Detecting passive eavesdroppers in the MIMO wiretap channel

Abstract

The MIMO wiretap channel comprises a passive eavesdropper that attempts to intercept communications between an authorized transmitter-receiver pair, with each node being equipped with multiple antennas. In a dynamic network, it is imperative that the presence of a passive eavesdropper be determined before the transmitter can deploy robust secrecy-encoding schemes as a countermeasure. This is a difficult task in general, since by definition the eavesdropper is passive and never transmits. In this work we adopt a method that allows the legitimate nodes to detect the passive eavesdropper from the local oscillator power that is inadvertently leaked from its RF front end. We examine the performance of non-coherent energy detection as well as optimal coherent detection schemes. We then show how the proposed detectors allow the legitimate nodes to increase the MIMO secrecy rate of the channel.