Secure Quadrature Channel Modulation

Abstract

In this paper, a physical layer security (PLS) scheme based on quadrature channel modulation (QCM) called secure QCM (SQCM) is proposed for time division duplex (TDD) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) media based modulation (MBM) systems to resist eavesdropping. By exploiting the abundant legitimate channel realizations generated by the radio frequency (RF) mirrors, secure mappings between the original information bits and the transmit patterns are designed, where the transmit patterns include the transmit antenna activation pattern (AAP), mirror activation pattern (MAP) and symbol modulation pattern. The secure mappings used by the transmitter change for each transmission and are unavailable at the eavesdropper due to the independent fading of the legitimate link and the eavesdropping link. Based on the secure mappings, the proposed SQCM conveys the source information bits securely through the complex modulation symbol and instantaneous channel realizations by using a single RF chain. The ergodic secrecy rate is analyzed and a closed-form approximation is derived. Simulation results show that the closed-form approximation coincides with the experimental ergodic secrecy rate, and the achievable ergodic secrecy rate is not influenced by the number of eavesdropping antennas or the channel advantage of the eavesdropping link. Compared to the secure MBM scheme using the traditional artificial noise (AN) technique, the proposed SQCM scheme shows significant performance gain without consuming jamming power when the eavesdropper has more antennas than the legitimate receiver. Compared to the precoded MBM and probabilistic optimized MBM schemes exploiting the eavesdropper's CSI, the proposed SQCM scheme has better secrecy performance in all SNR region and medium-to-high SNR regions respectively without requiring the eavesdropper's CSI.