Physical Layer Security with Untrusted Relays in Wireless Cooperative Networks

We investigate the problem of physical layer security in a wireless cooperative network, where communication is assisted by the untrusted relay. It is impossible for the amplify-and-forward protocol to convey a confidential message from the source to the destination without the help of other nodes, where only an untrusted relay is available. Nonetheless, our results are quite optimistic when there are multiple untrusted relays, which amplify the received signal and forward it to the destination. We treat the untrusted relay nodes as eavesdroppers, despite the fact that they are the enablers of communication. First of all, we prove that a positive secrecy rate can always be ensured regardless of the transmit power and the channel condition of the untrusted relays, as long as there exists a sufficient number of untrusted relays. Furthermore, a closed-form solution to the upper bound of secrecy rate is obtained. Finally, a practical approach is proposed to acquire a positive secrecy rate, which brings nearly no extra communication cost. Simulations are conducted to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach.