1. Introduction
Secure transmission is a fundamental problem in wireless communications due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. Along with the rapid advancement of information technology, the higher information transmission rate has called for a stricter standard of information transmission security. For a long time, the primary method of guaranteeing the secure transmission of information has been via encryption technology. Encryption technology utilizes the limitation in computing speed to prevent the eavesdropper from deciphering all encrypted information in a limited time. However, as computer technology advances with faster computation, the decryption of information becomes more straightforward. In theory, no encrypted information is indecipherable if the computer’s calculation speed is fast enough. This indeed is the inherent flaw in the current information encryption technology. Therefore, the physical layer security technology has been proposed to solve the problems of secure information transmission.
The physical layer security technology differs substantially from the information encryption technology. Unlike encryption technology, which relies on the limitation in computation speed, the physical layer security technology has its basis in the randomness of the wireless communication channel. The physical layer security technology tries to prevent eavesdroppers from decoding information, regardless of the amount of time or the computing speed. One of the most innovative physical layer security technologies is artificial noise (AN). AN adds extra noise to the information. This noise solely impacts the eavesdropper’s channel but does not affect the legitimate receiver channel. That is, only the signal received by the eavesdropper is reduced in this method. The effectiveness of the physical layer technology is then evaluated by secrecy capacity.
The study of physical layer security begins from [
1]. This paper proposes unconditional secure transmission as the ultimate goal of physical layer security technology study.
After [
1,
2] is the first paper to study the secure transmission of information from the perspective of information theory. In [
2], wiretap communication model with the eavesdropping channel is proposed, and the aforementioned secrecy capacity was also first proposed in this paper. Paper [
3] studies the physical layer security technology based on [
2]. In [
3], a broadcast channel model with confidential messages is proposed to extend Wyner’s work.
Currently, the physical layer security technology has not been at the center of public attention, primarily due to a strict restriction that the eavesdropper’s channel must be strictly worse than the legitimate channel. Considering the following cases: the eavesdropper is closer to the transmitter, or the eavesdropper has more antennas than the transmitter. These mentioned conditions will make the eavesdropper’s channel better than the legitimate channel and thus reduces the effectiveness of the physical layer security technology.
To help with the issue above, AN technology is introduced. The proposal of AN technology reduces the difficulty of applying the physical layer security technology in the multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) communication system [
4]. AN is in the null space of the legitimate channel, which mean the legitimate channel is not affected. There is no need to employ any additional signal processing device to the legitimate receiver. Meanwhile, the eavesdropper’s channel capacity is reduced significantly. To show this result quantitatively, let
A denote the channel capacity of the legitimate receiver and
B denote the channel capacity of the eavesdropper. The principle of AN is to increase the difference
by reducing
B and keeping
A constant.
There have been many outstanding works in the realm of AN technology. In [
5,
6], AN and the interference alignment technology are creatively merged to introduce AN featuring interference alignment. In [
7], the lower bound on the secrecy capacity of artificial noise wireless communication systems subject to transmit power is proposed. Ref. [
8] proposes the secrecy capacity expression with imperfect channel estimation. This expression is non-convex, so the gradient descent method cannot be used for this optimization problem. Therefore, it is impossible to get the optimal solution of the secrecy capacity expression. The study in [
9,
10,
11,
12] consider the effects of active eavesdropper. The active eavesdropper can interfere with pilot to reduce the secrecy capacity of the wire-tap system. This is something that hasn’t been explored in previous studies.
The past research on AN is summarized into two main aspects:
- (1)
Research on AN noise technology under different communication modes [
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21]: examples include the AN power allocation problem in OFDM, GSM, and other communication modes [
22] and the application of AN under intelligent reflecting surface [
23]. The simplified communication model is
, where
Y denotes the received signal,
H denotes the channel,
X denotes the transmitted signal, and
e is the noise. The above researches focus on “
H”.
- (2)
Reshaping certain features of AN. For example, Ref. [
24] designs an artificial noise that has interference alignment characteristics. The research focused on “
X” from the equation above [
25,
26,
27,
28].
Still, there has been little to no research attention on redesigning the core of AN. Therefore, our research focus on creating a new kind of AN. Our research shows that our new artificial noise has a better performance compared to its traditional counterpart.
In [
29], the secrecy capacity optimization artificial noise (SCO−AN) is proposed. The core of AN technology is to design a noise in the null space of the channel state information space. Unlike the traditional AN, which ignores the range space of the channel state information space, SCO−AN is located in that range space. While SCO−AN may slightly impact the channel capacity of the legitimate receiver, SCO−AN significantly reduces the channel capacity of the eavesdropper. Therefore, this method still increases the difference between the legitimate channel capacity and the eavesdropping channel capacity. SCO−AN is a tool to convert the noise immunity of communication systems into secrecy capacity.
As there is a limitation in the transmission power, it is critical to draw an optimization problem to maximize the secrecy capacity under that limitation. The power allocation problem becomes essential. Therefore, in this paper, we study the power allocation problem of SCO−AN. The Hessian matrix of the SCO−AN power allocation objective function is not positive definite, which means the objective function is non-convex. The maximum value of the SCO−AN power allocation function cannot be obtained by the gradient descent method. An improved sequential quadratic programming (ISQP) is proposed to solve this problem. With the effects of imperfect channel estimation considered, the objective power allocation function containing imperfect channel estimation parameters is constructed.
The main contributions of this paper are summarized as follows:
- (1)
In reality, the secrecy capacity of a wireless communication system using SCO−AN is limited by transmission power. Considering this limitation, this paper constructs a power distribution function for SCO−AN and the information-bearing signal.
- (2)
Since the power allocation objective function is non-convex, it is difficult to optimize the power distribution function using a power optimization scheme based on gradient descent. ISQP is then proposed to allocate power between SCO−AN and the information-bearing signal. ISQP improves the traditional iterative algorithm and reduces the computational complexity by simplifying the initial iterative matrix and improving computational efficiency.
- (3)
Due to the influence of Gaussian white noise in the channel, there is an error in the channel estimation, resulting in an error in the SCO−AN design. The channel estimation error affects the accuracy of the power allocation optimization. This paper considers the imperfect channel state information for power allocation. The power allocation objective function of SCO−AN and the information-bearing signal containing channel estimation errors is constructed. The expression for the channel estimation errors is derived for the first time. This expression can then be applied to future physical layer security research examining imperfect channel estimation.The power allocation function is then converted to a function with only one variable–the SCO−AN–simplifying the function’s overall computational complexity.
This paper is structured as follows:
In
Section 2, the system model and the framework are introduced.
In
Section 3, the objective function for the power allocation between SCO−AN and the information-bearing signal, with and without considering imperfect channel estimation, is proposed. ISQP is then applied to optimize the power allocation. The algorithm flow of ISQP algorithm is constructed.
In
Section 4, simulation results are shown and discussed.
In
Section 5, the conclusion is drawn, and the suggestions for future work are presented.
In this paper, the following notations are used: Boldface upper case denotes matrices, boldface lower case denotes vectors, italics case denotes numbers; denotes the matrix transpose operation; denotes the complex conjugate operation; denotes the conjugate transpose operation (conjugate complex number) for the matrix (number) “·”; denotes the mathematical expectation; denotes the norm of a vector; and denotes the determinant of a matrix.
2. Related Work and System Model
2.1. Related Work–Wireless Communication Model with Eavesdroppers
In this section, we review the artificial noise technology and the method of SCO−AN. Moreover, the effects of imperfect channel estimation are analyzed in detail.
Figure 1 shows a wireless communication system model with an eavesdropper. In this model, Alice is the transmitter of the message, Bob is the legitimate receiver, and Eve is the eavesdropper. Alice has
antennas, Bob has
antennas and Eve has
antennas.
H represents the channel state information (CSI) of the legitimate channel (Alice to Bob), while
G represents the CSI of the eavesdropper channel (Alice to Eve).
H and
G represent the CSI of
H and
G at time
k respectively. The element
(or
) in
H (or
G) is the channel gain coefficient between the i
transmitter antenna and the j
receiver’s (or eavesdropper’s) antenna.
x represents the signal transmitted by Alice at time
k;
y represents the signal received by Bob at time
k; and
z represents the signal received by Eve at time
k.
where
n and
e are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) additive Gaussian white noise (AGWN) with the variance of
and
respectively. For the convenience of discussion, we assume that the CSI of
G and
H can be obtained by Alice without delay. The maximum transmitting power is assumed to be
P, where
.
2.2. Related Work–The Artificial Noise
Located in the null space of legitimate channel (i.e., Bob’s channel), AN does not affect Bob’s reception of information. For Eve, however, AN reduces Eve’s channel capacity significantly. Alice sends AN simultaneously while sending the information-bearing signal; that is,
In (
3),
denotes AN;
denotes the information-bearing signal; and
is artificial noise, which is located in the null space of
, such that
= 0. Let
be a standard orthonormal basis for
and
be a complex random variable with the variance of
such that
and
. Then, the signals received by Bob and Eve are:
where
is the signal received by Eve, and
is the signal received by Bob.
and
are Gaussian vectors. As
is in the null space of
H, we have
and the term with
vanishes in (
4). That is, the artificial noise does not impact Bob, while Eve is affected.
In [
4], the transmitted signal is chosen as
, where
is the information signal with the variance of
and
obeys the independent Gaussian distribution. Here,
is chosen such that: (a)
, and (b)
.
In [
4], Goel considers two scenarios:
- (a)
A single-input, single-output (SISO) wireless communication system where the transmitter, the receiver, and the eavesdropper equip one antenna each, i.e., ; and
- (b)
A MIMO wireless communication system where the the transmitter, the receiver, and the eavesdropper each equip multiple antennas, i.e., .
For scenario a, the variables in (
4)–(
6) are Gaussian complex variables.
is used to calculate entropy, so the lower bound on secrecy capacity after adding artificial noise is given by:
where
.
denotes the secrecy capacity after adding artificial noise, and
denotes mutual information entropy of A and B.
For scenario b,
and
are Gaussian complex matrices. The elements in
and
are Gaussian complex variables. The other variables in (
4)–(
6) are Gaussian vectors. It then follows that the lower bound on secrecy capacity after adding artificial noise is given by:
2.3. Related Work–SCO−AN: Perfect Channel Estimation
SCO−AN is proposed in [
29]. In this section, SCO−AN is introduced in detail.
The goal of physical layer security is to maximize the secrecy capacity of a communication system. In the wireless wiretap communication model, it is not possible to increase the channel capacity of the legitimate receiver. AN is then proposed to reduce the eavesdropper’s channel capacity while the legitimate receiver’s channel capacity remains intact. Inspired by AN, the secrecy capacity optimization artificial noise (SCO−AN) is proposed in [
29]. Unlike the traditional AN, SCO−AN has a slight impact on the legitimate receiver’s channel capacity but reduces the capacity of eavesdropping channels much more significantly. Hence, the system’s overall secrecy capacity increases.
Next, we compute the analytical expression of using SCO−AN, in a manner parallel to our computations of AN above. Alice adds SCO−AN to the transmission signal:
In [
29], the transmitted signal is
, where
is the information-bearing signal with variance of
and
obeys the Gaussian distribution.
satisfies the following conditions: (a)
; and (b)
.
denotes the SCO−AN. To facilitate calculations, we assume that
, where
is a standard orthonormal basis of
and
is a complex random variables with variance
. The signals received by the Bob and Eve are:
where
denotes the signal received by Bob and
denotes the signal received by Eve.
For the SISO wireless communication system, all the elements in (
8)–(
10) are complex variables. So the lower bound on secrecy capacity after adding SCO−AN is:
where
, and
.
denotes the secrecy capacity after adding SCO−AN. In (
11),
is a non-convex function about
.
For the MIMO wireless communication system,
and
are gaussian complex martixs,
,
,
,
and
are gaussian vectors. So the lower bound on secrecy capacity after adding SCO−AN is:
(
12) is a function of
.
For the convenience of discussion,
represents the change of secrecy capacity after adding the SCO−AN when compared to simply adding traditional AN. For the case of SCO−AN, to ensure the effectiveness of physical security, (
13) must be guaranteed.
In (
13), for the SISO communication system,
is given by (
6) and
is given by (
11). For the MIMO communication system,
is given by (
7) and
is given by (
12).
In
Figure 2, the dashed line represents the secrecy capacity of AN calculated by (
7), and the solid line is the secrecy capacity of SCO−AN calculated by (
12). The legitimate channel
and the eavesdropper channel
are Rayleigh fading channels. The signal
is a complex covector.
Figure 2 shows that SCO−AN provides more secrecy capacity than AN does. The noise in
and
are Gaussian white noise. The secrecy capacity increases with higher SNR.
2.4. SCO−AN: Imperfect Channel Estimation
The Gaussian white noise causes the error of channel estimation. The effect of the imperfect channel estimation should be considered.
For the SISO communication system,
denotes channel estimation error. The channel state information received by Alice is
:
The signal received by Bob after adding SCO−AN is:
For MIMO communication system,
denotes channel estimation error. The channel state information received by Alice is
:
The signal received by Bob after adding SCO−AN is:
We assume that the channel estimation of is perfect.
For the SISO communication system,
,
, and
are independent. Therefore,
,
. The lower bound on secrecy capacity after adding SCO−AN under imperfect channel estimation is:
In (
18), we see that the channel estimation error will affect the channel capacity of the legitimate channel. Meanwhile, the secrecy capacity of the wireless communication system is reduced.
For the MIMO system, the lower bound on secrecy capacity after adding SCO−AN under imperfect channel estimation is:
In (
19),
and
.
2.5. Comprison of AN and SCO−AN
The artificial noise must be in the null space of the CSI matrix, this condition makes the artificial noise design very challenging. Artificial noise is the solution of homogeneous linear equations . If the rank of the matrix is r and the dimension is , only when , the homogeneous linear equation system has no solutions, when , the homogeneous linear equations have only zero solutions. In the environment of natural communication, the probability of occurrence of is almost zero, that is to say, in the conditions of natural communication, the design of artificial noise is almost impossible.
For example, in MIMO, when the number of transmitting antennas is less than the number of eavesdropping antennas, artificial noise cannot be designed; when the number of transmitting antennas is equal to the number of eavesdropping antennas, artificial noise can be designed under the condition . When the number of transmitting antennas is greater than the number of eavesdropping antennas, artificial noise cannot be designed. This is exactly the opposite of the original intention of AN. AN is designed to solve the condition that the eavesdropping channel must be a weaken version of the legitimate channel.
Therefore, the previous researches discussed some of the characteristics of AN theoretically and ignored its applicability.
For SISO, is a constant and is a constant as well. If has a non-zero solution, H = 0 must be guaranteed. Therefore, AN is not applicable in SISO wireless communication system.
SCO−AN is located in the range space of the legitimate CSI space, so, .
There are countless non-zero solutions to , so we don’t worry about to design .
We try to design AN under the condition of Rayleigh fading channels, and carry out a total of 1000 experiments, and all experiments fail. When we try to design SCO−AN, all experiments are successful.
In
Table 1, we compare SCO−AN and AN in detail, and briefly summarize the characteristics and applicability of SCO−AN and AN. It can be seen that SCO−AN is better than AN in every aspect.
5. Conclusions and Future Work
In this paper, we study the power allocation problems of SCO−AN under perfect and imperfect CSI. First, the power allocation model of SCO−AN with perfect channel estimation is constructed. Then, the effect of the imperfect channel estimation error is examined. The power allocation model of SCO−AN is constructed for the first time in this paper, along with the expression of the imperfect channel estimation’s effect on power allocation. The power allocation optimization problem is a crucial contribution to optimizing secrecy capacity under imperfect channel estimation. The power allocation problem’s objective function is non-convex, which poses challenges to the solving process. Therefore, we solve this problem by adopting the ISQP algorithm. We compare ISQP with the other three algorithms–SQP, BPA, and COCOA. Although ISQP is slightly worse than SQP in terms of the optimization effect, the ISQP algorithm far exceeds other algorithms. Moreover, ISQP requires the least complex computation. Therefore, we decide to choose the ISQP algorithm. Our simulation results show that the secrecy capacity of SCO−AN wireless communication system increases the most under ISQP algorithm. We then conclude that the ISQP algorithm is the most effective for this purpose.
There is much room for future research. For any optimization problem, there is an upper bound to be reached. What is the upper bound on secrecy capacity for SCO−AN under a specific power? This question lays an exciting background for future research directions. Since 2019, the research on the physical layer security of reflective intelligence surfaces has become a research hotspot. The application of SCO−AN in intelligent reflector technology is one of our future research contents as well. As inspired by many papers, the features of mixing other SCO−AN signals also pose a meaningful research question, such as SCO−AN with interference alignment characteristics and SCO−AN with channel coding characteristics. Among these proposed topics for future studies, we will first study the secrecy capacity’s upper bound of SCO−AN.