Ensuring Security in Multi-Tag Backscatter Communication Systems

Authors

  • Zilin You China Southern Power Grid (China) image/svg+xml , Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Power System Network Security
  • Zhihong Liang China Southern Power Grid (China) image/svg+xml , Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Power System Network Security
  • Siliang Suo China Southern Power Grid (China) image/svg+xml , Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Power System Network Security
  • Lifeng Mai China Southern Power Grid (China) image/svg+xml , Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Power System Network Security
  • Qiaoling Lin China Southern Power Grid (China) image/svg+xml , Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Power System Network Security

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4108/eetsis.9691

Keywords:

Power data network, multi-tag, secure transmission, backscatter communication

Abstract

This paper studies the security performance of a multi-tag backscatter communication system, where a reader exchanges its information with multiple distributed tags in the presence of an eavesdropper. The system security performance is assessed using the secrecy outage probability (SOP), which quantifies the likelihood that the system secrecy capacity drops below a specified threshold. The paper provides a mathematical analysis on the communication links, considering Rayleigh fading, and investigates the effect of system monostatic and bistatic RFID configurations on the overall security. An optimal tag selection scheme is proposed to maximize the secrecy capacity by choosing the tag with the best link between the reader and the eavesdropper. Moreover, an analytical expression is derived for the system SOP, which incorporates the joint probability distributions of channel gains and the asymptotic SOP is provided as the signal-to-noise ratio increases. Simulation results are presented to verify the theoretical analysis, where the simulation results closely match the analytical predictions, confirming the accuracy of the proposed SOP analysis. Moreover, the asymptotic analysis offers an upper bound on the outage probability, consistent with theoretical analysis.

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Published

12-01-2026

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 6 (2025): EAI Endorsed Transactions on Scalable Information Systems

Section

AIGC - Empowered Covert Communications for Scalable Information Systems

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Zilin You, Zhihong Liang, Siliang Suo, Lifeng Mai, Qiaoling Lin

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This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, which permits copying, redistributing, remixing, transformation, and building upon the material in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.

How to Cite

1.
You Z, Liang Z, Suo S, Mai L, Lin Q. Ensuring Security in Multi-Tag Backscatter Communication Systems. EAI Endorsed Scal Inf Syst [Internet]. 2026 Jan. 12 [cited 2026 Jan. 12];12(6). Available from: https://publications.eai.eu/index.php/sis/article/view/9691