Relay Placement for Physical Layer Security: A Secure Connection Perspective

TLDR

The study investigates secure connections in cooperative wireless networks using decode‑and‑forward and randomize‑and‑forward relay strategies. It analyzes both a four‑node source–relay–destination–eavesdropper topology and a cellular network scenario. Optimal power allocation for DF is derived, RF consistently outperforms DF, relay placement markedly enhances secure connectivity—particularly at the cell edge—and the benefit increases with greater path loss.

Abstract

This work studies the problem of secure connection in cooperative wireless communication with two relay strategies, decode-and-forward (DF) and randomize-and-forward (RF). The four-node scenario and cellular scenario are considered. For the typical four-node (source, destination, relay, and eavesdropper) scenario, we derive the optimal power allocation for the DF strategy and find that the RF strategy is always better than the DF to enhance secure connection. In cellular networks, we show that without relay, it is difficult to establish secure connections from the base station to the cell edge users. The effect of relay placement for the cell edge users is demonstrated by simulation. For both scenarios, we find that the benefit of relay transmission increases when path loss becomes severer.