Effects of Co-channel Interference on RIS Empowered Wireless Networks amid Multiple Eavesdropping Attempts

Abstract: This letter is concerned with the secrecy performance of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS)-aided wireless networks in the existence of multiple interferers towards the destination. To be more precise, we analyze three critical issues in the design of secure RIS-assisted networks: 1) How do interferers affect the performance of secure wireless networks? 2) Which of the two groups of eavesdroppers (i.e., colluding and non-colluding) is more severe? 3) How can RIS improve network confidentiality? To do so, we develop the analytical expression of secrecy outage probability in closed-form, along with asymptotic analysis at high signal-to-noise ratio regime to better understand the impacts of different system parameters on secrecy performance. Finally, we validate our analytical results using a computer based Monte-Carlo simulation.