Secrecy analysis of multiuser downlink wiretap networks with opportunistic scheduling

Abstract

This paper investigates physical layer security with opportunistic scheduling in a downlink wireless network with multiple asymmetrically located legitimate users (LUs) and eavesdroppers. We employ the cumulative distribution function (CDF)-based scheduling policy to guarantee fairness among LUs in arbitrary fading channels while exploiting multiuser diversity. Under this scheduling framework, the closed-form expressions for the secrecy throughput and secrecy outage probability are derived, illustrating the interplay among the system parameters such as the channel statistics and the number of LUs and eavesdroppers. In order to investigate the exploited multiuser diversity gain, the normalized secrecy throughput, i.e., the secrecy throughput for a given LU normalized by the probability of it being selected, is analyzed and is proved to achieve a double-logarithmic growth when the number of LUs in the network increases to infinity. In addition, we derive the secrecy diversity order through an asymptotic analysis of intercept probability and prove that the secrecy diversity order is equal to the number of LUs in the system, implying that full diversity is achieved by the CDF-based scheduling.