Optimization or Alignment: Secure Primary Transmission Assisted by Secondary Networks

Security is a challenging issue for cognitive radio (CR) to be used in future 5G mobile systems. Conventionally, interference will degrade the performance of a primary user (PU) when the spectrum is shared with secondary users (SUs). However, when properly designed, SUs can serve as friendly jammers to guarantee the secure transmission of PU. Thus, in this paper, we propose two schemes to improve the sum rate of SUs while guaranteeing the secrecy rate of PU. In the first scheme, the secondary transceivers are jointly designed to maximize their sum rate while satisfying a threshold on the PU's secrecy rate. Due to the non-convex nature, it is first converted into a convex one and then, an alternating optimization algorithm based on the second-order cone programming is proposed to solve it. In the second scheme, the principle of interference alignment is employed to eliminate interference from PU and other SUs at each secondary receiver, and the interference from SUs is zero-forced at the primary receiver. Thus, interference-free transmission can be performed by the legitimate CR network, with eavesdropping towards PU disrupted by SUs. The key features and performances of the two proposed schemes are also compared. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the two proposed schemes for secure CR networks.