Precoding-Aided Spatial Modulation for the Wiretap Channel with Relay Selection and Cooperative Jamming

We propose in this paper a physical-layer security (PLS) scheme for dual-hop cooperative networks in an effort to enhance the communications secrecy. The underlying model comprises a transmitting node (Alice), a legitimate node (Bob), and an eavesdropper (Eve). It is assumed that there is no direct link between Alice and Bob, and the communication between them is done through trusted relays over two phases. In the first phase, precoding-aided spatial modulation (PSM) is employed, owing to its low interception probability, while simultaneously transmitting a jamming signal from Bob. In the second phase, the selected relay detects and transmits the intended signal, whereas the remaining relays transmit the jamming signal received from Bob. We analyze the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of the ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC), the secrecy outage probability (SOP), and the bit error rate (BER) at Bob and Eve. We obtain closed-form expressions for the ESC and SOP and we derive very tight upper-bounds for the BER. We also optimize the performance with respect to the power allocation among the participating relays in the second phase. We provide examples with numerical and simulation results through which we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.