Analyzing Amplify-and-Forward and Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Strategies in Wyner's Channel Model

The benefits of Amplify-and-Forward (AF) and Decode-and-Forward (DF) cooperative relay for secure communication are investigated within Wyner's wiretap channel. We characterize the secrecy rate when source, destination, relay and eavesdropper all use single antenna and the channel conditions are fix. Both AF and DF cooperative strategies are proved theoretically to be able to facilitate secure communication. Detailed analysis of AF and DF scheme reveals a trade off between secrecy area and request secrecy rate. In addition, secrecy constraints in cooperative secure communication are discussed and are used to explain the differences in AF and DF scheme. Overall, our work establishes the utility of cooperation and compares each advantage of AF and DF scheme in facilitating secure communication over wireless channel.