Chaotic information metasurface for direct physical-layer secure communication

Jia Wen Xu, Menglin Wei, Lei Zhang, Vincenzo Galdi (), Lianlin Li () and Tie Jun Cui ()
Additional contact information
Jia Wen Xu: Peking University
Menglin Wei: Peking University
Lei Zhang: Southeast University
Vincenzo Galdi: University of Sannio
Lianlin Li: Peking University
Tie Jun Cui: Southeast University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Wireless information security has garnered significant attention with the ever-increasingly widespread adoption of broadcast wireless communication systems. The utilization of chaotic systems for secure communication methods has become a prominent area of research, given their inherent advantages of high randomness and sensitivity to initial conditions. However, existing chaos-based approaches usually require legitimate receivers to have access to the chaotic system’s parameters as decryption keys, often involving complex operations at the digital level. In this study, we present a novel physical-layer secure communication scheme that relies on an information metasurface whose local reflection properties are dynamically modulated by chaotic patterns. Our approach introduces a “one-time” mixed-pattern generation method that concurrently ensures communication security and transmission efficiency. More importantly, our proposed scheme removes the stringent requirement for decryption operations, enabling the legitimate receiver to directly access the original data while illegitimate receivers receive chaotically encrypted signals. This approach demonstrates significant merits, encompassing high security, a streamlined architecture, and intrinsic backward compatibility. Our innovative strategy provides a renewed perspective for advancing next-generation secure wireless communication systems.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60725-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-60725-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60725-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().