Individual secrecy for broadcast channels with receiver side information

Abstract: This paper studies the problem of secure communication over the broadcast channel with receiver side information under the lens of individual secrecy constraints. That is, the transmitter wants to send two independent messages to two receivers which have, respectively, the desired message of the other receiver as side information, while keeping the eavesdropper ignorant of each message (i.e., the information leakage from each message to the eavesdropper is made vanishing). Building upon one-time pad, secrecy coding, and broadcasting schemes, achievable rate regions are investigated, and the capacity region for special cases of either a weak or strong eavesdropper (compared to both legitimate receivers) are characterized. Interestingly, the capacity region for the former corresponds to a line and the latter corresponds to a square with missing corners; a phenomenon occurring due to the coupling between user's rates. Moreover, the individual secrecy capacity region is also fully characterized for the case where the eavesdropper's channel is deterministic. In addition to discrete memoryless setup, Gaussian scenarios are studied. For the Gaussian model, in addition to the strong and weak eavesdropper cases, the capacity region is characterized for the low and high SNR regimes when the eavesdropper's channel is stronger than one receiver but weaker than the other. Remarkably, positive secure transmission rates are always guaranteed under the individual secrecy constraint, unlike the case of the joint secrecy constraint (i.e., the information leakage from both messages to the eavesdropper is made vanishing). Thus, this notion of secrecy serves as an appropriate candidate for trading off secrecy level and transmission rate; making secrecy more affordable but still acceptable to the end user.