We investigate the secrecy transmission of uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with the aid of energy harvesting (EH) jammers. During each time frame, communication is divided into two phases. At the first phase, the base station (BS) transfers wireless power to EH receivers (EHRs). At the second phase, users perform uplink NOMA transmission to BS, while one of EHRs is selected as a friendly jammer that uses the energy harvested from the previous phase to emit the artificial noise for confusing the eavesdropper. In terms of the requirement of channel state information (CSI), we propose three friendly EH jammer selection schemes, namely random EH jammer selection (REJS) scheme without the requirement of any CSI, maximal EH jammer selection (MEJS) scheme with the CSI between BS and each EHR, and optimal EH jammer selection (OEJS) scheme where both the CSIs from BS to EHRs and from EHRs to the eavesdropper need to be known. Analytical closed-form expressions for the connection outage probability (COP), secrecy outage probability (SOP) and effective secrecy throughput (EST) are derived to evaluate the system performance achieved by the proposed schemes, respectively. Also, the asymptotic analysis is provided to gain further insights. The analytical and numerical results indicate that the proposed schemes can realize better secrecy performance than conventional scheme without an EH jammer. Both the secrecy diversity orders of the REJS and MEJS schemes are one while the OEJS scheme can achieve a full secrecy diversity order. Furthermore, owing to the impact of connection outage, the three schemes converge to the same EST floor with the increase of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

This article studies the reliable and secure communications for a wireless-powered non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. A joint artificial noise and power allocation (JAP) scheme is proposed to ensure the reliability and security for the system. Based on the JAP scheme, analytical closed-form expressions for connection outage probability (COP), secrecy outage probability (SOP) and effective secrecy throughput (EST) are derived, respectively, to evaluate the performance of the security-required user. Also, the asymptotic SOP and EST are analyzed to gain further insights. The numerical results demonstrate the correctness of the theoretic analysis and indicate that the proposed JAP scheme can achieve a better performance than the benchmark schemes.

This letter studies physical layer security (PLS) of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided wireless powered communication (WPC) system in the presence of a passive eavesdropper, and proposes three secure IRS-WPC modes. In mode-I, the IRS is deployed between hybrid access point (HAP) and wireless user (U) for co-located power station (PS) and access point (AP). In mode-II, the IRS is deployed between AP and U for separate PS and AP, while in mode-III, the IRS is deployed between PS and U for separate PS and AP. For each mode, the optimal phase shift is designed to maximize the reception of energy and information at legitimate receiver. The accurate and asymptotic ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC) of each mode is analyzed, and various new closed-form expressions are obtained. The results reveal that mode-I and mode-II significantly outperform benchmark without IRS, while mode-III outperforms benchmark without IRS under lower transmission power or small number of IRS elements.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) advances by leaps and bounds, a multitude of devices are becoming interconnected, marking the onset of an era where everything is connected. While this growth opens up opportunities for novel products and applications, it also leads to increased energy reliance on IoT devices, creating a significant bottleneck that hinders sustainable progress. Backscatter communication (BackCom), as a low-power and passive communication technology, emerges as one of the promising solutions to this energy impasse by reducing the manufacturing cost and energy consumption for IoT devices. However, BackCom systems also face some challenges, such as complex interference environments, including the direct-link interference (DLI) and the mutual interference (MI) between tags, which severely disrupt the efficiency of BackCom networks. Moreover, the double-path fading is another major issue that leads to a degraded system performance. To fully unleash the potential of BackComs, the purpose of this paper is to furnish a comprehensive review of existing solutions with a focus on addressing these challenges, offering an insightful analysis and comparison of various strategies. Specifically, we begin by introducing the preliminaries for BackCom, including its history, operating mechanisms, main architectures, etc., providing a foundational understanding of this field. Then, we delve into fundamental issues related to BackCom systems, such as solutions for the DLI, the MI, and the double-path fading. This paper thoroughly provides state-of-the-art advances for each case, particularly highlighting how the latest innovations in theoretical approaches and system design can strategically address these challenges. Finally, we explore emerging trends and challenges in BackComs by forecasting potential technological advancements and providing insights and guidelines for navigating the intricate landscape of future communication needs in a rapidly evolving IoT ecosystem.

Nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted semi-grant-free transmission admits grant-free users to access the channels otherwise solely occupied by grant-based users, and has been recently attracting considerable attention in terms of accommodating massive connectivity and reducing access delay in Internet of Things (IoT). In this work, we investigate the security of semi-grant-free NOMA transmission in the presence of passive and active eavesdropping attacks. In particular, for the scenario-I with strong grant-based user and weak grant-free users, the scenario-I-based maximal user scheduling (IbMUS) and scenario-I-based optimal user scheduling (IbOUS) schemes are proposed to combat the passive and active eavesdropping, respectively. For the scenario-II with weak grant-based user and strong grant-free users, two parallel schemes, namely, the scenario-II-based maximal user scheduling (IIbMUS) and scenario-II-based optimal user scheduling (IIbOUS) schemes, are proposed to combat the passive and active eavesdropping, respectively. These proposed schemes enhance the security by scheduling a grant-free user with maximal main channel capacity/maximal secrecy capacity to access the NOMA channel on the premise of ensuring the grant-based user’s Quality of Service. Based on these proposed schemes, the exact secrecy outage probability (SOP) are analyzed to evaluate the system performance. The simulation results validates the theoretic analysis and the superiority of the proposed schemes. The IbOUS and IIbOUS schemes can achieve better performance than the IbMUS and IIbMUS schemes owing to the use of active eavesdropper’s channel state information (CSI). The SOP achieved by the proposed schemes can be further improved with the increasing number of grant-free users and decreasing target rate (or target secrecy rate).

We investigate covert wireless communication in a multi-antenna relay network, where the relay transmits its own covert message to the destination when assisting the source’s information delivery, and the source acts as a warden to detect this covert transmission. Based on whether the channel state information of the relay-destination link is available at the source or not, we propose two relay beamforming schemes, namely random beamforming and maximum-ratio transmission (MRT) beamforming schemes, to guarantee the reception reliability at the destination while deliberately introducing uncertainty to the source to degrade its detection. Under the worst-case covert communication scenario where the source is capable of optimizing its detection threshold, analytical expressions for the minimum detection error probability achieved by each of the proposed schemes are derived to evaluate the detection limits of the source. By utilizing the above analytical results as the covertness constraint, an optimization problem of transmit power allocation for each scheme is formulated and solved to maximize the covert rate. The impact of imperfect channel state information on the covert communication performance is also examined. Simulation results are performed to confirm the accuracy of the derived analytical results and quantify the communication covertness enhancement of the proposed schemes. Our results also show that the MRT beamforming scheme offers a higher covert rate than that of the random beamforming scheme, especially when the covertness constraint becomes loose and/or the number of antennas at the relay increases.