On Ergodic Secrecy Capacity for Gaussian MISO Wiretap Channels

1 A Gaussian multiple-input single-output (MISO) wiretap channel model is considered, where there exists a transmitter equipped with multiple antennas, a legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper each equipped with a single antenna. We study the problem of finding the optimal input covariance that achieves ergodic secrecy capacity subject to a power constraint where only statistical information about the eavesdropper channel is available at the transmitter. This is a non-convex optimization problem that is in general difficult to solve. Existing results address the case in which the eavesdropper or/and legitimate channels have independent and identically distributed Gaussian entries with zero-mean and unit-variance, i.e., the channels have trivial covariances. This paper addresses the general case where eavesdropper and legitimate channels have nontrivial covariances. A set of equations describing the optimal input covariance matrix are proposed along with an algorithm to obtain the solution. Based on this framework, we show that when full information on the legitimate channel is available to the transmitter, the optimal input covariance has always rank one. We also show that when only statistical information on the legitimate channel is available to the transmitter, the legitimate channel has some general non-trivial covariance, and the eavesdropper channel has trivial covariance, the optimal input covariance has the same eigenvectors as the legitimate channel covariance. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the algorithm. Index Terms Ergodic secrecy capacity, MISO wiretap channel, beamforming. Work supported by the Office of Naval Research under grant ONR-N-00010710500 and the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-0905425. March 12, 2010 DRAFT