Spectrum leasing via cooperation for enhanced physical-layer secrecy

Spectrum leasing via cooperation refers to the possibility for primary users to lease part of the spectral resources to secondary users in exchange for cooperation. This paper proposes a novel implementation of this concept in which secondary cooperation aims at improving the secrecy of the primary link. In particular, a secondary transmission with multiple antennas creates interference on both primary and eavesdropping receivers but an appropriately designed beamformer may impair more the eavesdropper's reception and thus enhance primary secrecy. Design of the secondary beamformer that maximizes the primary secrecy rate while guaranteeing a minimal secondary rate is studied. It is proved that the problem can be solved in a domain that includes only two real numbers irrespective of the number of antennas. Numerical results show that the proposed spectrum leasing strategy increases the primary secrecy rate compared to the case of no spectrum leasing for a wide range of secondary minimum rate constraints.