Physical Layer Secrecy Performance of RF-EH Networks with Multiple Eavesdroppers

In this study, we investigate the physical layer secrecy performance of RF energy harvesting (EH) networks over Rayleigh fading channels. The RF–EH system considered here consists of one power transfer station, one source, one destination, and multiple passive eavesdroppers. The source harvests energy from the power transfer station and transmits the information to the destination by using a time switching-based relaying protocol. The eavesdroppers try to extract the transmitted information without an active attack. By using the statistical characteristics of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the exact closed-form expressions of the existence probability of the secrecy capacity and the secrecy outage probability are derived. Further, we analyze the secrecy performance of the system with respect to various system parameters, such as the location of the system elements and the number of eavesdroppers. Finally, the equivalent Monte Carlo simulation results are provided to confirm the correctness of our calculations.