Impact of hardware impairments on secrecy performance of multi-hop relay networks in presence of multiple eavesdroppers

This paper investigates impact of hardware impairments on the probability of Non-zero Secrecy Capacity (NSC) of multi-hop relay networks. In the considered protocol, multiple eavesdroppers attempt to overhear the data that is relayed from a source to a destination via multiple intermediate relay nodes. To enhance the secrecy performance, the multi-hop randomize-and-forward (RF) strategy is used to confuse the eavesdroppers. We derive exact expressions of the NSC probability in integral forms over Rayleigh fading channels. Moreover, these formulas are then expressed by sums of infinite series of exponential functions and exponential integral functions. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are performed to verify our derivations.