Fundamentals for IoT networks: secure and low-latency communications

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) has several salient characteristics that differentiate it from existing wireless networking architectures. These include the deployment of very large numbers of (possibly) low-complexity terminals; the need for low-latency, short-packet communications (e.g., to support automation); light or no infrastructure; and primary applications of data gathering, inference and control. These characteristics have motivated the development of new fundamentals that can provide insights into the limits of communication in this regime. This paper discusses two issues in this context, namely security and low-latency, through the respective lenses of physical layer security and finite-blocklength information theory.