Physical Layer Security in Cellular Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of large-scale cellular networks using stochastic geometry, focusing on how base station cooperation and user association affect secure communication in the presence of eavesdroppers.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic geometry framework to evaluate the impact of base station cooperation and cell association on secrecy rates, considering eavesdropper location information availability.

Findings

Secrecy rates improve with base station cooperation.

Location information exchange enhances security performance.

Analytical results under diverse eavesdropper information scenarios.

Abstract

This paper studies the information-theoretic secrecy performance in large-scale cellular networks based on a stochastic geometry framework. The locations of both base stations and mobile users are modeled as independent two-dimensional Poisson point processes. We consider two important features of cellular networks, namely, information exchange between base stations and cell association, to characterize their impact on the achievable secrecy rate of an arbitrary downlink transmission with a certain portion of the mobile users acting as potential eavesdroppers. In particular, tractable results are presented under diverse assumptions on the availability of eavesdroppers' location information at the serving base station, which captures the benefit from the exchange of the location information between base stations.