Untrusted Relay Networks Research Articles

An Optimization Strategy for Security and Reliability in a Diamond Untrusted Relay Network with Cooperative Jamming

An Optimization Strategy for Security and Reliability in a Diamond Untrusted Relay Network with Cooperative Jamming

Achievable secrecy rate analysis of OFDM‐based multi‐user untrusted relay networks with imperfect CSI

AbstractThis study investigates the impact of imperfect channel state information (CSI), caused by channel estimation errors and feedback delays, on the physical‐layer security performance of multi‐user relay networks. More specifically, a multi‐user untrusted half/full‐duplex (HD/FD) uni/bi‐directional wireless amplify‐and‐forward (AF) relay network is studied, adopting orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). In order to minimize the information leakage, it is considered that a limited number of friendly jammers affect the untrusted relay. In this context, the achievable secrecy rate of the relay network is theoretically analyzed and optimization problems are formulated and solved for the untrusted relay's location and power allocation. Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to validate the theoretical findings, revealing that channel estimation errors cause coding gain losses for low signal‐to noise ratio (SNR) while their impact becomes negligible for high SNR. Also, a large number of user‐pairs achieves higher secrecy rate while FD relaying further improves the secrecy performance. Finally, bi‐directional relaying provides higher achievable secrecy rate over uni‐directional relaying.

Optimal power allocation for secure transmission in untrusted relay networks with Alamouti space-time block coding

Optimal power allocation for secure transmission in untrusted relay networks with Alamouti space-time block coding

Secrecy Performance Analysis of Energy Harvesting Untrusted Relay Networks with Hardware Impairments

In this work, we focus on the issue of secure communication in energy harvesting untrusted relay networks taking into account the impact of hardware impairments, where an energy‐constrained relay, powered by received radio frequency signals, attempts to decode sensitive data from the source without authorization. To achieve secure communication, we employ destination‐assisted jamming to prevent the untrusted relay from decoding sensitive data while serving as a useful energy source. We derive the interception probability (IP), connection outage probability (COP), and effective secrecy throughput (EST) in closed form for time switching relaying (TSR) strategy. Subsequently, we conduct an asymptotic analysis in the high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) regime to provide practical insights into how various system parameters affect security, reliability, and efficiency, including time switching factor and the level of hardware impairments. Our findings demonstrate that the presence of hardware impairments improves security performance but compromises reliability performance, which does more harm than good.

Joint optimization scheme for the reconfigurable intelligent surface-assisted untrusted relay networks

To further improve the secrecy rate, a joint optimization scheme for the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) phase shift and the power allocation is proposed in the untrusted relay (UR) networks assisted by the RIS. The eavesdropping on the UR is interfered by a source-based jamming strategy. Under the constraints of unit modulus and total power, the RIS phase shift, the power allocation between the confidential signal and the jamming signal, and the power allocation between the source node and the UR are jointly optimized to maximize the secrecy rate. The complex multivariable coupling problem is decomposed into three sub-problems, and the non-convexity of the objective function and the constraints is solved with semi-definite relaxation. Simulation results indicate that the secrecy rate is remarkably enhanced with the proposed scheme compared with the equal power allocation scheme, the random phase shift scheme, and the no-RIS scheme.

Secure Energy Efficiency Maximization for Untrusted Wireless-Powered Full-Duplex Relay Networks Under Nonlinear Energy Harvesting

In this article, we raise the concern on secure energy efficiency (SEE) over the wireless-powered untrusted relay networks with nonlinear energy harvesting (EH). To achieve data confidentiality and secrecy performance enhancement concurrently, the untrusted relay can enable simultaneous energy signal reception and confidential information forwarding during the second phase, where no dedicated energy transmission phase or relaying signal splitting is needed for the energy supply. In particular, with the help of destination jamming, the relay can also harvest energy from source signal and jamming signal during the first phase, which is different from conventional relaying protocol that only harvests energy from source and recycled energy. Considering the nonlinear EH efficiency, our objective is to maximize the SEE through piecewise region selection and power allocation. To address this intractable nonconvex problem, a two-layer algorithm based on optimization decoupling, fractional programming, Lagrange dual decomposition and difference of convex functions (DC) programming is proposed. The core idea of the proposed algorithm is to convert the primary problem into simple subproblems by sequentially exploiting the above-mentioned optimization methods. Simulation results reveal the superior secrecy performance of the proposed scheme. The proposed algorithm achieves near-optimal solutions with faster convergence rate.

Secrecy rate optimization for SWIPT in two‐way relay networks with multiple untrusted relays and channel estimation errors

The secrecy rate of two-way untrusted relay networks with imperfect channel state information based on SWIPT is investigated when multiple relays harvest energy from two sources. Despite assisting in information forwarding, the relays are considered untrusted in that they might attempt to eavesdrop on confidential information. To interfere with eavesdropping by untrusted relays, sources-based friendly cooperative jamming is introduced. A joint power allocation and time switching strategy has been studied to maximize the sum secrecy rate of the system under total block transmission duration and power constraints. The genetic algorithm (GA) is introduced to optimize the proposed joint power allocation and time switching (JPTs) scheme. In addition, two suboptimal schemes are proposed: the power allocation and time switching scheme for individual power constraints and the power allocation scheme for equal time allocation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed joint power allocation and time switching strategy performs better in contributing to the total secrecy rate of the system.

Hybrid protocol for wireless-powered untrusted relay networks with imperfect channel reciprocity

This work investigates the security issue of the energy-constrained untrusted relay network with imperfect channel reciprocity, where the relay without the built-in power supply can only scavenge energy from radio-frequency signals radiated by the source and destination. A hybrid power-splitting (PS)- and time-switching (TS)-based relaying (HPTR) protocol is presented to improve the degraded secrecy performance due to the incomplete self-interference cancellation at the destination. To evaluate the secrecy throughput (ST) of the studied system, the analytical expression of the secrecy outage probability under the delay-limited transmission mode and the closed-form lower bound of the ergodic secrecy capacity under delay-tolerant transmission mode are derived. Both linear and nonlinear models for the energy harvester at the relay are compared. The optimal PS and TS ratios are evaluated numerically. The theoretical derivations are validated by numerical results, revealing that the residual jamming has a negative effect on the secrecy performance of untrusted relay networks, which can be alleviated by the HPTR protocol. Besides, we compare the ST performance of the HPTR protocol with that of the PS and TS relaying schemes, and the results show that the HPTR protocol outperforms both PS and TS relaying protocols in terms of the ST.

Secure NOMA and OMA coordinated transmission schemes in untrusted relay networks

Secure NOMA and OMA coordinated transmission schemes in untrusted relay networks

Secrecy Rate Optimization for RF Powered Two-Hop Untrusted Relay Networks with Non-Linear EH Model

Secrecy Rate Optimization for RF Powered Two-Hop Untrusted Relay Networks with Non-Linear EH Model

Three-Hop Untrusted Relay Networks With Hardware Imperfections and Channel Estimation Errors for Internet of Things

Cooperative relaying can be introduced as a promising approach for data communication in the Internet of Things (IoT), where the source and the destination may be placed far away. In this paper, by taking a variety of realistic hardware imperfections (HWIs) and channels estimation errors (CEEs) into account, the secrecy performance of a three-hop cooperative network with a source, a destination and two consecutive amplify-and-forward (AF) relays is investigated. The relays are considered to be untrusted, i.e., while they are mandatory helpers for data transmission, they may overhear the received signals. We adopt the artificial noise injection scheme, to keep the source message secret from being captured by the untrusted relays. Given this system model, a novel closed-form expression is obtained in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime for the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) performance over Nakagami-m fading. Our simulation results highlight that the secrecy performance of the system is improved when the tolerable HWIs are distributed beneficially across the transmission and reception radio-frequency (RF) front-ends of each node. Our work reveals that unlike the ideal case, the realistic scenario of non-ideal hardware with CEEs faces with the secrecy rate ceiling. Finally, under a constraint on the total energy consumption which is applicable for battery-limited IoT equipment, we maximize the achievable secrecy rate. Our results highlight the importance of the destination's jamming cooperation and the first relay's role on the secrecy performance.

Deep Neural Network Assisted Approach for Antenna Selection in Untrusted Relay Networks

This letter mainly studies the transmit antenna selection (TAS) scheme based on deep neural network (DNN) in untrusted relay networks. In our previous work, we revealed that machine learning (ML)-based TAS schemes have performance degradation caused by complicated coupling relationship between the achievable secrecy rate and channel gains. To solve this issue, we here introduce DNN to decouple the above complicated relationship. The simulation results show that the DNN scheme can achieve better decoupling and, thus, accomplish almost the same performance as the exhaustive searching scheme.

Secure Cooperative Communications With an Untrusted Relay: A NOMA-Inspired Jamming and Relaying Approach

We propose a novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-inspired jamming and relaying scheme to enhance the physical layer security of untrusted relay networks. Particularly, during the first phase, with the application of the downlink NOMA principle, the source sends a superimposed version of a desired signal and a jamming signal, where the jamming signal is designed to deliberately confuse the untrusted relay by exploiting the beamforming design and adapting the transmission rate at the source. During the second phase, relying on the uplink NOMA principle, the untrusted relay forwards its received signals and, simultaneously, the source transmits a new desired signal that cannot be wiretapped by the untrusted relay to maximize the secrecy sum rate. Scenarios of single-antenna and multiple-antenna relaying are considered, and the impact of different antenna configurations at the source and the untrusted relay on the secrecy performance is investigated. Analytical expressions of an ergodic secrecy sum rate (ESSR) lower bound and an asymptotic ESSR scaling law are derived to evaluate the secrecy performance of the proposed NOMA-inspired jamming and relaying scheme. Computer simulations are presented to validate the accuracy of the derived analytical results, and demonstrate the significant ESSR improvement of the proposed scheme over the conventional orthogonal multiple access-based relaying schemes.

비신뢰적 중계 네트워크에서 채널 추정 오류와 지연 채널정보를 고려한 방해 신호 전력 제어

비신뢰적 중계 네트워크에서 채널 추정 오류와 지연 채널정보를 고려한 방해 신호 전력 제어

Impact of Outdated CSI on the Secrecy Performance of Wireless-Powered Untrusted Relay Networks

We investigate the effect of outdated channel state information (CSI) on the secrecy performance of wireless-powered untrusted relay networks, in which the relay is a potential eavesdropper. To keep the information secret from this untrusted relay, the destination sends a jamming signal to the relay when the source transmits an information signal. At the same time, the relay harvests energy from the radio-frequency power, and forwards the received signals to the destination using this harvested energy. To determine the proportions of energy harvesting and information processing, the relay makes use of relaying based on power splitting or time switching policy. Although the destination tries to remove the jamming signal from the relaying signal, it cannot cancel out the jamming signal perfectly due to imperfect channel reciprocity caused by the outdated CSI; this residual jamming signal therefore has a negative impact on secrecy performance. In this scenario, we derive the closed-form expressions for the outage probability and average secrecy rate, and find the jamming power ratio, power splitting ratio, and time switching ratio to optimize these secrecy performance metrics. The numerical results demonstrate the accuracy of our analysis, and show that the proposed secure relaying protocols achieve a near-optimal secrecy performance, as well as outperforming the conventional scheme without the jamming power control.

Adaptive Jamming Power Control for Untrusted Relay Networks With Imperfect Channel Reciprocity

In an untrusted relay network where a destination transmits a jamming signal to prevent an untrusted relay from recovering the data sent by a source, we consider imperfect channel reciprocity (ICR) between the relay and the destination. This ICR prevents the destination from removing jamming interference perfectly, meaning that transmit power of the jamming signal has a significant impact on the secrecy rate. In this article, we present a system model of an untrusted relay network with ICR, and verify that the secrecy rate is concave with respect to the jamming power. We derive an asymptotic optimal jamming power to maximize the secrecy rate in closed-form and propose an adaptive scheme for jamming power control (JPC). Numerical results show that the proposed JPC scheme achieves a near-optimal secrecy rate, as well as outperforming conventional schemes by controlling the jamming power adaptively. In particular, we note that to improve the secrecy rate, it is advantageous to reduce the jamming power to decrease the residual jamming interference as the reciprocity error increases or the channel between the relay and the destination improves.

Energy-efficient secure multiuser scheduling in energy harvesting untrusted relay networks

In this paper, we investigate opportunistic secure multiuser scheduling in energy harvesting untrusted relay networks, where an energy-constrained amplify-and-forward (AF) relay harvests energy from the received radio frequency signal via using the power splitting protocol. To exploit the potential advantages (e.g., multiuser diversity and direct links) for secrecy improvement, we examine three opportunistic user scheduling schemes, i.e., optimal scheduling scheme, maximum scheduling scheme, and minimum scheduling scheme. Specifically, the optimal scheduling scheme performs user selection by maximizing the ratio between the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) at the destination and the corresponding SNR at the untrusted relay. The maximum scheduling scheme is conventional user selection that maximizes the channel gain of the direct links. For the minimum scheduling scheme, we try to reduce the overheard information at the untrusted relay by selecting the user with the lowest channel gain of the relay links. For these three schemes, we comprehensively examine the achievable secrecy performance including probability of positive secrecy rate, secrecy outage probability (SOP), asymptotic SOP, secrecy throughput (ST), as well as secure energy efficiency (SEE) to help facilitate an energy-efficient secure transmission design. Simulation results demonstrate that the maximum scheduling scheme outperforms the minimum scheduling scheme in terms of SOP at relatively low SNRs and target secrecy rates.

Robust Destination Jamming Aided Secrecy Precoding for an AF MIMO Untrusted Relay System

We consider a secrecy dual-hop amplify-and-forward (AF) untrusted relay network, where the relay is willing to forward the signal to the destination while acting as a potential eavesdropper. Assuming that all these nodes are equipped with multiple antennas, we propose a joint destination aided cooperative jamming and precoding at both the source and the relay scheme, with the objective to maximize the worst case secrecy rate. The formulated problem is highly non-convex due to the maximization of the difference of several logarithmic determinant (log-det) functions in the CSI uncertainty region. To handle this challenge, we propose to linearize these log-det terms. After linearization, we tackle the CSI uncertainty based on epigraph reformulation and the sign-definiteness lemma. Finally, an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm is proposed to solve the reformulated problem. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheme.

Secrecy Transmission for Self-Energy Recycling Untrusted Relay Networks With Imperfect Channel State Information

For the self-energy recycling (SER) untrusted relay network, a two-phase destination-based jamming (DBJ) protocol is proposed, in which the destination transmits the jamming signal to reduce the received SNR of the untrusted relay node in the first phase and the relay node operated in full-duplex (FD) mode for simultaneous energy transfer and information relaying in the second phase. In addition, the loopback interference (LI) generated by FD relay node can be reused as part of energy. To satisfy some practical application scenarios, we consider the imperfect channel estimation error at the destination. Considering the total power constraint and the quality of service (QoS) requirement at the destination, the secrecy rate maximization problem is formulated by optimizing the transmission power of source and destination. However, the formulated problem is non-convex and difficult to solve directly. To cope with this difficulty, an iterative power allocation algorithm is proposed. The key idea of the proposed algorithm first integrates the non-convex constraint into the objective function by the exact penalty method. Then the difference of convex functions (DC) programming can be utilized to convert the non-convex objective function into the approximate convex function and the sub-optimal transmission power of source and destination can be obtained by the traditional convex programming. Simulation results show the superiority security performance of the proposed scheme with the traditional schemes.

Physical Layer Security in an Untrusted Energy Harvesting Relay Network

The security performance in an amplify-and-forward dual-hop untrusted relay network is considered. It is assumed that the source and multiple destinations are equipped with multiple antennas, and the information transmission is aided by a single-antenna but energy-constrained relay. On the one hand, the relay can harvest the energy from its received signals by applying power splitting relaying and time switching relaying protocols and then forward the information to the destinations. To enhance the reliability performance, multiple destinations are exploited to receive the information simultaneously. On the other hand, the relay may be a potential passive attacker and eavesdrop the received information, but this kind of illegal activity may not be discovered by the sources. To investigate the security and the reliability performance, the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the connection outage probability (COP) of the considered system are especially examined. In particular, the exact closed-form expressions of SOP and COP are derived. Since the SOP and COP are contradictory metrics, the effective secrecy throughput (EST) performance is further characterized to comprehensively examine the security and the reliability performance. Moreover, the asymptotic analysis of EST in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime is provided. The theoretical analysis and simulations reveal the impact of different parameters on the system performance, such as the transmit SNR, the power allocation coefficient, the antenna numbers, and other parameters. The Monte Carlo simulations are in excellent agreement with the theoretical expressions.