Cooperation for secrecy in presence of an active eavesdropper: A game-theoretic analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a four single-antenna node network, constituted of a transmitter, a receiver, a cooperative node and a wiretapper. The wiretapper has the ability to eavesdrop the communication or disrupt the transmission by jamming. This results in both cases in the decrease of the secrecy rate. The cooperative node on the other hand aims to improve secrecy by either relaying or jamming. We investigate the secrecy performance of the decode-and-forward and cooperative jamming strategies against this kind of adversary. To model the interaction between the helper and the wiretapper, we define an extensive form game, for which we derive the pure and mixed strategies equilibria. Finally, we compare the performance of the schemes and we analyze the equilibrium outcomes through simulation results.