Link adaptation for physical layer security over wireless fading channels

Abstract

A secure link adaptation framework is proposed, which exploits the inherent fluctuations of wireless fading channels for high-performance communications and physical layer security in the presence of an eavesdropper. The authors use very sharp channel codes intended for reliability and demonstrate that they also provide security, when successfully incorporated in the link adaptation design framework and the security constraint is not very stringent. Two scenarios are considered in which the transmitter has access to the eavesdropper channel state information either instantaneously or statistically. The proposed secure link adaptation framework is formulated to maximise the spectral efficiency of the communication, whereas both reliability and security constraints are provisioned. Different designs are considered when the security constraint is quantified by instantaneous bit error rate (BER), average BER or leakage probability. For the problem with instantaneous BER constraint, an efficient analytical solution and a numerical solution are presented. A closed-form analytical solution is also provided for secure link adaptation with average BER constraint, whereas the problem with the leakage constraint is tackled numerically. Extensive results and detailed analysis are provided to draw insights on the effects of different design parameters on the performance.