As a complement to high-layer encryption techniques, physical layer security has been widely recognized as a promising way to enhance wireless security by exploiting the characteristics of wireless channels, including fading, noise, and interference. In order to enhance the received signal power at legitimate receivers and impair the received signal quality at eavesdroppers simultaneously, multiple-antenna techniques have been proposed for physical layer security to improve secrecy performance via exploiting spatial degrees of freedom. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on various multiple-antenna techniques in physical layer security, with an emphasis on transmit beamforming designs for multiple-antenna nodes. Specifically, we provide a detailed investigation on multiple-antenna techniques for guaranteeing secure communications in point-to-point systems, dual-hop relaying systems, multiuser systems, and heterogeneous networks. Finally, future research directions and challenges are identified.

A Survey on Multiple-Antenna Techniques for Physical Layer Security

The small carrier wavelength at millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) frequencies enables featuring a large number of co-located antennas. This paper exploits the potential of large antenna arrays to develop a low-complexity directional modulation technique, Antenna Subset Modulation (ASM), for point-to-point secure wireless communication. The main idea in ASM is to modulate the radiation pattern at the symbol rate by driving only a subset of antennas in the array. This results in a directional radiation pattern that projects a sharply defined constellation in the desired direction and expanded further randomized constellation in other directions. Two techniques for implementing ASM are proposed. The first technique selects an antenna subset randomly for every symbol. While randomly switching antenna subsets does not affect the symbol modulation for a desired receiver along the main direction, it effectively randomizes the amplitude and phase of the received symbol for an eavesdropper along a sidelobe. Using a simplified statistical model, an expression for the average uncoded symbol error rate (SER) is derived as a function of the observation angle. To overcome the problem of large sidelobes in random antenna subset switching, the second technique uses an optimized antenna subset selection procedure based on simulated annealing to achieve superior performance compared with random selection. Numerical comparisons of the SER performance and secrecy capacity of the proposed techniques against those of conventional array transmission are presented to highlight the potential of ASM.

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Antenna Subset Modulation for Secure Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communication

In order to formalize and extend on previous ad-hoc analysis and synthesis methods a theoretical treatment using vector representations of directional modulation (DM) systems is introduced and used to achieve DM transmitter characteristics. An orthogonal vector approach is proposed which allows the artificial orthogonal noise concept derived from information theory to be brought to bear on DM analysis and synthesis. The orthogonal vector method is validated and discussed via bit error rate (BER) simulations.

A Vector Approach for the Analysis and Synthesis of Directional Modulation Transmitters

Four-dimensional (4-D) antenna arrays are formed by introducing a fourth dimension, time, into traditional antenna arrays. In this paper, a time-modulated 4-D array with constant instantaneous directivity is proposed for directional modulation. The main idea is that the 4-D array transmits correct signal without time modulation in the desired direction, while transmitting time-modulated signals in other directions. As longs as the time modulation frequency is less than the bandwidth of the transmitted signal, the time-modulated signals cannot be demodulated correctly due to the aliasing effect, implying that time-modulated signals go distorted. Thus, the 4-D array can be used to transmit direction-dependent signals in secure wireless communications. The proposed idea is verified by experiments based on AM signal transmission through the 4-D array. Moreover, BPSK signal transmission through the 4-D array is studied and the bit error rate (BER) performance is investigated. Simulation results show that the BERs of time-modulated BPSK (TM-BPSK) signals transmitted through the sidelobes of the 4-D array are much higher than those of BPSK signals and almost keep unchanged even under higher SNR. Finally, two enhanced methods are presented to improve the feasibility of directional modulation by using random time sequences and random time modulation frequency.

Directional Modulation Based on 4-D Antenna Arrays

Directional modulation (DM) is a secure transmission technology that is able to retain the original constellation of transmitted signals along the desired direction, while distort the constellation in the undesired directions at the same time. In this letter, we develop novel and robust DM synthesis methods for enhancing the transmission performance. Specifically, we first propose a low-complexity dynamic DM synthesis method. In this method, we derive a closed-form expression for the null space of conjugate transpose of the steering vector in the desired direction. Based on the expression derived, we construct a projection matrix in order to form artificial noises to those undesired directions. Then, we focus our attention on more practical scenarios, where there is uncertainty in the estimated direction angle. This uncertainty will cause estimation errors and seriously jeopardize the receiving performance in the desired direction. To mitigate the uncertainty effect, we further propose a robust DM synthesis method based on conditional minimum mean square error. The proposed method aims to minimize the distortion of the constellation points along the desired direction. Simulation results show that our proposed robust DM method is capable of substantially improving the bit error rate performance compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

Robust Synthesis Method for Secure Directional Modulation With Imperfect Direction Angle

A dual-beam directional modulation (DM) technique is proposed for physical-layer secure communication. The main idea is that the in-phase and quadrature (IQ) baseband signals are used to excite two different antennas unlike a traditional transmitter, which is used to excite the same antenna. In this way, the constellation points of the transmit signal maintain their positions as traditional digital modulation signal at the desired direction, but scramble in the phase at the undesired directions because of the transmit signal both modulated at the baseband and the antenna level. Simulation results show that this dual-beam DM technique offers a security transmission method for wireless communication.

Yu Liu

Papers

Dual-Beam Directional Modulation Technique for Physical-Layer Secure Communication