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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIFS.2019.2955792, IEEE
Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Secure Transmission in HARQ-Assisted
Non-orthogonal Multiple Access Networks
Zhongwu Xiang, Weiwei Yang, Gaofeng Pan, Yueming Cai, Yi Song, and Yulong Zou
Abstract—This paper investigates the secure transmission
in hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ)-assisted non-
orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks, where a security-
required (SR) user is paired with an opportunity-served (OS)
user to perform NOMA. Different from the previous works
where NOMA and HARQ are separately considered for secure
transmissions, in this paper, both NOMA and HARQ are utilized
to enhance the security of the SR user. We derive the closed-
form expressions for connection outage probability (COP), se-
crecy outage probability (SOP), reliable and secure transmission
probability (RSP) and effective secrecy throughput (EST) of
the SR user in both maximum ratio combining (MRC) and
selection combining (SC) schemes. The security-reliability trade-
off (SRT) results of the SR user in both MRC and SC schemes are
also provided. Analysis and simulation results show that HARQ
improves secrecy performance in MRC and SC schemes in terms
of RSP, especially in low transmit power region. Besides, since
every retransmission is utilized in the MRC scheme, it strictly
outperforms the SC scheme in terms of the SRT metric. However,
the SC scheme has the potential to achieve higher EST than the
MRC scheme by optimizing the transmit power or the power
allocation factor. Significantly, the quality of service (QoS) of the
OS user can be guaranteed by pairing an SR user who is far
away from the transmitter and the secrecy performance of the
SR user can be enhanced by pairing an OS user.
Index Terms—HARQ-assisted NOMA networks, physical layer
security, security-reliability trade-off, reliable and secure trans-
mission probability, effective secrecy throughput.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A. Backgrounds
NTERNET of Things (IoT) has attracted considerable
I research attention in recent years. It is expected that large
scale deployed IoT devices will be connected to networks,
which are far beyond the number of existing devices and will
impose a heavy burden on the limited radio resources [2]. Non-
orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), identified as a promising
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (no. 61771487 and no. 61671474). (Corresponding author: Weiwei
Yang.) Part of the work was presented at the IEEE 2nd International Confer-
ence on Electronic Information and Communication Technology (ICEICT),
Harbin, China, January, 2019 [1].
Zhongwu Xiang, Weiwei Yang and Yueming Cai are with the
Army Engineering University of PLA, 210007, Nanjing, China (e-mail:
xzwnoon@live.com; wwyang1981@163.com; caiym@vip.sina.com).
Gaofeng Pan is with the School of Information and Electronic-
s, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China. (e-mail:
Gaofeng.Pan.CN@ieee.org).
Yi Song is with the Army Engineering University of PLA, 210007, Nanjing,
China, and also with Huaiyin Normal University, 223001, Huaian, China (e-
mail: hysongyi@163.com).
Yulong Zou is with the School of Telecommunications and Information
Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing,
China (e-mail: yulong.zou@njupt.edu.cn).
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technique for realizing ubiquitous connectivity [3], has been
employed in many IoT applications [4], [5]. In addition, hy-
brid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocol exploits time
diversity to improve the reliability of communication networks
with one-bit feedback. It is suitable for IoT networks which
generally consist of the devices with constrained hardware and
signal processing capabilities, and limited feedback [6], [7].
Power-domain NOMA has been proposed for 3GPP Long
Term Evolution (LTE) initiative [8], which explores the pow-
er domain to multiplex the non-orthogonal communication
resources. Multiple users can share the same resource slot
by applying successive interference cancellation (SIC) [9].
According to SIC, the signals with different power levels are
transmitted by superposition coding. The signal with stronger
power should be demodulated first, then re-modulate and sub-
tract this signal from the superposition signals, and finally, the
signal with weaker power can be demodulated. The key to SIC
is correctly demodulating the signal with stronger power. Once
the strong signal cannot be demodulated correctly, the error
propagation will exert a serious effect on the following de-
modulation [10], [11]. Fortunately, HARQ provides a solution
for reliable transmission in a feedback-limited system. When
the signal cannot be demodulated correctly, the retransmission
is requested until the signal is demodulated correctly or
reaching the maximum retransmission round. Thus, combining
HARQ with NOMA, the error propagation caused by SIC
can be alleviated. It demonstrates that there exists an inher-
ent benefit when combining HARQ with NOMA. Recently,
HARQ-assisted NOMA schemes have attracted much attention
[11]–[15]. A cooperative HARQ-assisted NOMA scheme is
proposed in [11] which provides an interference-aware optimal
design to improve the system throughput. Reference [12]
proposes a NOMA scheme with truncated HARQ, which
demonstrates that the proposed system outperforms the tra-
ditional HARQ scheme. HARQ with incremental redundancy
(IR) is studied in [13] and [14], where [14] guarantees the
required outage probability in HARQ-assisted NOMA systems
by optimizing power allocation factors. Reference [15] derives
the closed-form expressions for the outage probability in the
HARQ-assisted NOMA systems and demonstrates that in the
low transmit power region, the system performance can be
efficiently improved by using HARQ.
On the other hand, many devices in IoT networks are
concerned with confidential messages, especially when they
are related to military, commercial or political affairs [16].
Due to the broadcast nature of radio propagation, wireless
communication networks are vulnerable to eavesdropping [17].
Traditionally, secure transmission is achieved by cryptographic
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Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
algorithms, where the encryption and decryption will introduce
significant computation overhead and extra system complexity.
However, physical layer security (PLS) technology exploits the
characteristics of wireless channels to ensure the security of
transmission, which can be implemented without consuming
massive communication resources [18]. Therefore, PLS has
been considered as a promising technology for secure trans-
mission [19]–[22].
B. Related Works
In NOMA networks, PLS has become a popular technique to
guarantee information security [23]. In large scale networks,
reference [24] adopts user paring strategy in single antenna
scenarios and artificial noise generating strategy in multiple-
antenna assisted scenarios to enhance the PLS performance.
In cooperative networks, both amplify-and-forward (AF) and
decode-and-forward (DF) protocols are considered in [25],
which shows the same performance can be achieved in both
AF and DF systems. In full-duplex systems, reference [26]
derives the closed-form expressions for achievable ergodic
secrecy rates in both single and multiple eavesdroppers (Eve)
wiretapping situations. Previous works have identified that
NOMA outperforms traditional orthogonal multiple access
(OMA) schemes by proper resource allocation and signal
processing. Power allocation is investigated in [27] and [28]
to improve the secrecy performance and the results show the
secrecy performance of the NOMA scheme is better than that
in the OMA schemes. Reference [29] and [30] adopt secure
beamforming to enhance the secrecy performance in NOMA
systems, which also prove that NOMA outperforms OMA
benchmark systems.
In HARQ assisted networks, many efforts have been made
to improve the PLS performance [31]–[37]. HARQ with IR
is adopted in [31], [32], where the length of the codeword is
variable in the transmissions. Secure transmission is ensured
in [31] by the introduction of dummy-message and, compared
with [32], the scheme in [31] achieves higher secrecy through-
put and lower delay. In [33] and [34], multi-bit feedback
is utilized by the transmitter to adjust the code rate. [34]
demonstrates that 4-bit feedback achieves 90% of the secrecy
capacity when the perfect channel state information (CSI)
is available. Secrecy performance of cooperative HARQ is
investigated in [35] and [36], where [35] derives the closed-
form expressions for the connection outage probability (COP)
and secrecy outage probability (SOP) to reveal some insights
into system characteristics. Reference [37] designs an HARQ-
assisted network coding scheme, where only when the receiver
obtains all of the code packets can it demodulate the original
message correctly. The retransmission is stopped when the
legitimate user receives all of the code packets, however,
Eve may not, which shows that security can be enhanced if
combining HARQ with network coding.
C. Motivations and Challenges
Nevertheless, in HARQ-assisted NOMA networks, PLS
issue has not been concerned in published works. Although
previous works have confirmed that NOMA can achieve
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better secrecy performance than OMA after proper power
allocation and signal processing, multiple transmissions caused
by HARQ increase the risk of leaking confidential messages
to Eve. How to utilize the multiple transmitted signals to
improve the secrecy performance is challenging work. Secure
transmission design in HARQ-assisted NOMA networks is
still an open issue. In addition, Eves are widely assumed to be
powerful enough to perform perfect SIC process or eliminate
any interference by multiuser detection technologies [24]–
[30]. It overestimates Eves’ capability, especially when Eve
is an untrusted user. Considering the SIC error at Eve is more
corresponding to real wiretap scenarios and more effective
strategies can be used to against eavesdropping. Furthermore,
in HARQ-assisted NOMA networks, selection combining (SC)
is adopted in [11] and maximum ratio combining (MRC) is
adopted in [12] and [15] to exploit time diversity for reliable
transmission. However, the transceiver design for secure trans-
mission in HARQ-assisted NOMA networks is waiting to be
studied.
In this paper, we provide an initial investigation on the
secure transmission in HARQ-assisted NOMA networks where
a security-required (SR) user is paired with an opportunity-
served (OS) user to perform NOMA. To reduce the leakage
of confidential messages, less power is allocated to the SR user
and SIC is adopted to eliminate the interference from the signal
intended to the OS user. In addition, SIC error is considered
both at Eve and SR user, which has not been given enough
attention by previous works. Furthermore, HARQ is adopted
at the SR user to ensure the SIC being performed successfully.
For providing further insights into the performance of different
retransmission strategies on secrecy performance, the related
MRC and SC schemes are considered at the receiver. Our
principal contributions are summarized as follows.
• A novel secure transmission strategy is designed to im-
prove the secrecy performance in HARQ-assisted NOMA
networks where both Eve and SR user adopt SIC to ex-
tract its intended messages. Considering a more practical
communication scenario, SIC error may occur at both
Eve and SR user when their channel conditions are poor.
To reduce the impact of SIC error at SR user, HARQ is
adopted to guarantee the SIC process being implemented
successfully. Furthermore, both SC and MRC schemes
are adopted at receivers for utilizing the retransmitted
signals.
• We provide a comprehensive investigation of the secrecy
performance of the SR user by deriving the closed-form
expressions for SOP, reliable and secure transmission
probability (RSP), and effective secrecy throughput (EST)
over Nakagami-m channels. Moreover, the closed-form
expressions for COP of the SR user and OS user in
the MRC and SC schemes are derived. The security-
reliability trade-off (SRT) [38], [39] results of the SR
user in the both MRC and SC schemes are also provided.
The analysis results show that HARQ improves secrecy
performance in terms of RSP, especially in a low transmit
power region.
• The results also show that the MRC schemes strictly
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Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
NACK/ACK
Transmitter Eve User n
Fig. 1. HARQ-assisted NOMA network.
outperform the SC schemes in terms of SRT metric, at
the cost of consuming more communication resources.
However, the SC schemes have the potential to achieve
higher EST than the MRC schemes by optimizing the
transmit power or the power allocation factor. In addition,
the quality of service (QoS) of the OS user can be
guaranteed by pairing an SR user who is far away
from the transmitter and the secrecy performance of the
HARQ-assisted NOMA schemes are improved by pairing
an OS user when its transmit rate is properly determined.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The HARQ-
assisted NOMA networks and secure transmission strategy are
introduced in Section II. In Section III and Section IV, we
derive a set of closed-form expressions for the COP, SOP,
RSP and EST in MRC and SC schemes, respectively. In
Section V, simulations are conducted to verify the derived
closed-form expressions and provide some insights into system
characteristics. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper.
II. N ETWORK M ODEL AND T RANSMISSION S TRATEGY
As shown in Fig. 1, we consider an HARQ-assisted NOMA
network with one-bit feedback, which consists of a transmitter
T , an SR user n, an OS user m, and a passive eavesdropper e.
For intercepting more confidential messages, possible attacks
may be carried out by eavesdropper [40], which will be left
for further research. The two legitimate users are assumed
to require different communication demands. Specifically, the
secure transmission of the SR user should be considered,
however, the OS user only considers the QoS requirement.
Users with different communication requirements widely exist
in IoT applications that serve multiple devices with distinct
communication requirements [5]. The channels between trans-
mitter and users, and the channel between transmitter and
Eve in the jth transmission are denoted as hi,j and he,j ,
respectively, where i ∈ {m, n} , j ∈ {1, 2, · · · , L} and L is
the maximum transmission round. hi,j and he,j are assumed
to experience independent block Nakagami-m fading with
2 2
path loss E[|hi,j | ] = Ωi and E[|he,j | ] = Ωe , and fading
parameters Mi (i ∈ {m, n}) and Me , respectively. In addition,
all the nodes in the network work under half-duplex mode with
a single antenna, and the AWGN powers at all users and Eve
are assumed as σ 2 . The transmission strategy is detailed as
follows.
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2
The normalized messages xm and xn , i.e., E[|xm | ] = 1
2
and E[|xn | ] = 1, are transmitted after superposition coding
where the signals with different power levels are overlapped.
xm is the signal for the user m with codeword rate Rm,t , and
xn is the signal for the user n. Based on well-known Wyner
secrecy code theorem [41], xn is coded as (Rn,t , Rs ) where
Rn,t is the codeword rate, and Rs is the secrecy rate. The jth
received signals at users can be expressed as
User m
(√ √ )
yij = hi,j P αm xm + P αn xn + ni,j , (1)
where P is the total transmit power at the transmitter, ni,j is
the AWGN at user i and αi (i ∈ {m, n}) is the power alloca-
tion factor. For reducing information leakage, the confidential
signal of user n should be hidden below the signal of user m
[42]. Consequently, more power should be allocated to user
m, i.e., αm > αn where αm + αn = 1.
The Eve keeps silent and wiretaps the messages from
transmitter passively, where the jth received signal is denoted
as
(√ √ )
yej = he,j P αm xm + P αn xn + ne,j , (2)
where ne,j is the AWGN at Eve.
In order to extract the intended messages from the over-
lapped signals, SIC is employed at user n and Eve. According
to the SIC principle, when demodulating the strong signal,
the weak signal is viewed as interference. However, when
demodulating the weak signal, the strong signal should be first
demodulated with the interference of weak signal, and then re-
modulated and subtracted from the overlapped signals. When
the channel is poor, SIC could be failed at user n. HARQ is
adopted for reducing the impact of SIC error at user n. When
user n cannot demodulate its message correctly, it sends back
a NACK to request retransmission for the same signal; other-
wise, user n sends back an ACK. Transmitter stops the trans-
mission when receiving an ACK or the number of transmission
rounds reaches L. Both legitimate users and eavesdropper
can receive multiple transmitted signals. However, benefiting
from HARQ, user n may receive its messages correctly while
Eve may not, which will enhance security. If the multiple
transmitted signals are generated from the same codebook,
MRC can be adopted at receivers. Inspired by a randomize-
and-forward relaying strategy [43], every retransmitted signal
can be generated by an independent codebook. In this scenario,
MRC cannot be applied at receivers, which can be replaced by
SC. According to the two different retransmission strategies,
two corresponding receiving strategies are designed as follows:
1) Maximum Ratio Combining: If the multiple transmitted
signals are generated from the same codebook, MRC can be
employed. According to the principle of MRC, the signals
from multiple transmissions are combined by combining co-
efficients wj (j ∈ {1, 2, · · · l}) where l ≤ L is the number of
practical transmissions. The combined signal can be expressed
as
∑
l (√ √ ) ∑l
yl,k = hk,j wj P αm xm + P αn xn + nk,j wj , (3)
j=1 j=1
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Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

where k ∈ {m, n, e}. When network node k demodulates the transfer factor δ [10], [11]. When Eve eavesdrops the message
message of user m, the SINR can be written as of user n, the SINR can be written as
 2
∑  ∑
l
 l  |he,j |
2
P αm  wj hk,j  P αn
j=1  O j=1
γl,k→m (w1 , · · · wl ) =  2 . (4) γl,e→n = . (9)
∑  ∑
l
2
 l  ∑l
2 δP αm |he,j | + σ2
P αn  w h  + σ2 |wj |
j=1 j k,j  j=1
j=1

Obviously, δ = 0, when Eve correctly demodulates the

According to MRC principle, setting wj = hH
k,j and substitut- message of user m.
ing it into (4), we can obtain
2) Selection Combining: If the multiple transmitted signals
∑
l
2 are generated from different codebooks, SC is adopted at
P αm |hk,j |
j=1 receivers. Comparing with MRC, SC is easier to be imple-
O
γl,k→m = . (5) mented, which selects the signal with the best quality from l
∑
l
2
P αn |hk,j | + σ 2 transmissions to demodulate the intended message. When user
j=1 m demodulates its intended message, the SINR is given by
Observing (5), due to the interrelated interference among the { }
2
signals, the expression of SINR in NOMA scheme after MRC P αm max |hm,j |
j={1,··· ,l}
is much different from that in the traditional OMA scheme. S
γl,m→m = { } . (10)
2
It is also different from the NOMA scheme in [15] where the P αn max |hm,j | + σ 2
j={1,··· ,l}
interference among the signals is assumed to be independent.
The similar results can be seen in [27] equation (4) where the When user n demodulates the message of user m, the SINR
maximal ratio transmission (MRT) scheme is adopted. can be written as
After MRC, user m detects its intended message by treating { }
2
the signal intended to user n as interference, and the SINR can P αm max |hn,j |
be expressed as j={1,··· ,l}
S
γl,n→m = { } . (11)
2
∑
l P αn max |hn,j | + σ 2
2
P αm |hm,j | j={1,··· ,l}

O j=1
γl,m→m = . (6) After user n eliminating the interference from user m, the
∑
l
2
P αn |hm,j | + σ 2 SNR of user n is expressed as
j=1
{ }
2
According to the SIC principle, user n should demodulate P αn max |hn,j |
S j={1,··· ,l}
the message xm before demodulating its intended message, γl,n→n = . (12)
σ2
and the SINR of xm at user n can be expressed as
Similar to MRC scheme, considering the worst situation, when
∑
l
2
P αm |hn,j | user n cannot demodulate the message of user m, user n also
O
γl,n→m =
j=1
. (7) cannot obtain its message correctly.
∑
l
2 Eve also adopts SC to receive the multiple transmitted
P αn |hn,j | + σ 2
j=1 signals. Similar to MRC scheme, the SIC error is considered
at the Eve. Thus, when Eve intercepts the message of user n,
When the user n demodulates the message of the user m cor- the SINR can be obtained as
rectly, the interference from xm can be eliminated completely { }
by SIC. Thus, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of message xn P αn max |he,j |
2

is expressed as j={1,··· ,l}

S
γl,e→n = { } . (13)
2
∑
l δP αm max |he,j | + σ 2
2
P αn |hn,j | j={1,··· ,l}

O j=1
γl,n→n =
σ2
Otherwise, the residual signal of user m will impose a se-
vere impact on demodulating the message intended to user
n, considering the worst situation, which directly leads to
communication failure.
The Eve also adopts MRC and SIC to intercept the confiden-
tial messages intended to user n. In addition, a more practical
SIC scenario is considered, where the SIC error occurs when
the message of user m cannot be demodulated correctly.
Therefore, the signal of user m transfers into interference using
. (8)
III. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS OF MRC S CHEME
In this section, we adopt MRC scheme to process the multi-
ple transmitted signals. The CSI used for MRC can be obtained
from the pilot transmitted by transmitter. Although MRC
increases extra signaling overhead, every transmitted signal
are utilized for detecting, which is beneficial for improving
system performance. We derive the closed-form expressions
for COP, SOP, RSP and EST in the MRC scheme for offering
further insights into system performance.

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A. COP for User n and User m where T O (l) denotes the probability of the number of trans-
1) COP for SR User n: When user n cannot demodulate mission rounds l.
its message correctly, a NACK is sent back to request re- Before deriving the closed-form expression of T O (l), we
transmission until user n demodulates its signal correctly or first give the expression of P O (l) which denotes the probabil-
the number of transmission rounds reaches L. Consequently, ity of user n just correctly demodulating its intended message
connection outage event occurs when n cannot demodulate its after l transmissions. When l > 1, P O (l) is expressed as
signal correctly after L transmission rounds. The COP of user [ O ]
P O (l) = Pr γl,n→m O
> θm,t , γl,n→n > θn,t
n can be expressed as [ O ]
[ O ] − Pr γl−1,n→m > θm,t , γl−1,n→n
O
> θn,t . (20)
O
Pn,co = 1 − Pr γL,n→m O
> θm,t , γL,n→n > θn,t , (14)
According to (18), similar to the derivation of (15), (20) can
where θm,t = 2 − 1 and θn,t = 2
Rm,t
− 1. After some Rn,t be derived as
manipulations, the closed-form expression for COP of user n M∑n l−1 ( )j
O Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }
can be written as P (l) = e Ωn .
Ωn j!
M∑n L−1 ( )j j=Mn (l−1)
O Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }
(21)
Pn,co = 1− e Ωn ,
j=0
Ωn j!
When l = 1, P O (l) is given by
{ (15)
[ O ]
σ 2 θm,t
P αm −P αn θm,t , α m − α n θm,t > 0 P O (l) = Pr γl,n→m O
> θm,t , γl,n→n > θn,t
where φm = and
∞, else M∑n −1 ( )j
σ2 θ
Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }

φn = P αn,t . = e Ωn . (22)
n
j=0
Ω n j!
Proof: Substituting (7) and (8) into (14), we can obtain
 Observing (22) and (21), we can find that (22) is included in
∑L
σ 2 θm,t (21). Thus the closed-form expression of P O (l) is given by
= 1 − Pr 
2
O
Pn,co |hn,j | (αm − αn θm,t ) > ,
P (21).
j=1
 When l < L, if user n obtains its message correctly after
∑L
2 σ 2 θn,t  l transmissions, the number of transmission round is l. Thus,
|hn,j | > . (16) T O (l) = P O (l). When L = 1, T O (1) = 1, obviously. If
P αn
j=1
after L − 1 transmissions, user n still cannot demodulate its
Obviously, when αm−αnθm,t < 0, the first item in the right side message correctly, the number of transmission rounds goes to
O L, the probability of which is derived as
{ which leads to Pn,co = 1. For conve-
of (16) cannot be satisfied,
[ O ]
σ 2 θm,t
P αm −P αn θm,t , αm −αn θm,t > 0 T O (L) = 1 − Pr γL−1,n→m O
> θm,t , γL−1,n→n > θn,t
nient, we define φm =
∞, else Mn (L−1)−1 ( )j
∑ Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }
σ 2 θn,t = e Ωn .
and φn = P αn .
Thus, (16) can be rewritten as Ωn j!
  j=0

∑L (23)
= 1 − Pr  |hn,j | > max {φm , φn } ,
O 2
Pn,co (17)
Above all, T O (l) is obtained in (24) at the top of next page.
j=1
Utilizing (18) and (24), (19) can be derived as
∑
l
m l−1 ( )j
where the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of |hi,j |
2 ∑L M∑
Mm φm 1 − Mm φm
O
j=1 Pm,co = 1− T O (l) e Ωm . (25)
can be expressed as j=0
Ωm j!
l=1

i l−1 (
M∑ )j Observing (15) and (25), increasing maximum transmission
Mi x 1 − MΩi x
O
Fi,l (x) = 1 − e i . (18) rounds L decreases the COP of both user n and user m, which
Ωi j!
j=0 shows that HARQ is beneficial to reliable communication.
Substituting (18) into (17), (15) is obtained. For avoiding
O
Pn,co = 1, Rm,t should satisfy 2Rm,t − 1 < ααm
n
. B. SOP for SR User n
2) COP for OS User m: Due to the variation of chan- The confidential messages of security-required user n
nel condition between the transmitter and user n, in every should keep secret from the Eve. When intercepting the
communications, the number of signal transmission rounds is message of user n, Eve should eliminate the interference from
also variable. When user n demodulates its message correctly xm by SIC first. When Eve cannot demodulate xm correctly,
or the number of transmissions reaches L, transmitter stops xm will be transferred into interference by transfer factor δ,
transmission. COP of user m can be written as which can be expressed as
∑
L
[ O ] {
O
Pm,co = T O (l) Pr γl,m→m < θm,t , (19)
O
0, γl,e→m ≥ θm,t
δ= O , (26)
l=1 δ0 , γl,e→m < θm,t

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Transactions on Information Forensics and Security



 1, L=1

 M∑ ( )j


n l−1
Mn max{φm ,φn } 1 −
Mn max{φm ,φn }

j! e , l<L
Ωn
Ωn
T O (l) = j=Mn (l−1) (24)

 ( )j

 ∑
Mn (L−1)−1
Mn max{φm ,φn } M max{φm ,φn }
− n

 Ωn
1
j! e
Ωn , l = L.
j=0

 (( )+
M∑
e l−1 )j ( )j
Me φm 1 Me φe (δ = 0) 1
S O (l) =1 +  
M φe (δ=0)
− MeΩφ m − e Ω
e e − e e

j=0
Ωe j! Ωe j!
e l−1 (
M∑ )j
Me min {φe (δ = δ0 ) , φm } 1 − Me min{φeΩ(δ=δ0 ),φm }
− e e , (29)
j=0
Ωe j!

∑
l
P αm |he,j |2 HARQ has adverse effect on COP and SOP. Thus, the per-
, and δ0 (δ0 ∈ [0, 1]) is
O j=1
where γl,e→m = ∑
l formance of HARQ is hard to be evaluated by COP and SOP
P αn |he,j |2 +σ 2
j=1 separately. We adopt RSP to investigate system performance in
assumed to be a constant for simplicity [10], [11]. It is worthy the view of both Eve and user n, which denotes the probability
to note that when δ0 = 0, Eve is assumed to be powerful of reliable and secure transmission. RSP of user n is given by
enough to eliminate any interference [24] and when δ0 = 1,
∑
L
Eve cannot eliminate any interference when xm is detected O
Prs = P O (l)S O (l) , (30)
with error [44]. The SOP of user n can be written as l=1

∑
L where P O (l) is given in (21) and S O (l) is expressed in (29).
O
Pso =1− T O (l) S O (l), (27) Observing (30), both P O (l) and S O (l) are positive, increasing
l=1 maximum transmission round L improves reliable and secure
O
where S (l) denotes the probability that Eve cannot intercept transmission probability. It demonstrates that HARQ is ben-
any information after l transmissions in the MRC scheme. eficial to secrecy communication from the view of both Eve
According to total probability formula, S O (l) is given by and user n.
[ O ]
S O (l) = Pr γl,e→m ≥ θm,t , γl,e→n
O
< θs |δ = 0 D. EST for User n
[ O ]
+ Pr γl,e→m O
< θm,t , γl,e→n < θs |δ = δ0 , (28) Communication reliability can be improved by retransmis-
sion. However, transmission efficiency may decrease when
where θs = 2Rn,t −Rs − 1. Utilizing (18), similar to the the same message is transmitted by multiple rounds. EST
derivation of (15),{(28) is derived in (29) at the top of this page, is adopted to evaluate the efficiency of secure transmission,
σ 2 θs
P αn −δP αm θs , αn − δαm θm,t > 0 and
according to renewal-reward theorem [45], which is expressed
where φe (δ) =
∞, else as
+
[x] = max {0, x}. ∑L
Rs P O (l) S O (l)
According to (27), increasing maximum transmission round l=1
ηO = , (31)
L increases SOP, since Eve obtains more information from ∑L
multiple transmissions. Thus, retransmission decreases secrecy lT O (l)
l=1
performance.
Remark 1: COP evaluates the reliability performance and where P O (l), S O (l) and T O (l) are given by (21), (29) and
∑
L
SOP evaluates the secrecy performance. (15) and (27) demon- (24), respectively. lT O (l) represents the average number
strate that the impact of maximum transmission round L and l=1
of transmission rounds.
transmit power P on reliability performance is contrary to
Remark 2: RSP and EST evaluate the security and efficien-
secrecy performance. In other words, a tradeoff exists between
cy, respectively, from the perspective of both legitimate user
reliability and security. In different communication scenarios,
and Eve. (30) shows that HARQ improves the reliability and
the requirements of reliability or security are different. It is
secrecy performance, which is owed to the feedback between
worth noting that the proposed scheme can meet the different O
the SR user and transmitter. In addition, when P = 0, Prs =0
communication requirements by choosing a proper L or P .
and η = 0 and when P → ∞, Prs → 0 and η → 0,
O O O

which shows that increasing the transmit power P cannot

C. RSP for User n always improve RSP or EST. It demonstrates that the transmit
COP and SOP evaluate the system performance from the power should be reasonably designed for achieving better
view of legitimate users and Eve, respectively. In addition, performance.

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Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

IV. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS OF SC S CHEME According to (35), (37) can be derived as

M∑ n −1 ( )j
In this section, we adopt SC scheme to combine the multiple S Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }

transmitted signals, where only the signal with the best quality P (l) = e Ωn

j=0
Ω n j!
is employed to detect the intended message. It is worth to  l−1
mention that, in this scheme, the perfect CSI is not necessary, M∑n −1( )j
M max {φ , φ } 1 Mn max{φm ,φn }
×1− −  ,
n m n
which reduces the signaling overhead. COP, SOP, RSP and e Ωn

EST are adopted as performance metrics to evaluate the system j=0

Ωn j!
performance in the SC scheme. (38)
when l = 1, P S (l) is given by
A. COP for User n and User m [ S ]
P S (l) = Pr γl,n→m S
> θm,t , γl,n→n > θn,t
Similar to the MRC scheme, in the SC scheme, the trans- M∑ n −1 ( )j
Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }
mitter keeps transmitting until user n receives its signal = e Ωn . (39)
correctly or the transmission round reaches L. Thus, after L j=0
Ωn j!
transmissions, n still cannot demodulate its intended signal Observing (39) and (38), we can note that (39) is included in
correctly, resulting in connection outage. The COP of user n (38). Thus, the expression of P S (l) can be given by (38). In
in the SC scheme is given by addition, from (22) and (39), we can find P S (1) = P O (1)
[ S ] obviously because single transmission achieves the same per-
S
Pn,co = 1 − Pr γL,n→m S
> θm,t , γL,n→n > θn,t . (32)
formance in MRC and SC schemes.
After some mathematical manipulations, (32) can be derived When l < L, after l transmissions, user n can demodulate
as its signal correctly, the number of transmission round is l.
 L Thus, T S (l) = P S (l). When L = 1, T S (1) = 1, obviously.
∑
Mn−1( )j If after L − 1 transmissions, user n still cannot demodulate its
M max {φ , φ } 1 Mn max{φm ,φn }
Pn,co=1− − .
S n m n
e Ωn
message correctly, the number of transmission round goes to
Ωn j!
j=0 L, the probability of which is derived as
(33) [ S ]
T S (L) = 1 − Pr γL−1,n→m S
> θm,t , γL−1,n→n > θn,t
Proof: Substituting (11) and (12) into (32), (32) can be  L−1
M∑n −1 ( )j
rewritten as M max {φ , φ } 1 Mn max{φm ,φn }
=1− e−  .
n m n Ωn
[ { } ] Ω n j!
2 j=0
S
Pn,co = Pr max |hn,j | < max {φm , φn } , (34)
j={1,··· ,L} (40)
{ } Above all, T S (l) is expressed in (41) at the top of next page.
2
where the CDF of max |hi,j | is given by
j={1,··· ,l} Utilizing (35) and (41), (36) can be derived as
 l ∑
L
∑
M i −1 ( )j S
Pm,co = T S (l)
Mi x 1 M x
− Ωi
S
Fi,l (x) = 1 − e i . (35) l=1
Ωi j!  l
n −1 ( )j
j=0
M∑
Mn max {φm , φn } 1 − Mn max{φ m ,φn }
Substituting (35) into (34), (33) is obtained. × 1− e Ωn .
j=0
Ωn j!
[
When the number ]
of transmission rounds is l, the COP of
S
user m is Pr γl,m→m < θm,t . For the maximum transmis- (42)
sion round L, the COP of user m in SC scheme can be written Observing (33) and (42), increasing maximum transmission
as rounds L decreases the COP of both user n and user m in the
SC scheme, because time diversity can be utilized by HARQ
∑
L
[ S ]
S
Pm,co = T S (l) Pr γl,m→m < θm,t , (36) scheme to improve receiving performance, which shows the
l=1
similar property to MRC scheme.

where T S (l) denotes the probability of the number of the B. SOP for User n
transmissions l in SC scheme.
Before decoding the confidential messages of user n, Eve
Similar to the MRC scheme, we first derive the expression
should eliminate the interference from m by SIC first. How-
of P S (l) which denotes the probability of user n just demod-
ever, when Eve cannot demodulate the message of user m
ulating its message correctly in lth transmission. When l > 1,
correctly, the signal of user m is transferred into interference
P S (l) is expressed as
by transfer factor δ, which can be expressed as
[ S ] {
P S (l) = Pr γl,n→m S
> θm,t , γl,n→n > θn,t S
0, γl,e→m ≥ θm,t
[ S ] δ= , (43)
− Pr γl−1,n→m S
> θm,t , γl−1,n→n > θn,t . (37) S
δ0 , γl,e→m < θm,t

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Transactions on Information Forensics and Security


 1, L=1

 ( )l−1
M∑
 (
n−1 )j ∑n −1 ( )j

 Mn max{φm ,φ n } 1 −
M n max{φ ,φ
m n } M
Mn max{φm ,φ n } 1 −
Mn max{φm ,φn }

j! e 1− j! e , l<L
Ωn Ωn
Ωn Ωn
T S (l) = j=0 j=0 (41)

 ( )L−1

 n −1 (
M∑ )j

 1− Mn max{φm ,φn } 1
M max{φm ,φn }
− n
 Ωn j! e
Ωn , l = L.
j=0

 l  l +
∑
M e −1 ( )j ∑
M e −1 ( )j
 Me φe (δ = 0) 1 − e Ωe Me φm 1 − eΩ m  
S S (l) =1 −  − 1 −
M φ (δ=0) M φ
e e e e 
j=0
Ω e j! j=0
Ω e j!
 l
∑
Me −1 ( )j
Me min {φe (δ = δ0 ) , φm } 1 M min{φe (δ=δ0 ),φm }
+ 1 − e − e Ωe . (46)
j=0
Ωe j!

P αm max
j={1,··· ,l}
{|he,j |2 } D. EST for User n
S
where γl,e→m = and δ0 is assumed
P αn {|he,j |2 }+σ2
max
j={1,··· ,l} To evaluate the efficiency of secure transmission, EST is
to be a constant [10], [11]. The SOP of user n is given by adopted as performance metric in the SC scheme, which is
∑
L expressed as
S
Pso =1− T S (l) S S (l), (44)
∑
L
l=1 Rs P S (l) S S (l)
l=1
where S S (l) denotes the probability that Eve cannot intercept ηS = , (48)
any information after l transmission rounds. Similar to MRC ∑
L
lT S (l)
scheme, S S (l) is written as l=1
[ S ]
S S (l) =Pr γl,e→m ≥ θm,t , γl,e→n
S
< θs |δ = 0 where P (l), S (l) and T S (l) are expressed in (38), (46)
S S
[ S ] ∑
L
+ Pr γl,e→m S
< θm,t , γl,e→n < θs |δ = δ0 . (45) and (41), respectively. lT S (l) denotes the average number
l=1
Utilizing (35), (45) is derived as (46) at the top of this page. of transmission rounds in the SC scheme.
Similar to the MRC scheme, observing from (44), retrans- Remark 4: Observing (47), HARQ improves the reliability
mission increases the SOP in the SC scheme, due to time and secrecy performance in the SC scheme, which is similar
diversity is utilized by Eve to wiretap. It shows that HARQ is to the MRC scheme. In addition, increasing transmit power P
harmful to secure transmission from the perspective of Eve. cannot always improve RSP or EST. It demonstrates that the
Remark 3: (33) and (44) demonstrate that maximum trans- transmit power should be reasonably designed for achieving
mission round L and transmit power P also have an adverse better performance.
impact on reliability performance and secrecy performance in Remark 5: When L = 1, any retransmission is not al-
the SC scheme. Similar to the MRC scheme, a tradeoff also lowed. The HARQ-assisted NOMA system is degraded to the
exists between reliability and security in the SC scheme. The traditional NOMA system. In addition, when Rm = 0, the
different requirements of reliability or security can be satisfied interference from user m can always be eliminated. Thus,
in the proposed scheme by choosing a proper L or P . user m can obtain its intended message without SIC, i.e.,
the system is degraded to a traditional HARQ-assisted OMA
C. RSP for User n system. The two degraded systems can be viewed as two
In this subsection, RSP is adopted to investigate system benchmarks for measuring the proposed system’s performance.
performance in the view of both Eve and user n, which denotes It also demonstrates that the proposed HARQ-assisted NOMA
the probability of reliability and secure transmission. RSP of system represents a generalized system and the comparison
user n in the SC scheme is given by results are presented in Section V.
∑
L
S
Prs = P S (l) S S (l), (47) V. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
l=1 In this section, we present numerical results to give better
where P S (l) is given by (38) and S S (l) is expressed in (46). insights into system performance. The path loss is expressed
Observing from (47), increasing maximum transmission round as Ωk = d1a where k ∈ {m, n, e} and a is path loss
k
L improves reliable and secure transmission probability. It exponent. Unless otherwise stated, the simulation parameters
demonstrates that HARQ is beneficial to secrecy communi- are presented in Table I, where BPCU is the abbreviation of
cation from the view of both Eve and user n. bit per channel use.

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10 0 10 0
Simulation.
User m by MRC
User n by MRC
10 -1
10 -1

10 -2
COP

-2

SOP
10 L=1
10 -3
L=3

dn =500m,400m,300m
10 -3 L=4
10 -4

Simulation
SC scheme
-5 MRC scheme
10
10 -4

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 10 -4 10 -3 10 -2 10 -1 10 0
P (dBm) COP

Fig. 2. The COP of user m and n in MRC scheme versus P with dm = Fig. 4. SOP versus COP of user n in both SC and MRC schemes with
400m and dn = 500m, 400m, 300m. L = 1, 3, 4, and P ∈ [0, 20dBm].

10 0 10 0
Simulation
User m by SC
User n by SC

10 -1

L=1
COP

10 -2
RSP L=3

dn =500m,400m,300m L=4

-1
10 L=5
10 -3

Simulation
SC scheme
MRC scheme

10 -4
0 5 10 15 20 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
P (dBm) P (dBm)

Fig. 3. The COP of user m and n in SC scheme versus P with dm = 400m Fig. 5. The RSP of user n versus P with L = 1, 3, 4, 5 in both MRC and
and dn = 500m, 400m, 300m. SC scheme.

Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 plot the COP of users m and n versus
transmit power P with dn = 500m, 400m, 300m in the
MRC and SC schemes respectively. Both Fig. 2 and Fig. 3
show that the COP of user n keeps decreasing, and when
user n is near to the transmitter, the COP of user m also
keeps decreasing while increasing P . However, when user
n is far away from the transmitter, e.g., dn = 500m, the
COP of user m first decreases and then increases and finally
decreases while increasing P . When dn is large, multiple
transmissions are needed to promise correct demodulation at
TABLE I
TABLE OF PARAMETERS
Parameter
The distance between nodes dn = 300m, de = 800m
Nakagami-m fading parameters Mm = 2, Mn = 2, Me = 2
Codeword rates
Expected secrecy rate
Path loss exponent
Power allocation exponent
Interference transfer exponent
Noise power
user n. Increasing P will reduce the number of transmissions,
which leads to an increase of the COP at user m. In addition,
in both Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, when dn grows from 300m to
500m, the COP of user n increases. However, the COP of
user m decreases. It demonstrates that the QoS of user m can
be guaranteed when user n is far away from transmitter.
Fig. 4 plots SOP versus COP of user n in both SC and MRC
schemes with L = 1, 3, 4, and P ∈ [0, 20dBm]. Firstly, we can
observe that secrecy performance improves with the increasing
of COP. This implies a trade-off existing between security
and reliability of user n. In addition, the SRT performance
improves significantly in both SC and MRC schemes when
maximum transmission round increases from L = 1 to L = 4.
Especially, the HARQ-assisted NOMA system, i.e., L > 1,
value strictly outperforms the traditional NOMA system, i.e. L = 1,
in terms of SRT. Furthermore, Fig. 4 shows that in the HARQ-
Rn,t = 1.0BPCU, assisted NOMA system, the MRC scheme outperforms the
Rm,t = 1.0BPCU SC scheme. This is because the MRC scheme makes full use
Rs = 0.5BPCU of every transmission. However, the MRC scheme consumes
a = 2.7
αn = 0.2, αm = 0.8 more communication resources when compared with the SC
δ0 = 0.05 scheme.
−68dBm Fig. 5 plots the RSP of user n versus P with L = 1, 3, 4, 5

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10

0.4 0.5
Simulation
0.35 0.45 MRC scheme
SC scheme
0.4
0.3
0.35
L=1
0.25
0.3
L=2
EST

EST
0.2
0.25
L=3 OMA δ0 = 1, 0.2, 0
0.15 0.2
L=4
0.15
0.1

Simulation
0.1
0.05
MRC scheme
MC scheme 0.05
0
0
0 5 10 15 1 1.5 2 2.5
P (dBm) Rm,t (BPCU)

Fig. 6. The EST of user n versus P with L = 1, 2, 3, 4 in both MRC and Fig. 7. The EST of user n versus Rm,t with P = 12dBm, L = 4 and
SC scheme. δ0 = 0, 0.2, 1 in both MRC and SC scheme.

0.4
in both MRC and SC schemes. From Fig. 5, we can find Simulation
that in MRC and SC schemes, the RSP increases firstly 0.35 SC scheme
MRC scheme
and then decreases due to the increase of P , which shows
0.3
that the reliable and secure transmission performance can be
improved by choosing a proper transmit power. A specific 0.25 L=1

observation is that RSP also can be improved by increasing EST 0.2 L=2

the maximum transmission round. Besides, the HARQ-assisted L=3

0.15
NOMA system, i.e., L > 1, outperforms the traditional
L=4
NOMA system, i.e., L = 1, showing the advantage of 0.1

exploiting HARQ against eavesdropping. Especially, in the

0.05
high transmit power region, both MRC and SC schemes are
degraded to a traditional NOMA system where they have a 0
-20 -18 -16 -14 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0
similar performance. αn /αm (dB)

Fig. 6 plots the EST of user n versus P with L = 1, 2, 3, 4

in both MRC and SC schemes to show the efficiency of
HARQ-assisted NOMA systems. Notably, in the low trans-
mit power region, the EST in the SC scheme keeps nearly
unchanged when increasing maximum transmission round L.
It can be explained that the performance improvement brought
by retransmissions is neutralized by retransmission delay.
However, the EST in the MRC scheme increases remarkably
by increasing maximum transmission round L due to every
retransmission signal being utilized by MRC efficiently. It
shows that MRC is more suitable for improving the efficiency
of secure transmission in the low transmit power region.
Nevertheless, the maximum EST in the SC scheme is higher
than that in the MRC scheme, which shows that the SC scheme
can achieve better performance by choosing a proper transmit
power. It demonstrates that better performance can be achieved
by consuming fewer communication resources when SC is
adopted.
Fig. 7 plots the EST of user n versus Rm,t with P =
12dBm and δ0 = 0, 0.2, 1 in both MRC and SC schemes.
It is worthy to note that when δ0 = 0, the detection ability
assumption of Eve is degraded to that in [24] and when
δ0 = 1, the assumption is degraded to that in [44]. In addition,
when Rm,t = 0, HARQ-assisted NOMA system is degraded
to a traditional HARQ-assisted OMA system. From Fig. 7,
we can find that the EST of both MRC and SC schemes
first increases due to the increase of Rm,t when δ0 ̸= 0.
Fig. 8. The EST of user n versus αn /αm with P = 10dBm and L =
1, 2, 3, 4 in both MRC and SC scheme.
This is because a larger Rm,t may increase the difficulty of
demodulation at Eve when SIC error is considered. It shows
the proposed HARQ-assisted NOMA system can outperform
traditional HARQ-assisted OMA system by choosing Rm,t
properly. It also demonstrates that pairing an opportunity-
served user to perform NOMA not only can increase network
connectivity, but also has the potential to enhance security. As
Rm,t increases beyond a critical value, EST drops dramatically
until to zero, due to high Rm,t putting a heavy burden on the
SIC at user n. For achieving a better secrecy performance,
Rm,t should be determined reasonably.
Fig. 8 plots the EST of user n versus αn /αm with P =
10dBm and L = 1, 2, 3, 4 in both MRC and SC schemes.
Firstly, from Fig. 8, as the power allocated to user n increas-
es, the EST in both MRC and SC schemes first increases
and then decreases, which demonstrates an optimal αn /αm
existing for achieving the best performance. In addition, when
allocating less power to user n, i.e., αn /αm is small, the
MRC scheme shows better performance than the SC scheme
due to every retransmission signals being utilized efficiently in
the MRC scheme. However, the SC scheme has the potential
to outperform the MRC scheme by optimizing αn /αm . It

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also demonstrates that the lightweight SC scheme can achieve
better performance.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have explored the PLS of HARQ-assisted
NOMA networks, where HARQ is utilized to ensure the SIC
process at the SR user being implemented successfully. Both
MRC and SC schemes are considered, where the MRC scheme
is designed to make full use of retransmission signals and the
SC scheme chooses the best signal among the transmissions
for demodulation. In addition, a more practical wiretapping
scenario is considered, where when SIC cannot be imple-
mented successfully at Eve, the signal of the OS user will
be regarded as interference when demodulating the signal of
the SR user. The closed-form expressions for the COP of the
SR and OS users in both MRC and SC schemes are derived,
which show that the QoS of OS user can be ensured by
pairing an SR user who is far away from the transmitter. We
also derive the closed-form expressions for the SOP, RSP, and
EST of SR user in both MRC and SC schemes. The results
show that RSP and RST performances improve significantly
when applying HARQ in the low transmit power region.
It demonstrates that HARQ has the capability to improve
secrecy performance from the perspective of both Eve and
legitimate user. Simulations show that the HARQ-assisted
NOMA network outperforms the traditional HARQ-assisted
OMA network by deploying the code rate of the OS user
properly. Furthermore, in the low transmit power region, the
MRC scheme achieves better performance than the SC scheme
in terms of EST. However, the SC scheme has the potential
to outperform the MRC scheme by optimizing the transmit
power or power allocation factor.
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Zhongwu Xiang received the B.S. degree from
South China Normal University, in 2014, and M.S.
degree from the PLA University of Science and
Technology in 2017, and he is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree with the Institution of Communication-
s Engineering in Army Engineering University of
PLA. His research interests include non-orthogonal
multiple access, physical-layer security and cogni-
tive radio.
Weiwei Yang received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
degrees from the College of Communications En-
gineering, PLA University of Science and Tech-
nology, Nanjing, China, in 2003, 2006, and 2011,
respectively. His research interests include orthogo-
nal frequency domain multiplexing systems, signal
processing in communications, millimeter-wave, co-
operative communications, wireless sensor networks,
and network security.
1556-6013 (c) 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
12
Gaofeng Pan (M’12) received the B.Sc. degree in
communication engineering from Zhengzhou Uni-
versity, Zhengzhou, China, in 2005 and the Ph.D.
degree in communication and information systems
from Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Chi-
na, in 2011.
He was with Ohio State University, Columbus,
OH, USA, from 2009 to 2011 as a joint-trained
Ph.D. student under the supervision of Prof. E. Ekici.
From 2012 to 2019, he was with Southwest Univer-
sity, Chongqing, China, and he was also with the
School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, Lancaster,
U.K., from 2016 to 2018, where he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow under
the supervision of Prof. Z. Ding. His research interests span special topics
in communications theory, signal processing and protocol design, including
visible light communications, secure communications, CR/cooperative com-
munications, UAV communications, and MAC protocols. From Aug. 2019,
he has been a visiting researcher with The Communication Theory Lab, King
Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi
Arabia. He was a recipient of the Exemplary Reviewer Award 2017 given by
the IEEE Transactions on Communications.
Yueming Cai received the B.S. degree in physics
from Xiamen University, Xiamen, China, in 1982,
and the M.S. degree in microelectronics engineering
and the Ph.D. degree in communications and infor-
mation systems from Southeast University, Nanjing,
China, in 1988 and 1996, respectively. His current
research interests include MIMO systems, OFD-
M systems, signal processing in communications,
cooperative communications, and wireless sensor
networks.
Yi Song received the M.S. degree from the Nan-
jing University Of Aeronautics And Astronautics
in 2011, and he is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree with the Institution of Communications En-
gineering in Army Engineering University of PLA.
His research interests include millimeter-wave, non-
orthogonal multiple access, physical-layer security
and cognitive radio.
Yulong Zou (SM’13) is a Full Professor and Doctor-
al Supervisor at the Nanjing University of Posts and
Telecommunications (NUPT), Nanjing, China. He
received the B.Eng. degree in information engineer-
ing from NUPT, Nanjing, China, in July 2006, the
first Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, USA,
in May 2012, and the second Ph.D. degree in signal
and information processing from NUPT, Nanjing,
China, in July 2012.
Dr. Zou was awarded the 9th IEEE Commu-
nications Society Asia-Pacific Best Young Researcher in 2014. He has
served as an editor for the IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials,
IEEE Communications Letters, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal
Processing, IET Communications, and China Communications. In addition,
he has acted as TPC members for various IEEE sponsored conferences, e.g.,
IEEE ICC/GLOBECOM/WCNC/VTC/ICCC, etc.