Secrecy Performance of WET-Enabled Vehicular Networks With Simple Non-Reconfigurable Metasurface-Coated Antennas

The security of a vehicular network utilizing wireless energy transfer in conjunction with near-field non-reconfigurable metasurface (NRMS) technology is analyzed in this article. The system involves an energy-limited mobile source that collects energy from a roadside power beacon using the time-switching (TS) scheme, after which it transmits signals to the destination while a passive eavesdropper tries to intercept them. Two cases of antennas are analyzed, namely, NRMS-coated and standalone antennas. We derived realistic statistical models for double Nakagami-m faded channels to model the direct and reflected signal paths influenced by the NRMS-coated antenna. Analytical expressions are derived for secrecy outage probability (SOP), asymptotic SOP, secrecy diversity order (SDO), average secrecy outage duration, and average secrecy outage rate. A SOP minimization problem is formed and solved to find the optimal TS ratio using particle swarm optimization. Monte Carlo simulations validated the accuracy of our analytical closed-form expressions. The NRMS-coated antenna reaches the same SOP with 10 dB less power and achieves a higher SDO based on its number of reflective elements compared to the standalone antenna.