Wireless Pers Commun (2017) 95:26792689

DOI 10.1007/s11277-017-3949-1

Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array

For Secure Communications

Jie Xiong1 Shaddrack Yaw Nusenu1 Wen-Qin Wang1

Published online: 13 January 2017

 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Abstract In this paper, to obtain a better physical layer security for wireless communi-
cations, a directional modulation (DM) using frequency diverse array (FDA) is proposed.
Different from the traditional directional modulation that achieves only angle dependent
directional modulation, our proposed scheme achieves DM in both angle and range
dimensions. The transmitted signal symbols only could be recovered successfully at the
desired receiver, while they are distorted to be unrecoverable at the undesired receivers.
Therefore, it will increases the security of data transmission to against the eavesdroppers.
This FDA-based DM scheme can be potentially applied in the point-to-point security
communications and the effectiveness is validated by numerical results.

Keywords Directional modulation  Frequency diverse array (FDA)  Physical layer

security  Range-angle dependent

1 Introduction

Physical layer security for wireless communications has attracted much attention [1].
Wyner [2] introduced an information-theoretical approach for wireless physical layer
security. This work has been further extended in [3] to investigate the secrecy capacity of
broadcast channel.

& Jie Xiong

xiongjie@uestc.edu.cn
Shaddrack Yaw Nusenu
nusenu2012gh@yahoo.com
Wen-Qin Wang
wqwang@uestc.edu.cn
1
School of Communication and Information Engineering (SCIE), University of Electronic Science
and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu 611731, China

123
2680 J. Xiong et al.

In order to interfere the eavesdropper, artificial noise has been employed [4]. However,
how to add the artificial noise to interfere eavesdropper was a difficult task to be imple-
mented. For achieving physical layer security, the spread-spectrum technique [5] can be
used for the low interception and detection probability. Nevertheless, for this technique,
what an assumption strongly required is any prior-information about the spreading
sequence that is used in the transmitted signal should be unknown to the eavesdroppers.
Similarly, the frequency hopping technique [6] also assumes that the eavesdroppers cannot
detect the law of frequency behaviour. However, this assumption is hard to hold in the
practical scenarios. Several authors also have suggested multi-antenna based solutions [7].
A traditional multi-antenna based way is the digital beamforming (DBF) [8], where the
phase shifters are used to maximize the array gain at the desired direction and simulta-
neously minimize it elsewhere. However, the information at sidelobe regions has the same
copy of information radiated to the mainlobe region, which enables sufficiently sensitive
receiver to recover the communication information.
The directional modulation (DM) technique is proposed in [9] with a phased-array (PA).
By changing the phase of each element, a symbol with the desired phase and amplitude,
enabling distinct modulation constellation points that could be decoded by an intended
receiver. while it purposely distorted the constellation to be very difficult demodulated in
other undesired directions. The author further demonstrated a DM transmitter in [10].
However, when the eavesdropper is located along the desired direction, the information
can be demodulated by the eavesdropper..
To utilize the different range information between the desired and undesired users, we
introduce frequency diverse array (FDA) to realize a DM in this paper. As compared to the
aforementioned PA approaches, FDA uses a small frequency increment across the array
elements [11]. This frequency increment leads to a range-dependent beampattern whose
focusing direction will change as a function of the range, angle and time. Since FDA has
the characteristic of angle-range-dependent beampattern as the comparison with only
angle-dependent beampattern in conventional PA, it enables the enhanced physical layer
security for point-to-point communications. Our proposed method is different from the
FDA-OFDM transmitter [12], in which no phase shifters but the distinct initial phases on
different subcarriers of OFDM symbols are used.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, we summarize the traditional
DM. In Sect. 3, we propose the physical layer security approach by jointly exploiting the
DM and FDA techniques. Finally, simulation results are provided in Sect. 4 and conclu-
sions are drawn in Sect. 5.

2 Traditional Directional Modulation

In this section, we give a brief introduction to the traditional DM using PA. Figure 1 shows
the DM scheme which uses phase shifters as a mean of changing element weights. The
phase shifters are optimally designed and they are distinct for different symbols.
Taking the binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and two elements for example, the phase
shifters depend on the transmitted symbol bits 1 or 0. Suppose the desired receiver is
locate at 0, while the undesired receiver is at 30. In this case, an extra p sin 30 p=2 in
path length from the left antenna to the right antenna is added. Table 1 gives an example of
the phase shifters used for the BPSK transmission.
To send a bit 1, the phase shifter for the left antenna is set to 224 and the right one is
set to 140. Therefore, the desired receiver obtains exp224 j exp140 j

123
Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array For 2681

Fig. 1 Illustration of traditional DM scheme

Table 1 Example of phases used for BPSK transmission

Phase shifters Left shifters () Right shifters ()

Bit 1 224 140

Bit 0 50 314

1:5exp178 j. When sending a bit 0, the phase shifters of the left and right antennas
are 50 and 314, respectively. Therefore, the desired receiver obtains a voltage of
exp50 j exp314 j 1:3exp2 j. These received symbols still carry a 180 phase
difference between the transmitted bits 1 and 0 for the desired receiver.
In contrast, the undesired receiver obtains the information that is entirely different from
the desired one. Due to the extra 90 in path length between the two elements, when bit
1 is sent, the undesired receiver obtains exp224 90 j exp140 j
0:1exp133 j. Similarly, it receives exp50 90 j exp314 j 0:1exp133 j
when bit 0 is sent. It is obviously that the undesired receiver cannot demodulate the
information. Consider the constellation point shown in Fig. 2a, the signal can be suc-
cessfully demodulated by the desired user. However, it is completely overlapped at the
undesired direction in Fig. 2b, which means the demodulation becomes very difficult.
It is worth noting that this distortion is different from that one in traditional array
beamforming scheme. The security essence of the DM lies in that, along all the directions
except the desired transmit direction, the signals will become distorted in both the
amplitude and phase. This distortion is a consequence of the modulation offered in the
radio frequency rather than baseband.

3 Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array

Although the traditional DM has the capability of distorting information along undesired
directions. In a case, where the eavesdropper is at the same direction with the desired
receiver, the security will be completely lost. Inspired by the range-angle dependent
beampattern provided by FDA, we jointly exploit DM and FDA to achieve physical layer
security in both the angle and range dimension.

123
2682 J. Xiong et al.

recieved imformation from recieved imformation from

desired receiver undesired receiver
(a) 1 (b) 1
0.8 0.8
0.6 0.6
0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
Q

Q
0 0
0.2 0.2
0.4 0.4
0.6 0.6
0.8 0.8
1 1
2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
I I

Fig. 2 Comparisons of received information a from desired direction, b from undesired direction

3.1 System Model

As shown in Fig. 3, an N-element FDA with frequency increment Df are mixed with the
phase shifters. When the phase shifters are altered, the steering function is also changed
with respect to the value of the angle and range. The difference between the conventional
DM transmitter and the DM-FDA transmitter is that the later uses a frequency increment to
generate an array factor as a function of the angle and range. This property potentially
allows the transmitter to steer the beam for the desired angle and range position. Therefore,
this approach offers a possibility to prevent the eavesdroppers from intercepting the
transmitted information on both the angle and range dimensions.
According to the FDA principle [13], the radiated frequency from the nth element is
fn f0 n  Df ; n 0; 1; . . .; N  1 1
where f0 is the radar carrier frequency and N is the number of the array elements.

Fig. 3 Illustration of our proposed DM-FDA scheme

123
Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array For 2683

Taking the first element as the reference, for a given far-field point (h, r), the phase
difference of the signals between the reference and the nth element is [14]
un 2pf0 nd sin h=c 2nDfr=c 2
where c0 is the speed of light and d is the element spacing.
When the varying phase shifters Dun is added, the final phase u0n can be expressed as
u0n p sin h=c 4pnDfr=c Dun 3
It implies that the radiation pattern depends on not only the angle h, but also the range r. Df
and the desired location r; h are prior known. The remaining task is to optimize the Dun
to ensure the security performance.

3.2 Optimization for Specific Symbols

Quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) is assumed in this paper. Each pair of symbols is
optimally designed. Herein, we employed genetic algorithm (GA) to determine the phase
shifters, since GA has been widely used in various applications such as nulling [15] and
sidelobe reduction [16, 17].
The GA is expected to minimize the cost function, which is the sum of the square
magnitudes between desired signal constellation points and transmitted points in a con-
stellation diagram. If we take bits 11 which is located at the first quadrant as an example,
the normalized energy for the desired modulation symbol in the desired direction is
Edesired expj1=4p 4
The calculated energy modulation symbol can be defined as
N h
X i
2pDfr
Ecalculated ejp sin h c n1D/n 5
n1

Accordingly, the cost function can be expressed as

h 1 i2
F ej4p  Ecalculated 6

Obviously, for the QPSK signal, each symbol can be calculated in the same way as (6). The
only difference is that, the desired modulation symbol in (4) is expj3=4p for bits 01,
expj5=4p for bits 10 and expj7=4p for bits 00.
The processing procedure of this optimization algorithm is detailed in Table 2.

Table 2 Procedure of the optimization algorithm

Input: N, d, c, f0 , r and h

Step 1 Initialize the phase shifts D/n from the set [0 360], and set the generation g = 1
Step 2 Encode the units of population and Compute the cost function (6)
Step 3 ^ by min F
Select the optimal individual D/ n
Step 4 Apply the genetic algorithm iteratively to create next generation, update g = g ? 1
Step 5 if g\ the max iteration times G, go to the step 2
Step 6 ^
Otherwise, stop. Get the finally optimal D/ n

123
2684 J. Xiong et al.

In doing so, once the optimal D/n is obtained, it can be applied for each phase shifts to
ensure the secure communications.

3.3 BER Metrics

BER criterion can be used to evaluate the effect of various distortions on communications.
The way to calculate BER is referred to the closed-form equation (7) in [18], which is
based on which quadrant the constellation points are located in.
2 Error11 3
z
}|1
0s {
6 7
1 6 @ l21  sin2 bA 7
BERDM  6 6 Q Error 01 Error 00 Error 7
10 7 7
4 4 N0 =2 5

where Q is the scaled complementary error function, N0 =2 is the noise power spectral
q
l2 sin2 b
density with a Gaussian channel and the Errorxy is obtained by Q 1 N0 =2 (i = 2, 3, 4)
when the transmitted symbol xy is constrained within its quadrant. Parameter bi is the
minimum angle between the transmitted symbol vector which has the length li and the IQ
axes. Otherwise, 0.5 is assigned to Errorxy , which will be located at other quadrants due to
the constellation distortion.

4 Simulation Results

We consider an uniformly linear FDA with the carrier frequency f0 10 GHz, the fre-
quency increment Df 3 kHz and N = 4 antennas spaced by d c=2f0 . The desired
receiver is assumed to be located at R1 = 10 km and h 150 . Quadrature phase shift
keyed (QPSK) modulation is considered in all the simulations. The number of generations
G = 100 and each has M = 100 units in GA.

4.1 Simulate Two Assumptions

4.1.1 Eavesdroppers Located at the Same Distance But Different Direction

with the Desired Receiver

When the eavesdroppers are distributed at the same distance R1 = 10 km with the desired
receiver, the magnitude and phase patterns in term of angle dimension are illustrated in
Fig. 4.
It is noted that both the phase and amplitude vary with transmitted symbols. The QPSK
relative phase displacement and magnitude alignment occur only along the desired
direction 150 which is shown by the red dashed line, while the constellation points go
through complicated distortion at all undesired directions. Thus, our proposed method
achieve security in the angle dimension like traditional DM transmitter.

123
Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array For 2685

(a) (b) 20
150
10
100

Magnitude (dB)
50 0
Phase

0 10

50 20
100
30
150

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 40 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Angle () Angle ()

Fig. 4 Far-field a phase patterns in angle dimension, b magnitude pattern in angle dimension. And the
settings of the phase shifts is in Table 3 (blue line for symbol 11 in the DM array; red line for symbol
01 in the DM array; cyan line for symbol 00 in the DM array; green line for symbol 10 in the DM
array; dashed line for the 150 direction). (Color figure online)

Table 3 Paramenters of phase

Phase shifters
shifts used for secure QPSK
transmission Transmitted symbols n = 1 () n = 2 () n = 3 () n = 4 ()

Bit 11 161 69 48 299

Bit 01 111 288 343 162
Bit 10 284 193 134 100
Bit 00 296 331 154 128

4.1.2 Eavesdroppers Located at the Same Direction But Different Distance

with the Desired Receiver

When the eavesdroppers are distributed along the same direction h 150 with the desired
receiver, the security performance in range dimension can be seen in Fig. 5.
From Fig. 5, the results validate that the constellation points are well preserved along
the desired range R1 = 10 km, whereas neither phase nor amplitude has no QPSK relative
displacement at undesired ranges.

4.2 BER Performance

Using (7), we calculate the BER performance of the QPSK for our proposed system with
SNR = 10 dB. The BER curve for the conventional beamforming system is also illustrated
for comparison.
It can be noticed that the BERs vs SNR performance varies in all spatial directions as
shown in Fig. 6. Since the BER curve is mostly confined around the selected communi-
cation direction with a lower BER side-lobe regions than the conventional method, our
proposed method achieves much more secure performance in angle dimension. Further-
more, the conventional method gains the lower BER along some unselected communi-
cation directions, like 030 in this example, while our proposed method almost has a
high BER at all the unselected directions.

123
2686 J. Xiong et al.

(a) 200 (b) 10

150
0

Magnitude (dB)
100
10
Phase

50

0 20
50
30
100
40
150

200 50
0.5 1 1.5 2 0.5 1 1.5 2
4 4
Range (m) x 10 Range (m) x 10

Fig. 5 Far-field a phase patterns in range dimension, b magnitude pattern in range dimension. And the
settings of the phase shifts is in Table 3 (blue line for symbol 11 in the DM array; red line for symbol
01 in the DM array; cyan line for symbol 00 in the DM array; green line for symbol 10 in the DM
array; dashed line for the 10 km distance). (Color figure online)

0
10

2
10

4
10
BER

6
10
BERConv
BERDMFDA
8
10

10
10
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Angle ()

Fig. 6 BER in angle dimension

Figure 7 shows the performance of BER in range dimension. And the lowest BER of
our proposed method is higher than the lowest BER of the conventional method. This could
be because the beamforming technology can guarantee the maximum signal power at
desired direction which DM method cannot achieve that. However, our proposed method
achieves DM in range dimension while the traditional method only has angle dependent
modulation. Hence, this is important feature of our proposed DM FDA which can be
potentially useful for point to point secure communication applications.

123
Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array For 2687

0
10

2
10

4
10
BER
BER

Conv
BERDMFDA
6
10

8
10

10
10
0.5 1 1.5 2
4
Range (m) x 10

Fig. 7 BER in range dimension

4.3 Error Zone

Error zone is simulated for a comparison between our proposed DM-FDA and traditional
DM-PA in [16].
Figure 8 indicates the distribution of error. Without considering the power attenuation
with the distance, error zone is entirely angle dependent in DM-PA as shown in Fig. 8a.
Nevertheless, In Fig. 8b, DM-FDA offers both angle and range dependent error zone.
Meanwhile, the BER is lowest at the desired location (10 km, 150), which means the
desired receiver can recover the information without being affected.

Fig. 8 ErrorZone for a DM-PA, b our proposed DM-FDA

123
2688 J. Xiong et al.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, FDA and DM were jointly exploited for point to point secure communica-
tions, which provide physical layer security in both the angle and range dimensions. When
the position of the eavesdropper is not entirely the same as the desired receiver, the
proposed approach can provide some extent of data protection to defense the unwanted
interceptors. Note that, this work only considered how to optimize the phase shifters. In
future work, we plan to investigate the reconfigurable antenna elements, which can replace
the phase shifters in the DM array. Designing the proper waveform for FDA transmitter is
also a future work.

Acknowledgements The work described in this paper was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grant 61571081, the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University
under Grant NCET-12-0095 and Sichuan Province Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars under
Grant 2013JQ0003.

References
1. Trappe, W. (2015). The challenges facing physical layer security. IEEE Communications Magazine, 53,
1620.
2. Wyner, A. D. (1975). The wire-tap channel. Bell System Technical Journal, 54, 13551387.
3. Csiszar, I., & Korner, J. (1978). Broadcast channels with confidental messages. IEEE Transaction on
Information Theory, 24, 339348.
4. Goel, S., & Negi, R. (2008). Guaranteeing secrecy using artificial noise. IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communications, 7, 21802189.
5. Torrieri, D. (2015). Principles of spread-spectrum communication systems. Berlin: Springer.
6. Sharma, G., Bala, S., & Verma, A. K. (2010). Security in wireless sensor networks using frequency
hopping. International Journal of Computer Applications, 12, 2428.
7. Khisti, A., & Wornell, G. M. (2010). Secure transmission with multiple antennas I: The MISOME
wiretap channel. IEEE Transaction on Information Theory, 56, 20883104.
8. Mukherjee, A. (2011). Robust beamforming for security in MIMO wiretap channels with imperfect CSI.
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 59, 351361.
9. Daly, M. P., & Bernhard, J. T. (2009). Directional modulation technique for phased arrays. IEEE
Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 57, 26332640.
10. Daly, M. P., Daly, E. L., & Bernhard, J. T. (2010). Demonstration of directional modulation using a
phased array. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 58, 15451550.
11. Saeed, S., Qureshi, I. M., & Basit, A. (2015). Cognitive null steering in frequency diverse array radars.
International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies, 2015, 19.
12. Ding, Y., Zhang, J., & Fusco, V. (2015). Frequency diverse array OFDM transmitter for secure wireless
communication. Electronics Letters, 51, 13741376.
13. Antonik, P., Wicks, M. C., Griffiths, H. D., & Baker, C. J. (2006). Frequency diverse array radars. In
Proceedings of the IEEE radar conference, Verona, NY (pp. 215217).
14. Wang, W.-Q., So, H. C., & Shao, H. Z. (2014). Nonuniform frequency diverse array for range-angle
imaging of targets. IEEE Sensors Journal, 14(8), 24692476.
15. Haupt, R. L. (1997). Phase-only adaptive nulling with a genetic algorithm. IEEE Transactions on
Antennas and Propagation, 45, 10091015.
16. Haupt, R. L. (1994). Thinned arrays using genetic algorithms. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and
Propagation, 42, 993999.
17. Yan, K. K., & Lu, Y. (1997). Sidelobe reduction in array-pattern synthesis using genetic algorithm.
IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 45, 11171122.
18. Ding, Y., & Fusco, V. F. (2014). Establishing metrics for assessing the performance of directional
modulation systems. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 62, 27452755.

123
Directional Modulation Using Frequency Diverse Array For 2689

Jie Xiong received the B.E. degree in Communication Engineering

from Hunan University, Hunan, China, in 2009, and the M.E. degree
from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
(UESTC) in 2012. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in
Information and Communication Engineering from University of
Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in 2015. His
research interests include radar signal processing and wireless
communication.

Shaddrack Yaw Nusenu received the B.E. degree in Electronic and

Communication Engineering from All Nations University College
(Ghana) in 2009 and received his M.Tech. degree in Communication
Systems from SRM University (India) in 2011. He is affiliated to
Koforidua Polytechnic and currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
(UESTC).He is a member of International Association of Engineers
(IAENG) and Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Ghana.
His research interests include wireless sensor networks, wireless
communication and radar systems.

Wen-Qin Wang received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering

from Shandong University, Shandong, China, in 2002, the M.E. and
Ph.D. degrees in Information and Communication Engineering from
the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
(UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2005 and 2010, respectively. From
March 2005 to June 2007, he was with the National Key Laboratory of
Microwave Imaging Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China. Since September 2007, he has been with the School of
Communication and Information Engineering, UESTC, where he is
currently a Professor. From May 2011 to May 2012, he was a visiting
scholar at Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ, USA. From December
2012 to December 2013, he was a Hong Kong scholar at City
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Dr. Wang was the recipient of
Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, Hong Kong Scholar and
UESTC 100-Talent Program Award. He is the editorial board
members of five international journals.

123