Unlocking physical-layer security in cooperative wireless networks with multiple relays in α − μ fading environments

Abstract Cooperative communication has emerged as a pivotal innovation in wireless networks, allowing multiple sites with single antennas to collaborate in signal transmission, thereby improving power efficiency, enhancing spatial diversity, and increasing the reliability of signal reception. This paper introduces a cooperative communication system comprising two communicating nodes, multiple relays, and an eavesdropper. The eavesdropper attempts to intercept the signals transmitted between the two nodes. To mitigate this threat, a jamming signal is employed as artificial interference, degrading the quality of the wiretap channel and preventing the eavesdropper from successfully acquiring the transmitted data, thereby enhancing system security. The $$\alpha -\mu$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>α</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mi>μ</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> fading distribution is utilized as a generalized model for wireless channel fading. The system model is analyzed, and closed-form expressions for secrecy outage probability are derived for single-relay and the asymptotic secrecy outage probability is derived for multiple-relay scenarios, and finally the probability of the correct computation of the secrecy packets is evaluated. Analytical results are provided to substantiate the theoretical outcomes.