Secure Multiple Amplify-and-Forward Relaying Over Correlated Fading Channels

TLDR: This paper quantifies the impact of correlated fading on secure communication of multiple amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying networks and concludes that the channel correlation is always beneficial to the secrecy performance of full relay selection, however, it deteriorates the confidentiality performance if partial-relay selection is used.

Abstract: This paper quantifies the impact of correlated fading on secure communication of multiple amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying networks. In such a network, the base station (BS) is equipped with multiple antennas and communicates with the destination through multiple AF relays, while the message from the relays can be overheard by an eavesdropper. We focus on the practical communication scenario, where the main and eavesdropper’s channels are correlated. In order to enhance the transmission security, transmit antenna selection is performed at the BS, and the best relay is chosen according to the full- or partial-relay selection criterion, which relies on the dual-hop relay channels or the second-hop relay channels, respectively. For these criteria, we study the impact of correlated fading on the network secrecy performance, by deriving an analytical approximation for the secrecy outage probability and an asymptotic expression for the high main-to-eavesdropper ratio. From these results, it is concluded that the channel correlation is always beneficial to the secrecy performance of full relay selection. However, it deteriorates the secrecy performance if partial-relay selection is used, when the number of antennas at the BS is less than the number of relays.