A secure downlink NOMA scheme against unknown internal eavesdroppers

Abstract

Enhancing security level against potential internal eavesdroppers in Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) has been reported as a serious challenge. In this letter, a novel secure NOMA scheme based on physical-layer security concepts is proposed. The proposed scheme exploits the random and independent channel characteristics to induce a different phase shift in each user's symbol. Based on the assumption that the instantaneous channel phase between a user and the base station is available only at both ends, other users will not be able to decode the right symbol. Analytical and simulation average bit error rate performance results demonstrate the ability of the proposed scheme to degrade the performance at the eavesdropper without affecting the performance at other legitimate users and guarantee data confidentiality of each user.