On the Capacity of the Two-User Symmetric Interference Channel With Transmitter Cooperation and Secrecy Constraints

This paper studies the value of limited rate cooperation between the transmitters for managing interference and simultaneously ensuring secrecy, in the two-user Gaussian symmetric interference channel (IC). First, the problem is studied in the symmetric linear deterministic IC (SLDIC) setting, and achievable schemes are proposed, based on interference cancelation, relaying of the other user's data bits, and transmission of random bits. In the proposed achievable scheme, the limited rate cooperative link is used to share a combination of data bits and random bits depending on the model parameters. Outer bounds on the secrecy rate are also derived, using a novel partitioning of the encoded messages and outputs depending on the relative strength of the signal and the interference. The partitioning helps to bound certain negative entropy terms, leading to a tractable outer bound. The inner and outer bounds are derived under all possible parameter settings. It is found that, for some parameter settings, the inner and outer bounds match, yielding the capacity of the SLDIC under transmitter cooperation and secrecy constraints. In some other scenarios, the achievable rate matches with the capacity region of the two-user SLDIC without secrecy constraints derived by Wang and Tse; thus, the proposed scheme offers secrecy for free, in these cases. Inspired by the achievable schemes and outer bounds in the deterministic case, achievable schemes and outer bounds are derived in the Gaussian case. The proposed achievable scheme for the Gaussian case is based on Marton's coding scheme and stochastic encoding along with dummy message transmission. One of the key techniques used in the achievable scheme for both the models is interference cancelation, which simultaneously offers two seemingly conflicting benefits: it cancels interference and ensures secrecy. Many of the results derived in this paper extend to the asymmetric case also. The results show that limited transmitter cooperation can greatly facilitate secure communications over two-user ICs.