Improving physical layer security for wireless ad hoc networks via full-duplex receiver jamming

Abstract

This paper studies physical layer security in a wireless ad hoc network with numerous legitimate transmitter-receiver pairs and passive eavesdroppers. A hybrid full-/half-duplex receiver deployment strategy is proposed to secure legitimate transmissions, by letting a fraction of legitimate receivers work in the full-duplex (FD) mode sending jamming signals to confuse eavesdroppers upon their own information receptions, and other receivers work in the half-duplex mode just receiving desired signals. This paper aims to properly choose the fraction of the FD receivers to enhance network security. Tractable expressions for the connection outage probability and the secrecy outage probability of a typical legitimate link are first derived, based on which the network-wide secrecy throughput is maximized. Some insights into the optimal fraction are further developed. It is concluded that the fraction of the FD receivers triggers a non-trivial trade-off between reliability and secrecy, and the optimal fraction significantly improves the network security performance.