Secrecy outage of a two-user slow fading broadcast channel

Abstract

The secrecy outage of a two-user slow fading broadcast channel is studied in this paper. We consider the scenario where independent and confidential messages are transmitted to each user using superposition coding in the presence of an external eavesdropper. We assume the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of the eavesdropper's channel is not available and the secrecy outage can be claimed for each user. The secrecy outage probability of each user conditioned on the instantaneous CSI of the legitimate channel is studied and used to derive the achievable secrecy rate region under the conditional secrecy outage probability constraints. The average achievable secrecy rate, i.e. the secrecy throughput, is studied as the measure of performance under the slow fading. The optimal secrecy rate allocation strategy that achieves the boundary of the achievable secrecy throughput region is characterized for the general case and for the maximum sum secrecy throughput. Numerical results of the secrecy throughput regions are shown, and the parameters that influence the secrecy throughput are discussed.