Novel Secret-Key-Assisted Schemes for Secure MISOME-OFDM Systems

Abstract: We propose a new secure transmission scheme for uplink multiple-input single-output (MISO) orthogonal-frequency multiplexing (OFDM) systems in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. Our proposed scheme utilizes the sub-channels orthogonality of OFDM systems to simultaneously transmit data and secret key symbols. The base station, Bob, shares secret key symbols with the legitimate user, Alice, using wiretap coding over a portion of the sub-channels. Concurrently, Alice uses the accumulated secret keys in her secret-key queue to encrypt data symbols using a one time pad (OTP) cipher and transmits them to Bob over the remaining sub-channels. if Alice did not accumulate sufficient keys in her secret-key queue, she employs wiretap coding to secure her data transmissions. We propose fixed and dynamic sub-channel allocation schemes to divide the sub-channels between data and secret keys. We derive the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the secure throughput for the proposed scheme. We quantify the system's security under practical non-Gaussian transmissions where discrete signal constellation points are transmitted by the legitimate source nodes. Numerical results validate our theoretical findings and quantify the impact of different system design parameters.