Secure Transmission in Multi-Cell Massive MIMO Systems

TL;DR

This paper analyzes physical layer security in multi-cell massive MIMO systems, exploring how artificial noise and pilot contamination affect secrecy rates and proposing a low-complexity AN shaping method.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of secure downlink transmission with artificial noise in multi-cell massive MIMO, comparing conventional and random AN shaping matrices.

Findings

Artificial noise is essential for positive secrecy rates when user and eavesdropper experience similar path-loss.

Secure transmission can be compromised if eavesdropper has many antennas or insufficient power for channel estimation.

Random AN shaping matrices offer a good balance between performance and complexity.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider physical layer security provisioning in multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Specifically, we consider secure downlink transmission in a multi-cell massive MIMO system with matched-filter precoding and artificial noise (AN) generation at the base station (BS) in the presence of a passive multi-antenna eavesdropper. We investigate the resulting achievable ergodic secrecy rate and the secrecy outage probability for the cases of perfect training and pilot contamination. Thereby, we consider two different AN shaping matrices, namely, the conventional AN shaping matrix, where the AN is transmitted in the null space of the matrix formed by all user channels, and a random AN shaping matrix, which avoids the complexity associated with finding the null space of a large matrix. Our analytical and numerical results reveal that in multi-cell massive MIMO systems employing matched-filter precoding (1) AN generation is required to achieve a positive ergodic secrecy rate if the user and the eavesdropper experience the same path-loss, (2) even with AN generation secure transmission may not be possible if the number of eavesdropper antennas is too large and not enough power is allocated to channel estimation, (3) for a given fraction of power allocated to AN and a given number of users, in case of pilot contamination, the ergodic secrecy rate is not a monotonically increasing function of the number of BS antennas, and (4) random AN shaping matrices provide a favourable performance/complexity tradeoff and are an attractive alternative to conventional AN shaping matrices.