Performance of wiretap Rayleigh fading channels under statistical delay constraints

In this paper, we investigate the performance of the wiretap Rayleigh fading channel in the presence of statistical delay constraints. We invoke tools from stochastic network calculus to derive probabilistic bounds on the delay. This method requires a statistical characterization of the wiretap fading service process, which we derive in closed form. We then validate these analytical bounds via simulations. Interestingly, the analysis of the wiretap fading channel reveals close structural similarities with the interference channel in terms of service process characterization, which is derived in our prior work. In our numerical evaluations, we show that the delay performance of the wiretap fading channel is in particular sensitive to bursty arrival processes due to the high variance of the service process.