QoS-aware stochastic spatial PLS model for analysing secrecy performance under eavesdropping and jamming

Abstract

Securing wireless communication, being inherently vulnerable to eavesdropping and jamming attacks, becomes more challenging in resource-constrained networks such as internet-of-things. Towards this, physical layer security (PLS) has gained significant attention due to its low complexity. The authors address the issue of random inter-node distances in secrecy analysis and develop a comprehensive quality-of-service (QoS) aware PLS framework for the analysis of both eavesdropping and jamming capabilities of the attacker. The proposed solution covers the spatially stochastic deployment of nodes. The secrecy performance is characterised against both attacks using inter-node distance-based probabilistic distribution functions. The model takes into account the practical limits arising out of underlying QoS requirements, which include the maximum distance between legitimate users driven by transmit power and receiver sensitivity. A novel concept of eavesdropping zone is introduced, and the relative impact of jamming power is investigated. Closed-form expressions for asymptotic secrecy outage probability are derived offering insights into the design of optimal system parameters for desired security level against the attacker's capability of both attacks. The analytical framework, validated by numerical results, establishes that the proposed solution offers a potentially accurate characterisation of the PLS performance and key design perspective from point-of-view of both legitimate user and attacker.