In this work, we propose a joint security approach based on physical layer security (PhySec) and noisy ciphertext to improve the secrecy rate of a relay network with cooperative jamming via two trusted relays. While the secrecy capacity has been considered as the maximum limit for a perfect secrecy at the physical layer, we demonstrate that the consideration of error- prone ciphertext in encryption and its interaction with PhySec allows us to transmit above the PhySec capacity without any leakage. By formulating and solving a non-convex encryption- aided secrecy rate maximization problem, it is shown that beyond PhySec capacity performances can be achieved even in a simple jamming scenario in which the two jammers just send independent jamming signals. The optimal encryption-aware power allocation and the secrecy rate maximization solution are also established in the case of common jamming signals to further increase the secrecy rate. Numerical results are finally provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed joint security framework over traditional PhySec.

In traditional physical layer security paradigm, no leakage of confidential information to the eavesdropper is tolerated regardless of whether the message is encrypted or not. This will result in an achievable secure transmission rate that is significantly smaller than the channel capacity. This article presents a novel approach that allows treatment of physical layer security in conjunction with encryption to achieve a flexible trade-off of system resources. We propose a novel framework to model the interplay between secured transmission rate and error probability in error prone ciphertexts. To this end, we use the concept of rate-equivocation region to establish such a connection. To clearly describe the application of our framework, we consider the case of 4-node Gaussian wiretap channel. For such a channel, we characterize the rate-equivocation region in different scenarios, and then use it to study the achievable rate of encryption-aware physical layer security. The obtained results show that, for a fixed transmission power, the prior knowledge of encryption can significantly increase the secured transmission rate. In addition, encryption-aware physical layer security can achieve a target transmission rate at a reduced transmission power compared to the conventional encryption-agnostic physical layer security.