On Ergodic Secrecy Rate for Gaussian MISO Wiretap Channels

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 maximizes the ergodic secrecy rate 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 in which the 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, it is shown that when full information on the legitimate channel is available to the transmitter, the optimal input covariance has always rank one. It is also shown 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.