Achieving secrecy without knowing the number of eavesdropper antennas

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel approach to physical layer security that does not require knowing the number of eavesdropper antennas, instead using spatial constraints to ensure secure communication.

Contribution

It proposes a new method leveraging spatial constraints to analyze secrecy rates without needing the eavesdropper's antenna count, including optimal jamming power calculation.

Findings

Non-zero secrecy rate achievable with friendly jamming even against infinite antennas

Secrecy rate does not always increase with jamming power

Closed-form solution for optimal jamming power

Abstract

The existing research on physical layer security commonly assumes the number of eavesdropper antennas to be known. Although this assumption allows one to easily compute the achievable secrecy rate, it can hardly be realized in practice. In this paper, we provide an innovative approach to study secure communication systems without knowing the number of eavesdropper antennas by introducing the concept of spatial constraint into physical layer security. Specifically, the eavesdropper is assumed to have a limited spatial region to place (possibly an infinite number of) antennas. From a practical point of view, knowing the spatial constraint of the eavesdropper is much easier than knowing the number of eavesdropper antennas. We derive the achievable secrecy rates of the spatially-constrained system with and without friendly jamming. We show that a non-zero secrecy rate is achievable with the help of a friendly jammer, even if the eavesdropper places an infinite number of antennas in its spatial region. Furthermore, we find that the achievable secrecy rate does not monotonically increase with the jamming power, and hence, we obtain the closed-form solution of the optimal jamming power that maximizes the secrecy rate.