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This paper considers the joint design of training and data transmission in physical-layer secret communications, and examines the role of artificial noise (AN) in both of these phases. In particular, AN in the training phase is used to prevent the eavesdropper from obtaining accurate channel state information (CSI), whereas AN in the data transmission phase can be used to mask the transmission of confidential messages. By considering AN-assisted training and secrecy beamforming, we first derive bounds on the achievable secrecy rate and utilize them to obtain approximate secrecy rate expressions that are asymptotically tight at high SNR. By maximizing these expressions, power allocation policies between signal and AN in both training and data transmission phases are then proposed for conventional and AN-assisted training-based schemes, respectively. We show that the optimal AN power at high SNR should be non-vanishing with respect to the total power, and that AN usage can be more effective in the training phase than in the data transmission phase when the coherence time is large. However, at low SNR, we show that AN cannot be effectively utilized due to the lack of accurate CSI, and thus, one can often do better without. Numerical results are presented to verify our theoretical claims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Physical layer secrecy has attracted much attention in recent years due to its ability to ensure communication secrecy with the use of channel coding and signal processing techniques (and without the explicit use of secret keys) in the physical layer. It serves as a promising technique for highly dynamic or ad hoc systems such as device-to-device and machine-type communication systems. However, the achievable secrecy performance depends highly on the level of CSI at the transmitter, the receiver, and the eavesdropper. In this article, we discuss how different levels of CSI resulting from conventional and unconventional ways of performing training and channel feedback may affect the confidentiality in terms of the information-theoretic (perfect) secrecy rate. The conventional approach refers to the emission of pilot signals from the transmitter and explicit channel feedback from the receiver. This approach is backward compatible with existing systems and allows the receiver to obtain accurate knowledge of the CSI, but may suffer from CSI leakage toward the eavesdropper. Unconventional approaches capitalize on reverse training to prevent CSI leakage and are shown to achieve significant improvements over conventional schemes in certain cases. For example, in a system with four transmit antennas and a single antenna at both the receiver and the eavesdropper, a secrecy rate gain of approximately 0.8 b/channel use at transmit SNR of 16 dB is observed over the full CSI case by providing CSI only to the transmitter (but not the receiver and the eavesdropper). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]