures a secure INR protocol. Next, two types of outage probabilities, connection outage and secrecy outage probabilities are defined in order to characterize the tradeoff between the reliability of the legitimate communication link and the confidentiality with respect to the eavesdroppers link. For a given connection/secrecy outage probability pair, an achievable throughput of secure HARQ protocols is derived for block-fading channels. Finally, both asymptotic analysis and numerical computations demonstrate the benefits of HARQ protocols to throughput and secrecy.
This paper considers the problem of secret communication over a multiple access channel with generalized feedback. Two trusted users send independent confidential messages to an intended receiver, in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. In this se
tting, an active cooperation between two trusted users is enabled through using channel feedback in order to improve the communication efficiency. Based on rate-splitting and decode-and-forward strategies, achievable secrecy rate regions are derived for both discrete memoryless and Gaussian channels. Results show that channel feedback improves the achievable secrecy rates.
