In this paper, we propose a two-way secure communication scheme where two transceivers exchange confidential messages via a wireless-powered untrusted amplify-and-forward relay in the presence of an external jammer. We take into account both friendly jamming (FJ) and Gaussian noise jamming (GNJ) scenarios. Based on the time switching (TS) architecture at the relay, the data transmission is done in three phases. In the first phase, both the energy-starved nodes, the untrustworthy relay and the jammer, are charged by noninformation radio frequency (RF) signals from the sources. In the second phase, the two sources send their information signals and concurrently, the jammer transmits artificial noise to confuse the curious relay. Finally, the third phase is dedicated to forward a scaled version of the received signal from the relay to the sources. For the proposed secure transmission schemes, we derive new closed-form lower-bound expressions for the ergodic secrecy sum rate (ESSR) in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. We further analyze the asymptotic ESSR to determine the key parameters; the high SNR slope and the high SNR power offset of the jamming based scenarios. To highlight the performance advantage of the proposed FJ, we also examine the scenario of without jamming (WoJ). Finally, numerical examples and discussions are provided to acquire some engineering insights, and to demonstrate the impacts of different system parameters on the secrecy performance of the considered communication scenarios. The numerical results illustrate that the proposed FJ significantly outperforms the traditional one-way communication and the constellation rotation (CR) approach, as well as our proposed benchmarks, the two-way WoJ and GNJ scenarios.

In this paper, we examine the secrecy performance of two-way relaying between a large-scale multiple antenna base station (BS) and a single antenna mobile user (MU) in the presence of a multiple antenna external jammer. We consider the untrusted relaying scenario, where an amplify-and-forward relay is both a necessary helper and a potential eavesdropper to the BS and MU transmissions. With the aim of maximizing the instantaneous secrecy sum rate, we derive new closed-form solutions for the optimal power allocation (OPA) under the following three scenarios: 1) without jamming (WoJ) where the jammer is not activated; 2) friendly jamming (FJ) where the jamming signal is known a priori at the BS and MU; and 3) Gaussian noise jamming (GNJ) where the jamming signal is unknown at the BS and MU. Based on our OPA solutions, new closed-form expressions are derived for the ergodic secrecy sum rate (ESSR) with Rayleigh fading channels. Furthermore, we characterize the high signal-to-noise ratio slope and power offset of the ESSR to provide a fundamental comparison of the WoJ, FJ, and GNJ scenarios. Based on our analysis, we propose a simple relay selection criterion for the scenario when the BS and MU are assisted by multiple untrusted relays. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the impact of the jammer's location, number of antennas and the advantage of the proposed relay selection criterion on the secrecy performance. Our findings highlight that similar to the trusted relaying scenario, the ESSR of all three secure transmission scenarios improve as the number of untrusted relays increases. Moreover, we highlight an interesting insight that the OPA for the GNJ scenario results in the same ESSR performance as the OPA for the WoJ scenario.

The physical layer security (PLS) of millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems is investigated, where the secure source-to-destination communication is assisted by an untrusted relay selected from a group of them and there are also several passive eavesdroppers (Eves) in the network. In the considered system model, while the distributions of the untrusted relays and Eves follow a homogeneous Poisson Point Process (PPP). To maximize the instantaneous secrecy rate, a novel joint relay selection and power allocation (JRP) method is developed where the destination and source aim for jamming the reception of both the untrusted relays and passive Eves. New expressions of the optimal power allocation (OPA) are derived for both non-colluding Eves (NCE) and colluding Eves (CE). Subsequently, by considering the impact of potential blockages, new closed-form equations are derived for analyzing the system’s ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) for transmission over fading mmWave channels. Finally, numerical examples are provided for demonstrating the superiority of our proposed JRP method over the relevant benchmarks found in the literature. Interestingly, the ESR increases with the density of untrusted relays for both the NCE and CE scenarios, which is a benefit of the improved probability of selecting a relay with a stronger second-hop channel. Furthermore, in the low transmit power regime, employing relatively low mmWave frequencies achieves better ESR, while in the high transmit power regime, high mmWave frequencies provide higher ESR.

By taking a variety of realistic hardware imperfections into consideration, we propose an optimal power allocation (OPA) strategy to maximize the instantaneous secrecy rate of a cooperative wireless network comprised of a source, a destination and an untrusted amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. We assume that either the source or the destination is equipped with a large-scale multiple antennas (LSMA) system, while the rest are equipped with a single-antenna. To prevent the untrusted relay from intercepting the source message, the destination sends an intended jamming noise to the relay, which is referred to as destination-based cooperative jamming (DBCJ). Given this system model, novel closed-form expressions are presented in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime for the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) and the secrecy outage probability (SOP). We further improve the secrecy performance of the system by optimizing the associated hardware design. The results reveal that by beneficially distributing the tolerable hardware imperfections across the transmission and reception radio-frequency (RF) front ends of each node, the system’s secrecy rate may be improved. The engineering insight is that equally sharing the total imperfections at the relay between the transmitter and the receiver provides the best secrecy performance. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed OPA together with the most appropriate hardware design significantly increases the secrecy rate.

Physical-layer key generation (PLKG) can significantly enhance the security of classic encryption schemes by efficiently providing secret keys in resource-limited network like the Internet of Things (IoT). However, reaching a high key generation rate (KGR) is challenging in applications like smart home or remote area sensing with quasi-static channels. Recently, exploiting reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to induce randomness in quasi-static wireless channels has received significant research interest. However, the inherent spatial correlation among the RIS elements is rarely studied, which can alter the optimum physical-layer key generation (PLKG) approach in terms of KGR and randomness in the key sequence. Specifically, for the first time, in this contribution, we take into account a spatially correlated RIS, which intends to enhance the KGR in a quasi-static medium. Novel closed-form analytical expressions for KGR are derived for the two cases of random phase shift (RPS) and our proposed equal phase shift (EPS) in the RIS elements. We also analyze the correlation between the channel samples to ensure the randomness of the generated secret key sequence. It is shown that the EPS scheme can effectively exploit the inherent spatial correlation between the RIS elements and it leads to a higher KGR compared to the widely used RPS strategy. We further formulate an optimization problem in which we determine the optimal portion of time dedicated to direct and indirect channel estimation, which has never been addressed in previous studies. We show the accuracy and the fast convergence of our sequential convex programming (SCP)-based algorithm and discuss the various parameters affecting spatially correlated RIS-assisted PLKG.

In next-generation wireless systems ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) have to be realized in support of the Internet-of-things (IoT). However, this is quite a challenge in the face of channel estimation errors (CEEs) and hardware imperfections (HWIs). Hence, we consider a variety of realistic HWIs as well as CEEs and evaluate the average block error rate (BLER) of a short-packet based cooperative amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying network. Our simulation and analytical results reveal that as expected, both the CEEs and HWIs lead to a substantial average BLER degradation. In particular, CEEs lead to a BLER floor, which is further aggravated by the increase in HWIs. A high level of HWIs results in a BLER tending to one, regardless of the transmit power. Furthermore, it is shown that the CEEs and HWIs gravely degrade the energy efficiency of the idealized perfect scenario. This observation shows that both the CEEs and HWIs constitute critical issues in the design of energy efficient communication systems. However, through solving the optimization problems formulated, we conceived several schemes for mitigating the degradations imposed by the CEEs and HWIs, e.g., in our adaptive-duration training scheme the total CEE of the hops is shared in line with the current status of the two channels. Our simulation results show that this scheme significantly reduces the BLER and mitigates the deleterious effects of CEE.