Robust Beamforming for Secure Communication in Systems With Wireless Information and Power Transfer

TLDR: In this article, the authors studied the design of a resource allocation algorithm minimizing the total transmit power for the case when the legitimate receivers are able to harvest energy from radio frequency signals and proposed a suboptimal resource allocation scheme with low computational complexity for providing communication secrecy and facilitating efficient energy transfer.

Abstract: This paper considers a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink system with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer. In particular, we focus on secure communication in the presence of passive eavesdroppers and potential eavesdroppers (idle legitimate receivers). We study the design of a resource allocation algorithm minimizing the total transmit power for the case when the legitimate receivers are able to harvest energy from radio frequency signals. Our design advocates the dual use of both artificial noise and energy signals in providing secure communication and facilitating efficient wireless energy transfer. The algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem. The problem formulation takes into account artificial noise and energy signal generation for protecting the transmitted information against both considered types of eavesdroppers when imperfect channel state information (CSI) of the potential eavesdroppers and no CSI of the passive eavesdroppers are available at the transmitter. Besides, the problem formulation also takes into account different quality of service (QoS) requirements: a minimum required signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the desired receiver; maximum tolerable SINRs at the potential eavesdroppers; a minimum required outage probability at the passive eavesdroppers; and minimum required heterogeneous amounts of power transferred to the idle legitimate receivers. In light of the intractability of the problem, we reformulate the considered problem by replacing a non-convex probabilistic constraint with a convex deterministic constraint. Then, a semi-definite programming (SDP) relaxation approach is adopted to obtain the optimal solution for the reformulated problem. Furthermore, we propose a suboptimal resource allocation scheme with low computational complexity for providing communication secrecy and facilitating efficient energy transfer. Simulation results demonstrate the close-to-optimal performance of the proposed schemes and significant transmit power savings by optimization of the artificial noise and energy signal generation.