Secure Degrees of Freedom of Rank-Deficient MIMO Interference Channel

This letter investigates the secure degrees of freedom (SDoF) for a 2-user rank-deficient (M, D) interference channel with confidential messages (ICCM) in which each node is equipped with M antennas. In this model, each transmitter intends to send a confidential message to the corresponding receiver while ensuring that the messages are kept secret against the unintended receiver. Unlike the existing studies on 2-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel models, channel matrices in this letter do not need to be full rank, and they can take arbitrary rank, D <= M. According to different configurations of ranks and number of antennas, the problem is divided into two regimes, and the exact SDoF is given by min(2D, 4M-2D/3). Then, we propose a converse proof, in which the outer bound is proved by using information theoretic methods. Finally, we propose different achievable schemes for the corresponding regimes by utilizing the spatial alignment, symbol extension, and zero-forcing techniques. It can be obviously seen that the full rank situation on ICCM can be regarded as a special case when D = M.