Robust and Secure Near-Field Communication via Curved Caustic Beams

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Shicong, Yu, Xianghao, Schober, Robert
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915971476750336
author Liu, Shicong
Yu, Xianghao
Schober, Robert
author_facet Liu, Shicong
Yu, Xianghao
Schober, Robert
contents Near-field beamfocusing with extremely large aperture arrays can effectively enhance physical layer security. Nevertheless, even small estimation errors of the eavesdropper's location may cause a pronounced focal shift, resulting in a severe degradation of the secrecy rate. In this letter, we propose a physics-informed robust beamforming strategy that leverages the electromagnetic (EM) caustic effect for near-field physical layer security provisioning, which can be implemented via phase shifts only. Specifically, we partition the transmit array into caustic and focusing subarrays to simultaneously bypass the potential eavesdropping region and illuminate the legitimate user, thereby significantly improving the robustness against the localization error of eavesdroppers. Moreover, by leveraging the connection between the phase gradient and the EM wave departing angle, we derive the corresponding piece-wise closed-form array phase profile for the subarrays. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves up to an 80% reduction of the worst-case eavesdropping rate for a localization error of 0.25 m, highlighting its superiority for providing robust and secure communication.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_24077
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robust and Secure Near-Field Communication via Curved Caustic Beams
Liu, Shicong
Yu, Xianghao
Schober, Robert
Information Theory
Signal Processing
Near-field beamfocusing with extremely large aperture arrays can effectively enhance physical layer security. Nevertheless, even small estimation errors of the eavesdropper's location may cause a pronounced focal shift, resulting in a severe degradation of the secrecy rate. In this letter, we propose a physics-informed robust beamforming strategy that leverages the electromagnetic (EM) caustic effect for near-field physical layer security provisioning, which can be implemented via phase shifts only. Specifically, we partition the transmit array into caustic and focusing subarrays to simultaneously bypass the potential eavesdropping region and illuminate the legitimate user, thereby significantly improving the robustness against the localization error of eavesdroppers. Moreover, by leveraging the connection between the phase gradient and the EM wave departing angle, we derive the corresponding piece-wise closed-form array phase profile for the subarrays. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves up to an 80% reduction of the worst-case eavesdropping rate for a localization error of 0.25 m, highlighting its superiority for providing robust and secure communication.
title Robust and Secure Near-Field Communication via Curved Caustic Beams
topic Information Theory
Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24077