Enhancing Physical Layer Security of Cooperative Nonorthogonal Multiple Access Networks Via Artificial Noise

The massive connectivity requirement and security issues have become major factors restricting the further development of the Internet of Things. Nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can be combined with physical layer security (PLS) to achieve massive connectivity and secure transmission. This article investigates the PLS performance for a downlink communication system over Nakagami-m fading channels, with full-duplex (FD) cooperative NOMA transmission aided by artificial noise (AN). While direct communication is built between the base station and two NOMA users, the strong user is employed as an FD relay as well as the jammer to enhance the PLS of the legitimate transmission in the presence of a passive eavesdropper (Eve). Closed-form analytical expressions in terms of the outage probability of the legitimate users and the intercept probability of Eve are derived to evaluate the security–reliability trade-off (SRT) of the proposed scheme. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to validate the veracity of the theoretic analyses and illustrate that the proposed scheme is superior in terms of SRT to the benchmark schemes in the low SNR region. Furthermore, the results reveal that the SRT performance of the two NOMA users can be enhanced through a proper AN-bearing ratio and power allocation optimization.