Secure Degrees of Freedom of MIMO Rayleigh Block Fading Wiretap Channels With No CSI Anywhere

We consider the block Rayleigh fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel with no prior channel state information (CSI) available at any of the terminals. The channel gains remain constant within a coherence interval of T symbols, and then change to another independent realization in the next coherence interval. The transmitter, the legitimate receiver, and the eavesdropper have n
_t
, n
_r
, and ne antennas, respectively. We determine the exact secure degrees of freedom (s.d.o.f.) of this system when T ≥ 2min(n
_t
,n
_r
). We show that, in this case, the s.d.o.f. is exactly equal to (min(n
_t
,n
_r
)-n
_e
)
⁺
(T -min(n
_t
,n
_r
))/T. The first term in this expression can be interpreted as the eavesdropper with ne antennas taking away ne antennas from both the transmitter and the legitimate receiver. The second term can be interpreted as a fraction of the s.d.o.f. being lost due to the lack of CSI at the legitimate receiver. In particular, the fraction loss, min(n
_t
,n
_r
)/T, can be interpreted as the fraction of channel uses dedicated to training the legitimate receiver for it to learn its own CSI. We prove that this s.d.o.f. can be achieved by employing a constant norm channel input, which can be viewed as a generalization of discrete signalling to multiple dimensions.