On the physical layer security capabilities of reconfigurable intelligent surface empowered wireless systems

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the physical layer security of RIS-enabled wireless systems, deriving key secrecy metrics under complex fading models to evaluate security performance.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive system model with mixture Gamma fading for RIS-based links and derives secrecy probabilities and rates considering different channel knowledge scenarios.

Findings

Derived probability of zero-secrecy capacity.

Calculated average secrecy rate for full and partial channel knowledge.

Provided analytical expressions for information leakage probabilities.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the physical layer security capabilities of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) empowered wireless systems. In more detail, we consider a general system model, in which the links between the transmitter (TX) and the RIS as well as the links between the RIS and the legitimate receiver are modeled as mixture Gamma (MG) random variables (RVs). Moreover, the link between the TX and eavesdropper is also modeled as a MG RV. Building upon this system model, we derive the probability of zero-secrecy capacity as well as the probability of information leakage. Finally, we extract the average secrecy rate for both cases of TX having full and partial channel state information knowledge.