Energy-Efficient Physical Layer Security for Wearable IoT Devices

This work proposes an energy-efficient Directional Modulation (DM) scheme for on-body Internet of Things (IoT) devices. DM performance is tested using a 5-port stacked-patch MIMO antenna under two scenarios: a free space case and using a four-layer human forearm phantom to simulate the user's wrist. It is demonstrated that the scheme achieves steerable secure transmissions across the entire horizontal plane. With a low Bit Error Rate (BER) of ${1.5\times10^{-5}}$ at the desired directions, eavesdroppers experience a high error rate of up to ${0.498}$. Furthermore, this work investigates the DM performance using a subset of the stacked patches in the MIMO antenna, revealing that some combinations achieve a low BER performance using a lower antenna profile, albeit high side-lobes of BER${<10^{-2}}$ seen outside the desired region. Overall, the solution is proposed as a good candidate to enable secure wireless communications in emerging wearable IoT devices that are subject to size and energy constraints.