Performance analysis of linear precoding for secure multiuser MIMO systems with a multiple-antenna eavesdropper

In this paper, we investigate the secrecy performance of matched-filter (MF) and zero-forcing (ZF) precoding in a multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with a multi-antenna passive eavesdropper. For the two precoding schemes, we find that the equivalent wiretap channels are similar and thus the eavesdropper achieves the approximate same sum-rate. Closed-form expressions of ergodic secrecy sum-rate (ESSR) are derived for the both schemes in the low and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes. We show that a positive ESSR of MF scheme may be not achieved when the BS simultaneously serves more than two users with high transmit power, while the ESSR of ZF scheme always grows with the number of the served users. On the contrast, MF scheme is better than ZF scheme in the low SNR regime. Simulation results corroborate the analytic results.