Energy- and Cost-Efficient Physical Layer Security in the Era of IoT: The Role of Interference

IoT is emerging as the future evolution of the Internet, aiming to provide connectivity for everyone and everything. Since IoT is expected to carry important and private information, a high level of PHY security is critical for wireless communications in IoT, as a complement for traditional security techniques that are employed at high layers. In this overview, we examine the recent interest in energy-efficient and cost-efficient PHY solutions for securing downlink IoT transmission through interference exploitation. This exciting line of research departs from conventional interference cancellation, and judiciously employs the inherent interference as a useful element for LUs while obstructing the eavesdropping of information. We first discuss the concept of CI, and then elaborate the fundamental CI signal design that employs the traditionally undesired interference as a constructive element to LUs while ensuring they are destructive to potential Eves. Subsequently, we illustrate several low-hardware-cost techniques to inherit the advantage of CI in an energy- and cost-efficient manner, from the perspective of HBF and DM. This family of techniques brings a disruptive vision of interference management for securing wireless communications with an eye on low-cost and hardware-constrained devices tailored for IoT systems.