On the Delay/Throughput-Security Tradeoff in Wiretap TDMA Networks With Buffered Nodes

In this paper, we investigate the tradeoff between security and throughput and between security and queuing delay in wiretap time-division multiple access (TDMA) networks. We derive a simple relationship, characterized by a single key system parameter, between the stable-throughput region, where there are no perfect secrecy constraints on the data transmissions, and the secure stable-throughput region, where there are perfect secrecy constraints. We quantify the impact of the perfect secrecy constraints on the network’s average queuing delay and propose a novel cross-layer security scheme for delay-limited applications. We establish an insightful link between computational security (i.e., upper-layer security implemented through cryptographic schemes) and physical-layer (information-theoretically proved) security. For the two-user case, we derive a closed-form expression for the network’s minimum average queuing delay under the proposed security scheme and provide a relationship between the network’s minimum queuing delay under perfect secrecy constraints and computational-only secrecy constraints. Moreover, we investigate the impact of cooperative jamming on achieving perfect secrecy, minimum network’s queuing delay, and maximum throughput. We verify our theoretical findings through simulations.