Optimal Transmit Beamforming for Secure SWIPT in Heterogeneous Networks

This letter investigates the artificial noise aided beamforming design for secure simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in a two-tier downlink heterogeneous network, where one femtocell is overlaid with one macrocell in co-channel deployment. Each energy receiver (ER) in femtocell can be considered as a potential eavesdropper for messages intended for information receiver (IR). Our objective is to maximize the secrecy rate at IR subject to the signal-to-interference-plus noise ratio (SINR) requirements of macro users (MUs), transmit power constraint and energy harvesting constraint. Due to the non-convexity of the formulated problem, it cannot be solved directly. Thus, we propose a novel reformulation by using first-order Taylor expansion and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques. Furthermore, an SCA-based algorithm with low complexity is proposed to arrive at provably convergent solution. Finally, numerical results evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Index Terms Heterogeneous networks, SWIPT, secrecy rate, successive convex approximation, second-order cone programming.