Secure wireless multicasting through multi-cellular MIMO networks with linear equalization

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a confidential communication through multi-cellular co-located multiple-input multiple-output (C-MIMO) and distributed MIMO (D-MIMO) networks in the presence of an eavesdropper. The base station (BS) of each cell sends a common stream of information to a group of receivers within the cell and an eavesdropper observes their communications. We are interested to protect these information from eavesdropping, so that no eavesdropper can decode any information. Moreover, we investigate the performance of maximal ratio combining (MRC), zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) detectors in enhancing security in multi-cellular MIMO networks considering their presence at the receivers and eavesdropper. Our results show that although the D-MIMO system is more sensitive to interference than C-MIMO system but in the high interference region, the effect of interference on both the MIMO models are almost same. The increase in transmit antennas enhances security and the MRC and MMSE detectors perform better than the ZF detector when the number of transmit antennas is very small.