On Secrecy Rate Analysis of MIMO Wiretap Channels Driven by Finite-Alphabet Input

This work investigates the effect of finite-alphabet input constraint on the secrecy rate of a multi-antenna wiretap channel. Most existing works have characterized maximum achievable secrecy rate or secrecy capacity for single and multiple antenna systems based on Gaussian source signals and secrecy code. For practical considerations, we study the effect of finite discrete-constellation on the achievable secrecy rate of multiple-antenna wire-tap channels. Our proposed precoding scheme converts the underlying multi-antenna system into a bank of parallel channels. Based on this precoding strategy, we develop a decentralized power allocation algorithm based on dual decomposition to maximize the achievable secrecy rate. In addition, we analyze the achievable secrecy rate for finite-alphabet inputs in low and high SNR regions. Our results demonstrate substantial difference in secrecy rate between systems given finite-alphabet inputs and systems with Gaussian inputs.