Physical Layer Security in Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the physical layer security of millimeter wave cellular networks, analyzing secure connectivity and the impact of artificial noise under different network conditions using stochastic geometry.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of mmWave network security, including the effects of blockage, antenna patterns, and artificial noise, which were not previously studied in detail.

Findings

Secure connectivity probability varies with network parameters.

Artificial noise improves secrecy performance in interference-limited networks.

Secrecy performance is influenced by antenna pattern and base station density.

Abstract

Recent researches show that millimeter wave (mmWave) communications can offer orders of magnitude increases in the cellular capacity. However, the secrecy performance of a mmWave cellular network has not been investigated so far. Leveraging the new path-loss and blockage models for mmWave channels, which are significantly different from the conventional microwave channel, this paper comprehensively studies the network-wide physical layer security performance of the downlink transmission in a mmWave cellular network under a stochastic geometry framework. We first study the secure connectivity probability and the average number of perfect communication links per unit area in a noise-limited mmWave network for both non-colluding and colluding eavesdroppers scenarios, respectively. Then, we evaluate the effect of the artificial noise (AN) on the secrecy performance, and derive the analysis result of average number of perfect communication links per unit area in an interference-limited mmWave network. Numerical results are demonstrated to show the network-wide secrecy performance, and provide interesting insights into how the secrecy performance is influenced by various network parameters: antenna array pattern, base station (BS) intensity, and AN power allocation, etc.