3372
7, JULY 2009
A Distributed Differentially Encoded OFDM Scheme for
Asynchronous Cooperative Systems with Low Probability of Interception
Zheng Li and Xiang-Gen Xia
Abstract—Recently, Li, Hwu and Ratazzi have proposed a
physical-layer security design to guarantee low probability of
interception (LPI) for MIMO systems without relying on upper-
layer data encryption. The proposed scheme utilizes antenna
array redundancy to deliberately randomize the transmitted
signals to prevent eavesdropping. Motivated by their idea, in this
paper we design a physical-layer transmission scheme to achieve
LPI in cooperative systems. There are two major differences
in cooperative systems: 1) each relay node may have only one
antenna that can not provide antenna array redundancy for
signal randomization; 2) there may exist timing errors due to
the asynchronous nature of cooperative systems. Considering the
two differences, we propose a distributed differentially encoded
OFDM transmission scheme with deliberate signal randomization
to prevent eavesdropping and exploit the available spatial and
frequency diversities in asynchronous cooperative systems. We
use diagonal unitary codes to perform the differential encoding
in the frequency domain over subcarriers within each OFDM
block, or we use general (not necessarily diagonal) unitary
codes to perform the differential encoding in the frequency
domain across several OFDM blocks. By some deliberate signal
randomization, the eavesdropper can not detect the transmitted
symbols, while the authorized receiver can perform differential
decoding successfully without the knowledge of the channels or
the timing errors.
Index Terms—Differential space-time-frequency coding, asyn-
chronous cooperative diversity, unitary codes, OFDM, wireless
security, low probability of interception.
I. I NTRODUCTION
W IRELESS communication security has become more
and more important in recent years due to the wide
wireless communications applications [1], [2]. Unlike wired
systems, in wireless communications, any receiver within the
transmission range can receive the signals and listen/analyze
the transmission, which makes wireless physical-layer security
more vulnerable. Although the physical-layer may rely on
upper-layer data encryption techniques for security [3], it
is interesting to design wireless physical-layer transmission
schemes with inherent security which may be helpful and can
be integrated with the traditional data encryption approaches.
Note that there recently have been a lot of studies on physical-
layer security more from information theoretic perspective,
see for example [4], [5]. This paper is, however, more on
signal modulation and processing perspective in stead of
Manuscript received March 16, 2008; revised June 20, 2008 and September
17, 2008; accepted December 7, 2008. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this letter and approving it for publication was H. Shin.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer En-
gineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 (e-mail: {zhli,
xxia}@ee.udel.edu).
This work was supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific
Research (AFOSR) under Grant No. FA9550-08-1-0219 and the National
Science Foundation under Grant CCR-0325180.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2009.080365
1536-1276/09$25.00 
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO.
binary coding. In wireless security, one practical objective
is to design a wireless transmission with low probability of
interception (LPI). Recently, an innovative method has been
proposed by Li, Hwu and Ratazzi to achieve LPI without
relying on upper-layer data encryption for MIMO systems [6],
[7]. The proposed method utilizes antenna array redundancy
to deliberately randomize the transmitted signals to prevent
eavesdropping. In this method, training signals are not trans-
mitted from the transmitter but from the authorized receiver,
thus the transmitter knows the channel while the authorized
receiver does not. On the other hand, the eavesdropper may
use multiple antennas to obtain better received signal quality
than the authorized receiver does and knows all the trans-
mission protocols. For this reason, the scheme in [6], [7]
uses a deliberate signal randomization technique to randomize
the eavesdropper’s received signals but not the authorized
receiver’s received signals. Thus, the eavesdropper can neither
implement channel estimation [8] for non-blind detection
without training signals nor implement blind deconvolution
[9] due to the randomized received signals.
In this paper, we are interested in designing a physical-layer
transmission scheme to achieve LPI in cooperative systems.
We propose a deliberate signal randomization technique to
randomize the eavesdropper’s received signals but not the
authorized receiver’s received signals. However, in cooperative
systems, there are two major differences from MIMO systems:
1) each relay node may not afford more than one antenna,
thus there may be no antenna array redundancy that can be
employed to implement the deliberate signal randomization;
2) there may exist timing errors due to the distributed nature
of the relay nodes, i.e., the signals from different relay
nodes arrive at the authorized receiver or the eavesdropper
at different times [10]. These two differences may make the
physical-layer security design in cooperative systems more
difficult.
In this paper, we propose a distributed differentially encoded
OFDM transmission scheme with deliberate signal random-
ization to achieve LPI as well as the available spatial and
frequency diversities in asynchronous cooperative systems. In
our proposed scheme, we use OFDM to combat frequency-
selective fading channels and timing errors. The newly pro-
posed deliberate signal randomization and the differential
encoding can be performed in the frequency domain over
subcarriers within each OFDM block using diagonal unitary
codes (space-frequency coding). Moreover, if channels do not
change over several OFDM blocks, i.e., slow fading channels,
the differential encoding in the frequency domain can be done
across several OFDM blocks using general (not necessar-
ily diagonal) unitary codes (space-time-frequency coding) to
c 2009 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 7, JULY 2009
R1
RJ
Fig. 1. Cooperative system architecture.
obtain better performance. By the deliberate signal random-
ization, the eavesdropper’s received signals change randomly
on each subcarrier. Thus, the eavesdropper may not be able
to implement a blind deconvolution or differential decoding.
Meanwhile, the authorized receiver can implement differential
decoding successfully to obtain full diversity with neither the
knowledge of the channels nor the timing errors. Most of
the literatures on combating timing errors have to assume
that the receiver has perfect knowledge of the timing errors,
the proposed distributed differentially encoded OFDM scheme
can guarantee transmission security without the knowledge of
timing errors, which is the unique property of the method.
The remaining of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, the system model is described. In Section III, two
distributed differentially encoded OFDM systems with deliber-
ate signal randomization are proposed. Distributed differential
diagonal space frequency coding and distributed differential
space-time-frequency nondiagonal coding are discussed sepa-
rately. In Section IV, simulation results are presented. Finally,
the conclusions are given in Section V.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Consider a cooperative system with one source node S and
J relay nodes Ri (1 ≤ i ≤ J), and we denote the authorized
receiver as D, and there exists a passive eavesdropper E, as
shown in Fig. 1. Consider the case when every node in the
system has only one antenna except the eavesdropper, i.e.,
E may have multiple antennas. To transmit the information
from the source node S to the authorized receiver D, there
undergo two phases. In the first phase, the source node S
broadcasts the information to the J relay nodes. Meanwhile,
the J relay nodes receive the information. During the second
phase, the J relay nodes Ri send the received signals to the
authorized receiver D. In this paper, we adopt the decode-and-
forward (DF) protocol, i.e., the J relay nodes have correctly
detected the information symbols in the first phase. Thus, we
only consider the transmission in the second phase. Due to
the lack of physical boundary, we know that the eavesdropper
E can also receive the signals transmitted from the J relay
nodes.
Note that the security for the communication between the
source node and relay nodes is equally important. In this
paper, this problem is omitted because the reason of utilizing
relay nodes to help the communication between the source and
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3373
the destination nodes is that we only consider the case when
the distance between the source and the destination nodes is
far enough so that the destination node cannot receive the
message sent from the source. In this paper, we also assume
that the eavesdropper can be anywhere but far enough from the
source node. When the eavesdropper is close to the source, we
may choose a direct communication between source and the
receiver and use Li, Hwu and Ratazzi’s method [6], [7] directly
to achieve LPI when the source and the receiver are close to
each other, and we may use Li, Hwu and Ratazzi’s method
[6], [7] in the first phase of cooperative communications when
the source and the receiver are far away from each other, and
in the second phase, we use our proposed scheme.
Each relay node employs an OFDM modulator with N
subcarriers. We assume the frequency-selective channels have
L paths. Without timing errors, in the frequency domain, the
received signals at the kth (0 ≤ k ≤ N − 1) subcarrier at the
authorized receiver D in one OFDM block can be written as:
J
√ 
Y (k) = ρ Xi (k)Hi,D (k) + Z(k) (1)
i=1
where ρ is the average received signal to noise ratio, Xi (k)
is the transmitted symbol over the kth subcarrier from the ith
relay node, Hi,D (k) is the channel frequency response at the
kth subcarrier between the ith relay node and D, and Z(k) is
the AWGN with zero mean and unit variance.
The channel frequency response Hi,D (k) can be given by
L−1

Hi,D (k) = αi,D (l)e−j2πkΔf τi,D (l)
l=0
where αi,D (l) is the multipath channel coefficient of the
lth path, τi,D (l) is the lth path delay, Δf = 1/T is the
subcarrier spacing, T is the OFDM symbol period. Each
channel coefficient αi,D (l) is modelled as zero mean, complex
Gaussian random variable with variance E|αi,D (l)|2 = δl2 ,
and for convenience,
L−1 the power of the L paths are normalized
such that l=0 δl2 = 1.
When there exist timing errors, we assume the timing error
between the ith relay and D is τi,D , which is rounded to the
nearest sampling position. If the length of the cyclic prefix
(CP) is not less than maxi,l {τi,D (l) + τi,D }, we can still
maintain the orthogonality between the subcarriers. The delay
τi,D in the time domain corresponds to a phase change in the
frequency domain:
f τi,D = [1, e−j2πτi,D /N , . . . , e−j2πτi,D (N −1)/N ]T
with f = [1, e−j2π/N , . . . , e−j2π(N −1)/N ]T .
Now the received signals with timing errors at the kth (0 ≤
k ≤ N − 1) subcarrier at the authorized receiver D can be
written as:
J
√ 
Y (k) = ρ Xi (k)Hi,D (k)f τi,D (k) + Z(k) (2)
i=1
where f τi,D (k) = exp(−j2πkτi,D /N ).
Now consider the eavesdropper E, E may use multiple
antennas for better interception. Therefore, here we assume
that E has M antennas. The received signals with timing errors
3374
at the kth (0 ≤ k ≤ N − 1) subcarrier at the mth (1 ≤ m ≤ M)
antenna of the eavesdropper E can be written as:
J coded scheme using diagonal unitary codes, and then we
√ 
Ym (k) = ρ Xi (k)Hi,m (k)f τi,m (k) + Zm (k)
i=1
where Hi,m (k) is the channel frequency response at the kth
subcarrier between the ith relay node and the mth antenna of
E, and Zm (k) is the AWGN with zero mean and unit variance.
Similarly, Hi,m (k) can be specified as
L−1
 A. A Distributed Differentially Space Frequency Coded
Hi,m (k) = αi,m (l)e−j2πkΔf τi,m (l)
i=0
where αi,m (l) and τi,m (l) are the multipath channel coefficient
of the lth path and the delay of the lth path, respectively. And
τi,m is the timing error between the ith relay and the mth
antenna of E. Note that, for equation (3), it has assumed that
the length of CP is not less than maxi,l,m {τi,m (l) + τi,m }.
From the above equation, it is obvious that E can try
to detect the transmitted symbols based on better received
signal quality. In the following section, we will design a
physical-layer secure transmission scheme to prevent E from
eavesdropping under the assumption that the relay nodes and
D share no additional information such as secret keys [3]
beforehand and know nothing about the eavesdropper E.
III. T HE D ISTRIBUTED D IFFERENTIALLY E NCODED
OFDM WITH D ELIBERATE S IGNAL R ANDOMIZATION
In order to prevent E from eavesdropping, we can, for
example, create high BER for E. Thus, as in [6], [7] for
MIMO systems, in the cooperative system, the relay nodes
can not send training signals, otherwise, E can easily utilize
the training signals for channel estimation and symbol de-
tection. However, without training, D also can not have the
channel state information (CSI) including the channel fading
coefficients and the timing errors. Thus, we have to design a
transmission scheme so that D can detect the symbols without
the CSI.
In the following proposed schemes, the same as [6], [7] we
require that the authorized receiver D transmits the training
signals to the relay nodes, therefore, the relay nodes know
the corresponding channel according to channel reciprocity
[12], [13], and this procedure gives no useful information
to E. Note that, even though the relay nodes can have the
knowledge of the corresponding channel, it is hard for each
relay node to know its relative timing delay, which means that
in the cooperative system, no one can know the timing errors.
Another kind of synchronization errors may be the multiple
frequency offsets from the relay nodes. Because the authorized
receiver will send training signals to the relay nodes, each
relay node can estimate its frequency offset and therefore
may be able to compensate it, which is different from the
conventional relay systems. Thus, we omit this problem in
this paper.
In the following, we propose two transmission schemes with
random weighting coefficients at the relay nodes. With our
proposed scheme, D can implement the detection successfully
through differential decoding without the CSI, while E’s
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 7, JULY 2009
received signals are randomized to prevent eavesdropping.
We first describe the distributed differentially space frequency
design the random weighting coefficients at the relay nodes.
(3)
Moreover, we use general (not necessarily diagonal) unitary
codes to construct the distributed differentially space-time-
frequency coded scheme to achieve better performance.
Scheme Using Diagonal Unitary Codes
Our distributed differentially space frequency coded scheme
is based on the space frequency codes in [14], [15] and
the corresponding differential scheme in [16]. The major
difference of the scenario here from [16] is that the un-
known channel at the receiver D is caused by our deliberate
randomized weighting coefficients and the unknown timing
errors, which motivates our following new transceiver design.
In the following, we assume the frequency-selective channels
keep unchanged within each OFDM block, and may change
independently from one OFDM block to another OFDM block,
i.e., it may be fast fading.
Notice that in the frequency domain phase change vector
Δ
f τ = [f τ (0), f τ (1), · · · , f τ (N − 1)]T
= [1, e−j2πτ /N , . . . , e−j2πτ (N −1)/N ]T ,
there exists a relationship of f τ (k) = (f τ (N − k))∗ , for k =
1, ..., N2 − 1. But when k = 0 and k = N2 , this relationship of
conjugation does not always hold. We will make use of this
conjugation property in the design to deal with the unknown
timing errors. Discarding the 0th and the N2 th subcarriers, we
partition the remaining N −2 subcarriers into 2P groups where
P = (N − 2)/(2ΓJ), 1 ≤ Γ ≤ L, i.e., the largest integer
not greater than (N − 2)/(2ΓJ), where J is the number of
relay nodes involved and Γ is a parameter used in the space
frequency coding to achieve the multipath diversity [14]–[16].
Thus, each group includes ΓJ subcarriers.
In our distributed differentially space frequency coded
scheme, we use half of the useful subcarriers, i.e., the first
P groups, to send information symbols, and the other half of
the useful subcarriers, i.e., the second P groups, to send the
corresponding reference symbols. Denote Bp = (p − 1)ΓJ,
p = 1, 2, ..., P . Specifically, for relay node i, we send
information symbols Xi (k) on subcarrier k, where k =
Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ and Xi (k) = 0 for other k; and we send
the corresponding reference symbols Xi (k) on subcarrier k,
where k = N − (Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ) and Xi (k) = 0 for
other k, in which 1 ≤ p ≤ P , 1 ≤ i ≤ J and 1 ≤ γ ≤ Γ.
We can see that in this scheme, on each useful subcarrier,
there is only one relay node that sends nonzero symbols. This
scheme can be represented by a matrix form and a distributed
differential space frequency code as follows. For group p in the
first P groups, let Xp be the ΓJ × ΓJ signal matrix including
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 7, JULY 2009 3375

information symbols and it has a diagonal form: From the conjugation property, we have fτpD = (fτ D ∗
p ) , thus
⎡ ⎤ we can rewrite (5) as
X1 (Bp + 1)
⎢ .. ⎥ √
⎢ . ⎥ Y∗
p = ρIΓJ W∗ ∗ τD ∗
p ◦ Hp ◦ fp + Zp , p = 1, 2, ..., P (6)
⎢ ⎥
⎢ X (B p + Γ) ⎥
⎢ 1 ⎥ From (4) and (6), if Wp ◦ Hp = W∗ ∗
⎢ .. ⎥ p ◦ Hp , we have
Xp = ⎢ . ⎥,
⎢ ⎥
⎢ XJ (Bp + (J − 1)Γ + 1) ⎥ Yp = Xp Y∗
p + Z̃p (7)
⎢ ⎥
⎢ .. ⎥
⎣ . ⎦
where Z̃p = Zp − Xp Z∗ p is a noise vector where each entry
XJ (Bp + (J − 1)Γ + Γ) is a Gaussian random variable with mean zero and variance
√
where Xi (k) is what is transmitted for the ith relay at the kth 2. Since Xp = IΓJ , so Xp = Vp . Without the CSI, the
subcarrier and otherwise there is no tranmission. For group maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding can be performed as
p in the second P groups, the transmission matrix Xp is a
ΓJ × ΓJ signal matrix including the corresponding reference
symbols. Xp also has a diagonal form which can be expressed X̂p = argmin ||Yp − Xp Y∗ 2
p ||F . (8)
Xp ∈Λ
as
⎡  ⎤ We now look at the condition Wp ◦ Hp = W∗ ∗
p ◦ Hp we
X1 (N − (Bp + 1))
⎢ .. ⎥ made for the ML decoding in (8), which is, in fact, easy to
⎢ . ⎥ satisfy since each relay node knows its own channel in the
⎢ ⎥
⎢ X 
(N − (B + Γ)) ⎥ scenario in this paper. Since its own channel is known at a
⎢ 1 p ⎥
 ⎢ . .. ⎥ relay node, the relay node can then design random weighting
Xp = ⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥ coefficients so that Wp ◦ Hp = W∗ ∗
⎢ 
XJ (N − (Bp + (J − 1)Γ + 1)) ⎥ p ◦ Hp for the authorized
⎢ ⎥ user D, while the received signals are changing randomly on
⎢ .. ⎥
⎣ . ⎦ each subcarrier in each OFDM block for the eavesdropper E
 as we shall explain below.
XJ (N − (Bp + (J − 1)Γ + Γ))

Now we encode the transmitted signals differentially in the

frequency domain within each OFDM block as follows: Xp = B. A Deliberate Signal Randomization at the Relay Nodes
Vp Xp , and Vp ∈ Λ carries the transmitted information and
is a unitary diagonal matrix. As in [16], the space frequency With the weighting coefficients, our goal is to make
coding can achieve a diversity order of ΓJ. Note that, the wi (k)Hi,D (k) = wi∗ (N − k)Hi,D ∗
(N − k) for D so that D
differential space frequency coding scheme causes rate loss, can perform the differential decoding, while wi (k)Hi,m (k) =
the symbol rate is P ΓJ/N ≈ 12 when N is large. wi∗ (N − k)Hi,m ∗
(N − k) and wi (k)Hi,m (k), wi∗ (N −
∗
Assume the weighting coefficient for the ith relay node on k)Hi,m (N − k) change randomly for E so that E has no way
the useful subcarrier k as wi (k). We can form the received to intercept the information symbols.
signals in a vector-matrix form as follows. We can first choose wi (k) randomly, then wi∗ (N − k) =
∗
For the subcarriers sending information symbols, the re- (wi (k)Hi,D (k))/Hi,D (N − k). Since Hi,D (k) and Hi,m (k)
ceived signal model at D is: are independent fading coefficients, it is almost surely to
have wi (k)Hi,m (k) = wi∗ (N − k)Hi,m∗
(N − k). Therefore,
√
Yp = ρXp Wp ◦ Hp ◦ fτpD + Zp , p = 1, 2, ..., P (4) in general, our goal can be satisfied by simply choosing
wi (k) to have a specific distribution. However, choosing
where Wp is a ΓJ × 1 weighting vector to be designed later, wi (k) randomly may cause the total transmission power to
whose ((i−1)Γ+γ)th entry is wi (Bp +(i−1)Γ+γ), Hp is the be increased. Thus, we are also interested in preserving
ΓJ × 1 vector of channel coefficients, whose ((i − 1)Γ + γ)th the total transmission power to be unchanged, i.e., the total
entry is Hi,D (Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ), fτpD is also a ΓJ × 1 vector transmission power is
whose ((i − 1)Γ + γ)th entry is f τi,D (Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ),
J

Zp is the corresponding noise vector, and ◦ is the Hadamard
product, i.e., the component-wise product. E( |wi (k)|2 ) = Nu (9)
Nu i=1
For the subcarriers sending reference symbols, the received
signal model at D is: where Nu is the number of useful subcarriers. In order to
√ achieve this requirement, we can design the random weighting
Yp = ρXp Wp ◦ Hp ◦ fτ
p
D
+ Zp , p = 1, 2, ..., P (5)
coefficients as follows:
where Xp = IΓJ as the reference symbols. Wp is also 1) To preserve total transmission power, we design the
a weighting vector with its ((i − 1)Γ + γ)th component amplitude of the random coefficients first and the following
wi (N − (Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ)), the ((i − 1)Γ + γ)th entry two requirements have to be satisfied simultaneously:
of Hp is Hi,D (N − (Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ)), the ((i − 1)Γ + γ)th

entry of fτ D
is f τi,D (N − (Bp + (i − 1)Γ + γ)), Zp is the |wi (k)||Hi,D (k)| = |wi∗ (N − k)||Hi,D
∗
(N − k)| = C
p
corresponding noise vector. |wi (k)|2 + |wi∗ (N − k)|2 = 2.

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3376 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 7, JULY 2009

Thus, we have C. A Distributed Differentially Space-Time-Frequency Coded

⎧ √ ∗ Scheme Using Nondiagonal Unitary Codes
⎪ 2|Hi,D (k)||Hi,D (N − k)|
⎪
⎪ C =  In the previous study, we proposed to use differential
⎪
⎨ ∗ (N − k)|2 )
(|Hi,D (k)|2 + |Hi,D space frequency coding across subcarriers when the channels
⎪
⎪ |wi (k)| = C/|Hi,D (k)| do not change in one OFDM block, where the differen-
⎪
⎪
⎩ ∗ ∗ tial space frequency codes are diagonal unitary codes. In
|wi (N − k)| = C/|Hi,D (N − k)|
this subsection, we propose to use differential space-time-
2) For the phases of the random coefficients, we can simply frequency coding across OFDM blocks, where the differential
choose the phase of wi (k) uniformly distributed: wi (k) = space-time-frequency codes may be general (not necessarily
|wi (k)|ejθwi (k) , θwi (k) ∼ U (0, 2π), which is unknown to E. diagonal) unitary codes. In this case, we assume that the
Then, we obtain the phase of wi (N − k) as: θwi (N −k) = channels do not change over J OFDM blocks. For more details
−θHi (N −k) − θwi (k) − θHi (k) . on space frequency and space-time-frequency coding, we refer
Thus, we have designed random coefficients wi (k) and the reader to a tutorial paper [17].
wi (N − k) to make wi (k)Hi (k) = wi∗ (N − k)Hi∗ (N − k) We will use the block repetition coding method to construct
for D as well as preserving the total transmission power. The the nondiagonal unitary codes. Similarly as in Subsection
authorized user D can detect the symbols according to (8). III-A, we partition the useful N −2 subcarriers into 2P groups
On the other hand, if E also tries to detect the symbols by where P = (N − 2)/(2Γ), 1 ≤ Γ ≤ L. We also denote
the differential decoding, then from Bp = (p − 1)Γ, p = 1, 2, ..., P .
√ For group p in the first P group, letting Xp be the ΓJ × ΓJ
Ymp = ρXp Wp ◦ Hm τm m
p ◦ fp + Z p , (10) signal matrix including information symbols, we can express

m∗ √  ∗ 
m∗ τm 
m∗
Yp = ρXp Wp ◦ Hp ◦ fp + Zp (11) Xp as follows:

we can obtain: Xp = IΓ ⊗ X̃p = diag[X̃p , . . . , X̃p ] (14)

 √ m
Ym
p = Xp Yp
m∗
+ ρXp Δp ◦ fτm + Z̃p (12) where ⊗ denotes the Kronecker product and diag[ ] produces a

block diagonal (BD) matrix from the matrices in its argument.
where Δp = Wp ◦ Hm ∗
p − Wp ◦ Hp
m∗
is the channel difference X̃p is a J × J unitary matrix which can be expressed as
which is determined by the difference between wi (k)Hi,m (k) ⎡ p p p ⎤
and wi∗ (N − k)Hi,m
∗
(N − k). The differential decoding for E X1,1 X2,1 . . . XJ,1
p p
⎢ X1,2 X2,2 . . . XJ,2 p ⎥
can be written as: ⎢ ⎥
X̃p = ⎢ . .. .. .. ⎥
⎣ .. . . . ⎦
X̂p = argmin ||Ym

m∗ 2
p − Xp Yp ||F (13) p p p
Xp ∈Λ X1,J X2,J . . . XJ,J
we can see that the decoding performance of E mainly depends where Xm,np
denotes the transmitted signal from the mth relay
on ρE||Δp ||2F . Since wi (k)Hi,m (k) = wi∗ (N − k)Hi,m
∗
(N − node in the nth OFDM block in group p, in which 1 ≤ m, n ≤
2
k), ρE||Δp ||F can be large. Thus E can hardly detect the J. We can notice that X̃p is a unitary space time code and we
symbols by the differential decoding according to (13). repeat it across the subcarriers to construct the BD code Xp ,
However, E may try to implement blind deconvolution to thus Xp is a space-time-frequency code, which is different
detect Xp and Xp directly from the received signals on each from the space frequency code in Subsection III-A. In order
subcarrier, and then using Xp = Vp Xp to intercept the infor- to get BD codes with better performance than the diagonal
mation. Since wi (k)Hi,m (k), wi∗ (N − k)Hi,m ∗
(N − k) change unitary codes, we will choose X̃p as the unitary codes with
randomly on each subcarrier in each OFDM block and the larger coding gain (diversity product), such as the codes in
distribution of wi (k) is unknown to E and there exist unknown [18], [19].
phase change caused by timing errors, as proved in [6], [7], we Assume the weighting coefficient for the ith relay node on
conclude that E can not implement blind deconvolution while subcarrier k as wi (k). Now we can give the received signal
it is well known that successful blind deconvolution requires model at D. For the subcarriers sending information symbols,
the receiver knows some special and sufficient statistics or the received signal model at D is:
structure of the signals [9]. Thus, we can guarantee LPI by √
the proposed deliberate signal randomization. Yp = ρ(Xp Wp Hp ) ◦ fτpD + Zp , p = 1, 2, ..., P (15)
Note that, when designing the random coefficients, we where Wp is a ΓJ ×ΓJ diagonal matrix which can be designed
introduce random phases according to the uniform distribution, similarly as in Subsection III-B, whose (i + J(γ − 1))th
the random phases can help to keep the peak-to-average power diagonal entry is wi (Bp + γ), Hp is the ΓJ × 1 vector
ratio (PAPR) of the scheme in an acceptable level even we of channel coefficients, whose (i + J(γ − 1))th entry is
simply send 1 as the reference symbol on half of the useful Hi,D (Bp +γ), fτpD is also a ΓJ ×1 vector whose (i+J(γ−1))th
subcarriers. However, the proposed design of the random entry is f τi,D (Bp + γ).
coefficients focuses primarily on preserving total transmission For the subcarriers sending reference symbols, we still use
power, if considering other aspects, such as obtaining the Xp = IΓJ as the reference symbols, then the received signal
best performance of preventing eavesdropping or reducing the model at D can be written as:
PAPR of the scheme, there might exist better design than the
√
proposed one here. Y∗
p = ρ(IΓJ W∗ ∗ τD ∗
p Hp ) ◦ fp + Zp , p = 1, 2, ..., P (16)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 7, JULY 2009
where the parameters are similarly defined as in (15).
Similar to Subsection III-A, if Wp Hp = W∗ ∗
p Hp , from (15)
and (16), we can perform the ML differential decoding as
X̂p = argmin ||Yp − Xp Y∗ 2
p ||F . (17)
Xp ∈Λ
We can see that (17) has the same form as (8) except
we utilize the nondiagonal unitary matrix Xp to carry the
transmitted information. The received signal model and the
differential decoding for E can be similarly obtained as in
(10)-(13).
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
In this section, we present some simulation results to show
the effectiveness of the proposed transmission schemes by
comparing the BERs of D and E. In the simulations, we
assume that E directly uses D’s decoding method, i.e., (13), so
that the BER of E mainly depends on ρE||Δp ||2F , where ρ is
the averaged signal to noise ratio at the receiver. For simplicity,
we assume that the number of the relay nodes is 2, and E has
2 antennas. Each OFDM modulator has N = 128 subcarriers
with the total bandwidth of 1 MHz. The corresponding OFDM
block interval is T = 1/Δf = 128μs. The length of CP is 32
μs for combating intersymbol interferences caused by channel
multipath and the timing errors. We consider a simple two-ray
equal power delay profile (L = 2) with a delay of τ = 20μs
between the two rays. The timing errors τ are chosen randomly
from 0 to 10 μs with the uniform distribution.
We first show the performance of using diagonal unitary
codes. The diagonal unitary codes we use in the simulations
are the cyclic group codes designed in [20], [21]. Specif-
ically, for an M × M unitary matrix and a transmission
rate R such that the group size L = 2RM , the set of
parameters used to fully specify Vp is denoted as GM,L =
(M, L, [u1 , u2 , ..., uM ]) [20]. In the simulations, the fading
channels are assumed to be constant within each OFDM block
and may change independently from one OFDM block to
another.
We investigate the effect of varying Γ to the performance of
D and E first. When Γ = 1, we choose the cyclic group code
G2,4 = (2, 4, [1, 1]), in which each signal matrix represents 2
information bits, i.e., the information bit rate is 0.48 bits/s/Hz
(omitting the CP). When Γ = 2, we choose the cyclic group
code G4,16 = (4, 16, [1, 3, 5, 7]), in which each signal matrix
represents 4 information bits, i.e., the information bit rate is
0.47 bits/s/Hz. In either case, the P groups which are sending
information symbols transmit P information bits. When Γ = 1,
we can see from Fig. 2 that D can detect the symbols
successfully. However, E’s BER is 0.5 even with 2 antennas,
which means E can not do better than guessing. When Γ = 2,
it is obvious that D’s diversity order increases especially when
ρ is large. However, E’s BER is slightly lower than 0.5, it
can be explained as follows: if we do not exploit frequency
diversity (Γ = 1), then each relay will use only one subcarrier
to perform encodng/decoding in the same group p, in this
case, the channel coefficients on different subcarriers within
the same group are independent. However, when making
use of frequency diversity (Γ > 1), each relay will use
adjacent subcarriers to perform encodng/decoding in the same
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3377
10
−1
10
−2
BER
10
−3
10
E, Γ=1, 0.48 bits/s/Hz
E,
D,
Γ=2, 0.47 bits/s/Hz
Γ=1, 0.48 bits/s/Hz
D, Γ=2, 0.47 bits/s/Hz
10
−4
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
ρ(dB)
Fig. 2. BER comparison between D and E with different Γ using diagonal
code.
group. Thus the similarity of adjacent subcarriers will reduce
ρE||Δp ||2F . Moreover, although the decoding performance of
E mainly depends on ρE||Δp ||2F , the specific code used in
the scheme also has an influence on the performance. When
ρE||Δp ||2F is large, the decoding performance of E is poor,
however, the G4,16 code with diversity order 4 can still obtain
a slightly better performance than the G2,4 code with only
diversity order 2. Thus, when using G4,16 code, E’s BER
is slightly lower than 0.5. However, it still guarantees a low
probability of interception.
Then we increase the information bit rate to compare the
performance between D and E. We only consider the case
of Γ = 1 for simplicity. In the simulation, we use cyclic
group code G2,8 = (2, 8, [1, 3]) in which each signal matrix
represents 3 information bits and G2,16 = (2, 16, [1, 7]) in
which each signal matrix represents 4 information bits. Thus,
the information bit rate is 0.73 bits/s/Hz and 0.97 bits/s/Hz,
respectively. As shown in Fig. 3, we can see that in both cases,
D can implement the differential decoding successfully while
E’s BER is 0.5.
Now we give the performance of using nondiagonal unitary
codes and compare the performance with the diagonal codes.
The nondiagonal unitary codes we use in the simulations are
the parametric codes proposed in [19]. The fading channels
are assumed to be constant within two OFDM blocks in the
simulations.
We first compare the performance when Γ = 1. For the
diagonal code, we choose the cyclic group code G2,32 =
(2, 32, [1, 7]) in which each signal matrix represents 5 infor-
mation bits and this code is the optimal cyclic group code
at the rate 2.5. For the nondiagonal code, we use the 2 × 2
parametric code V(30, 6, 0) which has a signal constellation
of size 32, i.e., the rate is also 2.5, denoted as P2,32 in the
simulation. Thus, the information bit rate is 1.23 bits/s/Hz for
both cases. From Fig. 4, we can see the nondiagonal code
outperforms the diagonal code about 2dB when ρ is large at
the same rate. And for E, they all guarantee LPI as E’s BER
is 0.5 in both cases.
3378 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 7, JULY 2009

0
10 0.61 bits/s/Hz
0
10

−1
10 −1
10
BER

−2
10

BER
−2
10

−3
10 E, G2,8, 0.73 bits/s/Hz −3
10 E, G4,32
E, G2,16, 0.97 bits/s/Hz
E, P2,32
D, G2,8, 0.73 bits/s/Hz
D, G4,32
D, G2,16, 0.97 bits/s/Hz
D, P2,32

−4
10 −4
0 5 10 15 20 25 10
ρ(dB) 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
ρ(dB)

Fig. 3. BER comparison between D and E with higher information bit rate
Fig. 5. BER comparison between diagonal code and nondiagonal code when
using diagonal code.
Γ = 2.

1.23 bits/s/Hz
V. C ONCLUSION
0
10

In this paper, we have proposed two distributed differen-

tially encoded OFDM transmission schemes with deliberate
−1
10 signal randomization to guarantee LPI and achieve the avail-
able spatial and frequency diversities in asynchronous cooper-
ative systems. We use diagonal and nondiagonal unitary codes
to construct the distributed differentially (space frequency and
BER

−2
10
−3
10 E, G
2,32
E, P2,32
D, G2,32
D, P2,32
−4
10
0 5 10
ρ(dB)
Fig. 4. BER comparison between diagonal code and nondiagonal code when
Γ = 1.
Then we compare the performance when utilizing frequency
diversity if Γ = 2. For the diagonal code, we choose the
cyclic group code G4,32 = (4, 32, [1, 7, 9, 15]) in which each
signal matrix represents 5 information bits and this code is the
optimal cyclic group code at the rate 1.25. For the nondiagonal
code, we still use the 2 × 2 parametric code V(30, 6, 0) and
repeat it across the subcarriers to construct a 4 × 4 block
diagonal code to obtain frequency diversity. Thus it has the
same rate 1.25 as the diagonal code. The information bit rate
is 0.61 bits/s/Hz for both cases. As shown in Fig. 5, the
performance is almost the same for the two codes. However,
we may use the permutation techniques proposed in [15] to
further improve the performance of the nondiagonal unitary
codes.
As a remark, although we have only shown the simulation
results for two receive antennas for E, similar results hold
when there are more than 2 receive antennas for E.
space-time-frequency) encoded OFDM transmission schemes.
The authorized receiver can implement the detection by the
differential decoding without the knowledge of the channels
nor the timing errors. Meanwhile, the eavesdropper can hardly
implement the differential decoding and its blind deconvolu-
tion capacity is also prevented. Although the proposed scheme
will cause rate loss, it is useful in some cases, such as wireless
15 20 25 sensor networks for military use where security is of primary
concern.
Note that in this paper we have only considered the low
probability of interception (LPI). The unique property of the
proposed schemes is combating the unknown timing errors
existed in the cooperative system as well as keeping the LPI.
Other problems of physical-layer security such as low prob-
ability of detection (LPD) or malicious relays in cooperative
systems are certainly interesting but left for future research.
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