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Radioengineering

Computational Analysis of Secrecy Outage in Energy-Harvesting Multi-Backscatter IoT Networks

S. Q. Nguyen, M.-H. H., L.-D. Huynh, T. N. Nguyen

Published Oct 1, 2026• 0 citations

Abstract

This paper studies the secrecy outage performance (SOP) of an energy-harvesting multi-backscatter-device (BD) network in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. A dedicated radio-frequency source illuminates multiple BDs employing power splitting (PS), and the BD with the strongest source-to-BD channel is opportunistically selected for confidential backscatter transmission. Unlike conventional secure backscatter communication models that assume an always-active BD, we explicitly impose a practical circuit-activation constraint requiring the selected BD to harvest sufficient energy before transmission. Consequently, the selected source-to-BD channel jointly determines circuit availability and the strengths of the legitimate and wiretap cascaded links. A tractable analytical framework for the SOP is developed by accounting for activation failure, secrecy-rate outage, opportunistic selection, PS, and Rayleigh fading. Since the activation constraint yields a non-zero lower integration bound, we derive a finite-sum approximation using the binomial expansion and Gaussian -Chebyshev quadrature. We further obtain a high-signal-to-noise-ratio expression that reveals a non-zero secrecy outage floor caused by the proportional scaling of the legitimate and eavesdropping links. Monte Carlo simulations validate the analysis and show that increasing the number of candidate BDs improves secrecy performance, particularly in energy-limited regimes, but with diminishing returns. The results also reveal the trade-off between circuit activation and backscattered-signal strength and quantify the effects of the activation threshold, PS coefficient, and channel conditions on secrecy performance. Keywords: Energy harvesting, backscatter communication, physical layer security, secrecy outage probability, power splitting

DOI: 10.13164/re.2026.0487

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m

fading channels. Our analysis delineates the joint impact of the transmit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), fading severity, channel parameters, the number of eavesdroppers, and additionally demonstrates how energy conversion efficiency of the harvesting circuit influences secrecy behavior in practice. The analytical findings are further validated through Monte-Carlo simulations, which confirm the accuracy of the derived expressions. The findings demonstrate that strategic system design, particularly strengthening the main channel in a proper way, improving harvesting duration, and ensuring efficient energy conversion, can effectively mitigate eavesdropping risks and ensure confidentiality. This work provides critical aspects for securing future energy constrained Internet of Things (IoT) networks where short packets and robust data privacy are essential.

In this paper, the secrecy performance of a wireless-powered multi-antenna relaying system, which consists of a source

\boldsymbol {(S)}

, a destination

\boldsymbol {(D)}

,

\boldsymbol {N (N>1)}

relays (Rs), a power beacon

\boldsymbol {(B)}

, and an eavesdropper

\boldsymbol {(E)}

, is studied in the presence of imperfect channel state information at Rs. Both S and Rs are assumed to be with nonlinear energy harvesters, and harvest energy from radio-frequency signals from B through a time-switching harvesting scheme. Assuming Rs deploy decode-and-forward scheme, a general

\boldsymbol {K}

th best relay in terms of instantaneous secrecy capacity for S-R-D link is selected for information transmission. An analytical expression for secrecy outage probability (SOP), validated via Monte Carlo simulation, is derived when all channels experience independent Rayleigh fading. Numerical results show that a higher correlation coefficient between the estimated and real channel values leads to better SOP performance when the ratio of the channel gains of R-D and R-E links is in the high region for the first hop or in the low-to-medium region for the second hop. Furthermore, there exists a special value of the saturation threshold of the energy harvester at S or R, and SOP performance cannot be improved when the saturation threshold is beyond that value.

This paper studies the secrecy performance of an energy-harvesting relaying system in the presence of a dualuse source node and an eavesdropper.Specifically, the source has dual roles in the dual-hop communication: 1) to transmit confidential information in the first hop; 2) to generate jamming signal to interfere the eavesdropper in the second hop.Moreover, the multi-antenna relay deploys a power-splitting harvesting scheme to coordinate the information receiving and energy harvesting, and adopts maximal ratio combining technique to process the multiple copies of signals.Considering decode-andforward protocol and transmit antenna selection scheme, we derive an analytical expression for secrecy outage probability, and perform Monte Carlo simulation to validate the analysis.Analytical results show that the SOP performance with the dualuse source node can be effectively improved when the relaydestination channel does not have absolute advantage over the relay-eavesdropper channel.

In this paper, we study the secrecy performance of an energy-harvested relaying assisted free space optical-radio frequency (FSO-RF) network. In particular, a single-beam source sends an optical signal to a multi-aperture relay over an FSO channel, and then the relay converts it into an RF signal and adopts a decode-and-forward protocol to forward it to a multi-antenna destination under the wiretapping of a multi-antenna eavesdropper. We assume that the relay is power constrained, and it requires to harvest energy from a power beacon to assist the information transmission. It is also assumed that the FSO link and all RF links are subject to gamma-gamma fading with atmospheric turbulence and Rayleigh fading, respectively. Analytical expressions for secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity are derived. In addition, the asymptotic expression for SOP is obtained to present insight into secrecy performance at high signal-to-noise ratio regimes. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations verify the correctness of the theoretical derivations.

This paper investigates the physical-layer secure performance of a multi-power beacon-empowered wirelessly powered communication system in the surveillance of an external eavesdropper. Specifically, a limited-energy source harvests energy from multiple dedicated power beacons in the first time slot and reuses it to perform data transmission in the second time slot. However, its communication with the destination is wiretapped by a potentially idle untrusted user. Thus, to evaluate the secure performance of the considered system, we have derived closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) metric in terms of both exact and asymptotic aspects. Through these formulas, we then provide a series of numerical discussions on how to configure the number setting of the power beacon, the energy harvesting parameters as well as scheduling time to improve the SOP performance, where the Monte-Carlo simulation method is used to verify the developed mathematical framework.