QoS-aware secure transmission design for VLC with semi-grant-free NOMA scheme

This work aims to enhance the physical layer security (PLS) of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) aided indoor visible light communication (VLC) system with semi-grant-free (SGF) transmission scheme, in which a grant-free (GF) user shares the same resource block with a grant-based (GB) user whose quality of service (QoS) must be strictly guaranteed. Besides, the GF user is also provided with an acceptable QoS experience, which is closely aligned with the practical application. Both active and passive eavesdropping attacks are discussed in this work, where users' random distributions are taken into account. Specifically, to maximize the secrecy rate of the GB user in the presence of an active eavesdropper, the optimal power allocation policy is obtained in exact closed-form and the user fairness is then assessed by Jain's fairness index. Moreover, the secrecy outage performance of the GB user is analyzed in the presence of the passive eavesdropping attack. Both exact and asymptotic theoretical expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) of the GB user are derived, respectively. Furthermore, the effective secrecy throughput (EST) is investigated on the basis of the derived SOP expression. Through simulations, it is found that the PLS of this VLC system can be significantly improved by the proposed optimal power allocation scheme. The radius of the protected zone, the outage target rate for the GF user, and the secrecy target rate for the GB user would have pronounced impacts on the PLS and user fairness performance of this SGF-NOMA assisted indoor VLC system. The maximum EST will increase with the increasing transmit power and it is hardly influenced by the target rate for the GF user. This work will benefit the design of indoor VLC system.