Optimal Transmit Antenna Selection for Massive MIMO Wiretap Channels

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Saba Asaad - , University of Tehran (Author)
  • Ali Bereyhi - , Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Author)
  • Amir Masoud Rabiei - , University of Tehran (Author)
  • Ralf R. Muller - , Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Author)
  • Rafael F. Schaefer - , Technical University of Berlin (Author)

Abstract

In this paper, we study the impacts of transmit antenna selection on the secrecy performance of massive MIMO systems. We consider a wiretap setting in which a fixed number of transmit antennas are selected and then confidential messages are transmitted over them to a multi-antenna legitimate receiver while being overheard by a multi-antenna eavesdropper. For this setup, we derive an accurate approximation of the instantaneous secrecy rate. Using this approximation, it is shown that in some wiretap settings under antenna selection the growth in the number of active antennas enhances the secrecy performance of the system up to some optimal number and degrades it when this optimal number is surpassed. This observation demonstrates that antenna selection in some massive MIMO settings not only reduces the RF-complexity, but also enhances the secrecy performance. We then consider various scenarios and derive the optimal number of active antennas analytically using our large-system approximation. Numerical investigations show an accurate match between simulations and the analytic results.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)817-828
Number of pages12
JournalIEEE journal on selected areas in communications
Volume36
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2018
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-1702-9075/work/165878342

Keywords

Keywords

  • Massive MIMO wiretap channel, physical layer security, transmit antenna selection