Analysis of a generalized multi-tag, multi-antenna ambient backscatter with mobile nodes: A physical layer security perspective

Ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) has recently attracted a lot of attention as a solution for next-generation internet of things (IoT) applications due to its capability to interact with peer devices with extremely little power usage (in μW). Security being a major concern in IoT applications, we look at the AmBC system from a physical layer security standpoint. In this paper, we focus on a realistic scenario in which numerous tags, a multi-antenna reader, and a multi-antenna eavesdropper are present, and the nodes are in motion concerning each other. The influence of speed, estimation error, number of antennas at nodes, and number of tags on the AmBC system's secrecy performance in terms of secrecy outage probability and intercept probability is investigated. Finally, the theoretical findings are supported with Monte-Carlo simulations.