Artificial-noise-aided coordinated secure transmission design in multi-cell multi-antenna networks with limited feedback

Abstract

In this paper, we consider secure communications in a multi-cell downlink multi-antenna system, where each multi-antenna base station (BS) sends confidential messages to one intended legitimate user (LU) with a passive multi-antenna eavesdropper trying to intercept the messages in this cell. To enhance the secure communications of the cell-edge users, the multiple BSs employ coordinated beamforming with the aid of artificial-noise (AN) beamforming. We conduct a mathematically rigorous secrecy performance analysis of the considered system and obtain new accurate closed-form expressions of a lower bound on the ergodic rate of each LU and an upper bound of the ergodic rate of each eavesdropper without assuming asymptotes for any system parameter (except for the 'worst-case' scenario with zero noise power). Then, a lower bound on the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) of each LU follows. Based on the derived analytical results, we propose a low-complexity algorithm to optimize the channel sate information (CSI) feedback bits allocation for the channels of target signal link and inter-cell interference links. Furthermore, we develop explicit sufficient conditions on the set of system parameters under which there are at least two BSs to coordinated secure transmission. Through both theoretical analysis and numerical results, we can verify that the obtained analytical lower bound on ESR of each LU as a function of the set of power allocation coefficients is generally neither convex nor concave. Thus, we propose to employ some numerical method to find a sub-optimal power allocation solution. Finally, numerical results are also provided to validate our theoretical results and the proposed feedback bits and power allocation methods.