Relay Selection, Eavesdropper-Aware Relaying, PHY-Secrecy Capacity Analysis of Cooperative Wireless System over Hybrid Fading Channels

Abstract

Physical layer (PHY) security (PLS) exploits the randomness of wireless fading channels and offers better secrecy capacity. Cooperative and eavesdropper-aware relays are useful in establishing reliable and energy-efficient communication links between the source transmitter and destination receiver and enhancing PHY secrecy. We consider a four-node, two-hop cooperative PHY-security model with one eavesdropper node. For it, we propose relay selection probabilistically and relaying in the presence of hybrid fading channels. We derive closed-form expressions for probabilities with which the regenerative relay is selected. Further, we develop an analysis of PHY-secrecy capacity and gain useful insights. We evaluate and validate the performance of the proposed strategy and present different numerical results. The proposed model with the relay selection and energy-efficient relaying strategy is a useful potential benchmark for more complex power-adaptive cooperative PHY-secure systems and networks.