Secrecy capacity over correlated ergodic fading channel

Abstract

We investigate the secrecy capacity of an ergodic fading wiretap channel in which the main channel is correlated with the eavesdropper channel. In this study, the full Channel State Information (CSI) is assumed, and thus the transmitter knows the channel gains of the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. By analyzing the resulting secrecy capacity we quantify the loss of the secrecy capacity due to the correlation. In addition, we study the asymptotic behavior of the secrecy capacity as Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) tends to infinity. The capacity of an ordinary fading channel logarithmically increases with SNR. On the contrary, the secrecy capacity converges to a limit which can be an upper bound on the secrecy capacity over the fading wiretap channel. We find a closed form of the upper bound for the correlated Rayleigh wiretap channel which also includes the independent case as a special one. Our work shows that the upper bound is determined by only two channel parameters; the correlation coefficient and the ratio of the main to the eavesdropper channel gains that will be called the average Channel Gain Ratio (CGR). The analysis of the upper bound tells how the two channel parameters affect the secrecy capacity and leads to the conclusion that the excessively large signal power does not provide any advantage in the secrecy capacity and the loss due to the correlation is especially serious in low CGR regime.