Secrecy Performance of Multicasting Networks over Nakagami-0.5 Fading Channels Employing MRC Diversity

This paper investigates the role of the Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC) diversity scheme in enhancing security for multicast communications over a Nakagami-0.5 fading channel in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. The considered scenario involves a singleantenna transmitter communicating confidentially with multiple legitimate receivers, while multiple eavesdroppers attempt to intercept the transmission. Closed-form analytical expressions are derived for the probability of non-zero secrecy multicast capacity and the secure outage probability, providing a theoretical framework to evaluate the secrecy performance. The analysis highlights the impact of critical system parameters, including the number of legitimate receivers, the number of eavesdroppers, and the number of antennas employed at both legitimate receivers and eavesdroppers. By employing MRC, which coherently combines signals from multiple antennas to maximize the received signal-to-noise ratio, the study demonstrates significant improvements in the secrecy performance of multicast systems. The findings contribute valuable insights into designing more secure multicast communication networks in the presence of severe fading and adversarial interception.