Secrecy diversity in MISOME wiretap channels

The use of multiple-antenna arrays can leverage the physical-layer security of wireless systems. It is therefore important to characterize such systems in a realistic situation where we can apply the so-called artificial-noise solution in multiple-antenna systems to enhance the communication confidentiality by only exploiting a fading nature of wireless environments. In this paper, we consider secure communication over a multiple-input single-output Rayleigh-fading channel in the presence of a multiple-antenna eavesdropper - referred to as a multiple-input single-output multiple-eavesdropper (MISOME) wiretap channel. Specifically, secure beamforming with artificial noise is treated when the transmitter has access to full channel state information (CSI) of a legitimate channel but only channel distribution information of an eavesdropper channel. We first put forth a new notion of the symbol error probability (SEP) of confidential information - called the δ-secrecy SEP - to connect the reliability and confidentiality of the legitimate communication. We then quantify the diversity impact of secure beamforming with artificial noise on the δ-secrecy SEP in the MISOME wiretap channel and show that the artificial-noise strategy preserves the secrecy diversity of order n _t - n_e for n_t transmit and n_e eavesdropper antennas.