On the Secrecy Performance of Random VLC Networks With Imperfect CSI and Protected Zone

This article investigates the physical-layer security for a random indoor visible light communication (VLC) network with imperfect channel state information (CSI) and a protected zone. The VLC network consists of three nodes, i.e., a transmitter (Alice), a legitimate receiver (Bob), and an eavesdropper (Eve). Alice is fixed in the center of the ceiling, and the emitted signal at Alice satisfies the nonnegativity and the dimmable average optical intensity constraint. Bob and Eve are randomly deployed on the receiver plane. By employing the protected zone and considering the imperfect CSI, the stochastic characteristics of the channel gains for both the main and the eavesdropping channels is first analyzed. After that, the closed-form expressions of the average secrecy capacity and the lower bound of secrecy outage probability are derived, respectively. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are provided to verify the accuracy of the derived theoretical expressions. Moreover, the impacts of the nominal optical intensity, the dimming target, the protected zone, and the imperfect CSI on secrecy performance are discussed, respectively.