Null‐space beamforming strategy for secrecy rate balancing of two‐way MIMO relay networks

Abstract

Abstract Here, the issue of physical layer security in a two‐way multi‐antenna relay network) is studied. In such a network, two multi‐antenna transceivers attempt to exchange their secret messages via a multi‐antenna relay node in the presence of an eavesdropper. Throughout the first hop, two sources send their messages to the relay node, while an eavesdropper tries to overhear these messages. Then, in the second hop, the relay attempts to send its signal in the null‐space direction of relay‐to‐eavesdropper channel to prevent eavesdropping. The main goal is to obtain effective receive and transmit beamforming vectors at transceivers as well as the beamforming matrix at the relay node to address the secrecy rate balancing problem. The underlying problem is not convex in general. To overcome this issue, the original problem is divided into three subproblems. In the first subproblem the beamforming design at the relay is optimized while in the second subproblem the receive beamforming in a closed form solution is obtained. Finally, in the last subproblem the transmit beamforming is solved using the semi‐definite relaxation and Taylor series expansion. Numerical results represent the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to the previous works in the literature.

Keywords

• MIMO communication
• relay networks (telecommunication)
• telecommunication security