Secure transmission via beamforming optimization for NOMA networks

Owing to the eminent performance gain, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been regarded as a promising approach to achieve high throughput and low latency for the next-generation networks. Nevertheless, potential adversaries can still pose a threat to secure transmission in NOMA systems. Hence, in this article, secure transmission schemes based on beamforming optimization are designed to combat both internal and external eavesdropping for downlink multi-input single-output NOMA networks. Using the transmit beamforming design, we first propose two schemes to protect the privacy of a specific NOMA user in the presence of untrusted users. Then, the sum secrecy rate optimization problem is studied to combat the external eavesdropper through optimizing the precoding vectors, when the channel state information (CSI) is available. In addition, two secure beamforming strategies with the help of artificial noise and inter-user interference are proposed without eavesdropping CSI, respectively. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes, and some open issues are discussed as well.