Use of Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces For and Against Wireless Communication Security

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS) have been perceived as a promising and innovative technology for 5G and next-generation communications, which offers the flexibility of re-configuring a wireless communication environment as desired. Their attractive benefits include low cost, energy-saving, and no interference to others, and hence yield high-performance communications. On the other hand, malicious users may take advantage of IRS to conduct attacks such as eavesdropping and jamming. The integration of IRS into 5G and beyond networks will open up new opportunities from the security perspective, which has not been thoroughly studied. This paper presents the recent accomplishment of the use of IRS-based systems for secure wireless communication by grouping into two categories: secure communication utilizing IRS and security threats using IRS. Representative use cases are proposed, e.g., using IRS to enhance Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for legitimate users, reducing malicious signals via IRS, and increasing SNR for malicious users. Extensive simulations are conducted for these use cases. The results validate the effectiveness of using IRS to increase or decrease SNR and enhance to improve secure communication or threaten the communication.

I. Introduction

We have witnessed the rapid evolution of wireless communication networks and their wide applications in virtually every sector of our daily lives including autonomous driving, real-time surveillance, smart city, and intelligent transportation. Beyond doubt, 5G and Next Generation (NextG) wireless networks will continue to significantly contribute to our important societal infrastructures. To successfully provide critical and essential services for these infrastructures, security is required to ensure network performance, which has drawn considerable attention. New emerging technologies (e.g., Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS) and blockchain) have opened up new horizons and could be integrated into developing secure and intelligent 5G and NextG systems.