Cooperative jamming protocols in two hop amplify-and-forward wiretap channels

In this paper, we propose two cooperative jamming protocols in two-hop amplify-and-forward (AF) wiretap channels: 1) jamming signal at the source (JSS) and 2) jamming signal at the relay (JSR). We apply optimal power allocation (OPA) between the useful signal and the jamming signal to maximize the secrecy rate for each of the protocols. A fundamental question to address is “Which cooperative jamming protocol is superior under OPA?” To this end, we evaluate the maximum secrecy rate of JSS and JSR for the general scenario of independent but not necessarily identically distributed fading with distinct average signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in the first hop, the second hop, and the wiretap link. We demonstrate that the strong first and second hops equally benefit the secrecy rates of JSS and JSR, when the wiretap link is weak. When the wiretap link is strong, the secrecy rate of JSR is superior to JSS.