Secrecy Energy Efficiency for MIMO Single- and Multi-Cell Downlink Transmission With Confidential Messages

This work develops a beamforming framework for energy efficiency optimization in MIMO multi-user systems with confidentiality constraints. Two channel models are considered, namely, a broadcast channel with confidential messages (corresponding to single-cell downlink) and an interference channel with confidential messages (corresponding to multi-cell downlink), in which multiple messages are transmitted, and it must be ensured that only the intended receiver is able to perform data decoding, thus treating non-intended receivers as potential eavesdroppers. In this multi-user scenario, the new metric global secrecy energy efficiency is introduced and optimized. Moreover, the coupling among the secrecy energy efficiencies of different users is analyzed by providing an efficient way of computing the system secrecy energy efficiency Pareto boundary. Both contributions are achieved by developing an optimization framework which suitably combines fractional programming theory and sequential optimization theory. The proposed framework is provably convergent, enjoys affordable complexity, and fulfills first-order optimality properties. Finally, the closed form conditions are provided to support smart user selection algorithms for downlink transmission.