On Linear Precoding for the Two-User MISO Broadcast Channel With Confidential Messages and Per-Antenna Constraints

We study the design of linear precoders for secure transmission in the two-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel with confidential messages (BC-CM). The transmitter has multiple antennas, and each user has a single receive antenna. Two independent messages are simultaneously transmitted, one intended for each user, and each message should be kept confidential from the other user. Assuming real-valued transmitted signals, we design the linear precoders subject to total and per-antenna average power constraints, and also subject to amplitude constraints. In both cases, we tackle the design problem via weighted secrecy sum rate maximization. The resulting problem, however, involves a fractional objective, making it nonconvex and difficult to solve. Nevertheless, we show that this difficult problem can be transformed into a more tractable problem, for which a solution can be obtained by an iterative search algorithm. In addition, we characterize a condition under which the obtained solution is guaranteed to be optimal. Furthermore, we show that the problem formulation and solution approach can be easily extended to handle the robust version of the design problem with uncertain channel information. We provide numerical examples to demonstrate the performance of the proposed precoder in terms of the achievable secrecy rate regions subject to the aforementioned constraints. We also demonstrate the performance of the robust precoder under different channel uncertainty levels.