Eavesdropping in the Uplink of massive MIMO: countermeasure and performance analysis

Abstract

In massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, a multi-antenna eavesdropper could potentially harm the uplink security by channel estimation in the training phase and then coherent detection in the payload data phase. To address this issue, we propose to inject artificial noise to the payload data to combat eavesdropping. Specifically, lower bounds of secrecy rates for maximum-ratio combining (MRC) and zero-forcing (ZF) detection schemes are derived. In each case, we further investigate scenarios with perfect and imperfect channel-state information. Moreover, the impact of key parameters, including the channel estimation error, power allocation factor and the number of antennas on the security of massive MIMO uplink are discussed.