The Internet of Things (IoT) integrates various sensors, objects and smart nodes that can communicate with each other without human intervention. The objects/things function autonomously in connection with other objects. IoT nodes are capable of delivering lightweight data, accessing and authorizing cloud-based resources for collecting and extracting data and making decisions by analysing collected data.

The emergence of IoT has led to pervasive connection of people, services, sensors and objects. IoT devices are now deployed in a wide range of applications that include agriculture applications, forest management, environmental applications, industrial applications, medical and healthcare applications, and military and security applications. Huge business opportunities that exist within IoT domain significantly increased the number of smart devices and intelligent, autonomous services offered in IoT networks.

One of the main challenges in IoT networks is the degree of security that can be achieved for the data exchanged among the distributed nodes. Security concerns become more significant in military and security applications, such as border monitoring, battlefield applications, and infrastructure protection. This is due to the need that exchanged data among nodes in these applications must be completely protected against eavesdroppers, and also, data senders must be continuously authenticated.

Although conventional encryption and authentication can achieve a high degree of resilience against eavesdroppers and attackers in wireless communications, they are rather inefficient in an IoT networks context.

PHYSEC aims at exploiting the physical-layer parameters to provide the different security aspects including confidentiality and authentication for IoT applications in military and security applications.