Physical Layer Security by Interleaving and Diversity: Impact of Imperfect Channel State Information

In recent years, physical layer security (PLS) has emerged as a promising concept to complement cryptography solutions. Many PLS schemes require perfect knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. However, in practical cases, CSI is often imperfect due to channel estimation errors, noisy feedback channels and outdated CSI. In this paper, we study the impact of imperfect CSI on an adaptive PLS scheme that combines diversity with interleaving to provide security. Particularly, we derive the secrecy capacity expressions for the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper's channels under imperfect CSI conditions. Numerical and theoretical simulations for secrecy capacity and bit error rate (BER) are carried out for the frequency-selective Rayleigh fading wiretap channel model. The results reveal the negative impact of imperfect CSI on the secrecy and BER performance of the single input single output (SISO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. The analysis is done under both frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) modes.