Physical Layer Security Enhancement in VLC Using Zero-Forcing Beamforming and Optimized LED Placement

In this paper, we address the secure data transmission through visible light communication (VLC) using physical layer security (PLS) techniques and particularly, optical beamforming with the zero-forcing algorithm. More precisely, we consider the secrecy capacity of classical multiple-input single-output VLC so that the system can deal with eavesdroppers by minimizing the secrecy outage probability (SOP). The considered wireless channel is modeled by the Gaussian distribution, which is subject to amplitude constraints. We quantity the achievable secrecy capacity and SOP for the conventional line-of-sight VLC link and show that how the beamforming can determine the optimal placement of the transmitters. We also show that for a given SOP, the proposed optimal placement offers a signal-to-noise ratio gain of up to 6 dB compared to classical methods such as uniform placement of the transmitters. Our numerical results indicate that the proposed optimal LED arrangement can achieve an SOP of 10−10 while the SOP with uniform arrangement is equal to 10−4.