Cooperative Interference Engineering for Network Secrecy

The ability to exchange secret information, to guarantee privacy, and to provide authenticity forms the basis for trust in today's information society. In contrast to communications via wires, the use of a wireless medium is highly susceptible to eavesdropping due to its broadcast nature. To overcome this challenge, it is imperative to exploit the intrinsic properties of the wireless propagation medium. A key observation for exploiting such properties is that the broadcast nature generates contrasting effects: it makes the secrecy information from a certain legitimate transmitter vulnerable to malicious interception, but at the same time, it enables other legitimate partners to impede the capability of eavesdropping receivers via interference. However, the concurrent effect of interference on both eavesdropping receivers and legitimate receivers has not been thoroughly investigated. This calls for research on carefully engineering the network interference to fully harness its potential for wireless secrecy.

This project aims at developing cooperative interference engineering strategies that coordinate the transmission and reception of multiple legitimate partners to generate desirable aggregate interference for wireless secrecy protection. New techniques will be designed to impede the eavesdropper's capability while having little effect on the legitimate receivers. Specifically, this research aims to: (1) characterize the fundamental limit of cooperative interference engineering for controlling the aggregate interference injected into a wireless network; (2) set up a theoretical foundation for the design of cooperative interference engineering techniques; and (3) evaluate the performance of cooperative interference engineering techniques and their benefits to network secrecy. The proposed research combines various theories in communication, information, algebraic geometry, and stochastic geometry, serving as a foundation for the design of wireless networks with a new level of secrecy protection.