Secure Wireless Communication and Power Transfer

Secure wireless communication and power transfer encompass the integration of information transmission and energy delivery over radio‐frequency links while safeguarding sensitive data against eavesdropping and malicious interference. Central to this field is simultaneous wireless information and power transfer, whereby devices harvest energy from ambient or dedicated radio signals while decoding embedded messages. Security at the physical layer exploits channel randomness, directional transmission and cooperative strategies—such as beamforming, jamming and relaying—to enhance confidentiality without imposing prohibitive computational overheads. Recent advances have focused on multi‐antenna systems capable of shaping signal and noise distributions, robust designs that tolerate imperfect channel knowledge, and cognitive architectures that adapt transmit strategies under spectrum and power constraints. These developments underpin emerging applications in Internet of Things networks, unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous sensors, where perpetual operation and data integrity are essential.

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Secure Wireless Communication and Power Transfer publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in secure wireless communication and power transfer across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT): A technique enabling devices to harvest energy and decode data from the same radio‐frequency signal.

Beamforming: The spatial filtering of a multi‐antenna array to direct signal energy toward intended receivers and away from eavesdroppers.

Artificial Noise (AN): Deliberately generated interference transmitted alongside useful signals to degrade an eavesdropper’s reception without affecting legitimate users.

Channel State Information (CSI): Knowledge of the propagation environment used to adapt transmission parameters for performance and security.

Semidefinite Relaxation (SDR): A convex optimisation technique that approximates non‐convex beamforming problems by relaxing rank constraints on covariance matrices.

Amplify‐and‐Forward (AF) Relaying: A cooperative communication strategy in which relay nodes amplify received signals before retransmission to extend coverage or enhance robustness.

Cognitive Radio Network (CRN): A wireless system that dynamically adjusts spectrum access and transmission power to coexist with primary users while optimising its own performance.

References

1. To Harvest and Jam: A Paradigm of Self-Sustaining Friendly Jammers for Secure AF Relaying. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2015).
2. Masked Beamforming in the Presence of Energy-Harvesting Eavesdroppers. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (2014).
3. Secrecy Performance Maximization for Underlay CR Networks with an Energy Harvesting Jammer. Sensors (2021).