Physical layer security in multi-cell MISO downlinks with incomplete CSI - A unified secrecy performance analysis

In this paper, we consider a multi-cell MISO downlink, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) sends messages to its intended user, while a passive eavesdropper tries to intercept the information in each cell. Physical layer security is employed in order to guarantee information security. Due to incomplete channel state information (CSI) at BSs, residue inter-cell interference exists even with coordinated beamforming, which exerts a great impact on the secrecy performance. In this paper, we conduct a unified performance analysis for physical layer security with incomplete CSI, and derives closed-form expressions of ergodic secrecy rate, secrecy outage probability, and interception probability, considering CSI estimation accuracy, transmit signal to noise ratio (SNR), and channel condition. We reveal some insights on the secrecy performance through asymptotic analysis. Furthermore, based on the derived theoretical results, we propose a CSI exchange amount allocation scheme. Finally, the simulations validate our theoretical claims.