Privacy in bidirectional relay networks

In this work, the bidirectional broadcast channel (BBC) with confidential messages is studied. The problem is motivated by the concept of bidirectional relaying in a three-node network, where a half-duplex relay node establishes a bidirectional communication between two other nodes using a decode-and-forward protocol and thereby transmits additional confidential information to one of them in the broadcast phase. The corresponding confidential message is transmitted at a certain secrecy level which characterizes the amount of information that can be kept secret from the non-legitimate node. The capacity-equivocation and secrecy capacity regions of the BBC with confidential messages are established where the latter characterizes the communication scenario with perfect secrecy, which means that the confidential information is completely hidden from the non-legitimate node. Thereby, it is shown that the optimal processing exploits ideas and concepts of the BBC with common messages and of the classical broadcast channel with confidential messages.