Secure Communication Based on Reliability-Based Hybrid ARQ and LDPC Codes

This paper designs a re-transmission strategy to intensify the security of communication over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) wire-tap channel. In this scheme, irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes work with reliability-based hybrid automatic repeat-request (RB-HARQ). For irregular LDPC codes, the variable nodes have different degrees, which means miscellaneous protection for the nodes. In RB-HARQ protocol, the legitimate receiver calls for re-transmissions including the most unreliable bits at decoder's outputting. The bits' reliability can be evaluated by the average magnitude of a posteriori probability log-likelihood ratios (APP LLRs). Specifically, this scheme utilizes the bit-error rate (BER) to assess the secrecy performance. Besides, the paper gives close analyses of BER through theoretical arguments and simulations. Results of numerical example demonstrate that RB-HARQ protocol with irregular LDPC codes can hugely reinforce the security performance of the communication system.