Secrecy Performance Analysis of Mixed-ADC/DAC Cell-Free Massive MIMO in the Presence of Multiple Eavesdroppers

Abstract

This paper studies the secrecy performance of the cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system, where access points (APs) are equipped with a mixed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) architecture. The distributed antenna structure is prone to multiple eavesdropping network threats. Specifically, legitimate transmissions can be affected by non-colluding and colluding eavesdroppers. Based on the above considerations, we determine the expressions of the sum achievable secrecy rate and secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) with applications of the additive quantization noise model and the conjugate performing precoding method. These provide the composite measures to analyze the effects of the mixed-ADC/DAC architecture on secrecy performance. We also propose a SEE-maximization power control (SEEMPC) scheme, which can be solved by the sequential convex approximation algorithm. In addition to verifying the effectiveness of the proposed SEEMPC algorithm, numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the impact of some key design parameters, including the number of APs, quantization bit of coarse ADCs/DACs, ratio of ideal ADCs/DACs, and power control strategy.