Defeating Eavesdroppers with Ambient Backscatter Communications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-power anti-eavesdropping method using ambient backscatter communication, where secret info is transmitted via backscattered signals, making eavesdropping extremely difficult without extra energy or computation.

Contribution

It proposes a novel security technique leveraging ambient backscatter to transmit secret information without additional power or computational resources.

Findings

Significantly enhances communication security against eavesdroppers.

Does not require extra power or active RF signals.

Effective in simulation for protecting transmitted messages.

Abstract

Unlike conventional anti-eavesdropping methods that always require additional energy or computing resources (e.g., in friendly jamming and cryptography-based solutions), this work proposes a novel anti-eavesdropping solution that comes with mostly no extra power nor computing resource requirement. This is achieved by leveraging the ambient backscatter communications in which secret information can be transmitted by backscattering it over ambient radio signals. Specifically, the original message at the transmitter is first encoded into two parts: (i) active transmit message and (ii) backscatter message. The active transmit message is then transmitted by using the conventional wireless transmission method while the backscatter message is transmitted by backscattering it on the active transmit signals via an ambient backscatter tag. As the backscatter tag does not generate any active RF signals, it is intractable for the eavesdropper to detect the backscatter message. Therefore, secret information, e.g., secret key for decryption, can be carried by the backscattered message, making the adversary unable to decode the original message. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed solution can significantly enhance security protection for communication systems.