Secrecy Performance Analysis of Cognitive Decode-and-Forward Relay Networks in Nakagami- $m$ Fading Channels

Abstract

This paper investigates the physical layer security problem of cognitive decode-and-forward relay networks over Nakagami-m fading channels. We consider the relaying communication between one secondary user (SU) source and one SU destination by using an opportunistic relay selection from multiple SU relays and sharing the licensed spectrum of multiple primary users (PUs) in the underlay network. While the transmission between the SUs imposes interference on each PU, the relayed transmission is intercepted by one SU eavesdropper. In the absence of the eavesdropper's channel state information, the relay selection is based on the largest channel gain of relay-to-destination link, which is assumed to be outdated due to feedback delay. We derive the exact probability of non-zero secrecy capacity and the exact secrecy outage probability (SOP) in the closed form. Furthermore, we derive the asymptotic SOP in two different cases, and explicitly show the effects of system parameters on the secrecy diversity order and the secrecy diversity gain, respectively. Both asymptotic analysis and simulation results show that the secrecy performance can be improved by increasing either the number of relays or the Nakagami parameter of the legitimate relay channels, whereas the secrecy diversity gain deteriorates as the number of the PUs increases.