On Physical Layer Security: Weighted Fractional Fourier Transform Based User Cooperation

In this paper, we propose a novel user cooperation scheme based on weighted fractional Fourier transform (WFRFT), to enhance the physical (PHY) layer security of wireless transmissions against eavesdropping. Specifically, instead of dissipating additional transmission power for friendly jamming, by leveraging the features of WFRFT, the information bearing signal of cooperators can create an identical artificial noise effect at the eavesdropper while causing no performance degradation on the legitimate receiver. Furthermore, to form the cooperation set in an autonomous and distributed manner, we model WFRFT-based PHY-layer security cooperation problem as a coalitional game with non-transferable utility. A distributed merge-and-split algorithm is devised to facilitate the autonomous coalition formation to maximize the security capacity while accounting for the cooperation cost in terms of power consumption. We analyze the stability of the proposed algorithm and also investigate how the network topology efficiently adapts to the mobility of intermediate nodes. Simulation results demonstrate that the WFRFT-based user cooperation scheme leads to a significant performance advantage, in terms of secrecy ergodic capacity, compared with the conventional security-oriented user cooperation schemes, such as relay-jamming and cluster-beamforming.