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International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC)

A Comparative Secrecy Study of Flying and Ground Eavesdropping in UAV Based Communication Systems

Monir Abughalwa, Mazen O. Hasna

Published Oct 1, 2019• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we study the strictly positive secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the ergodic secrecy capacity of a wiretap unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system where a UAV transmitter (Alice) is trying to send a message to a ground receiver (Bob) while an eavesdropper (Eve) is attempting to eavesdrop on the legitimate communication link. We study the performance of the system in two cases, first, when Eve is on the ground and an Air-to-Ground channel model is adopted between Alice, Bob and Eve. In the second case, Eve is a UAV drone that is located at the same altitude as Alice and the channel between Alice and Eve follows an Air-to-Air channel model. We derive closed form expressions of the SOP and ergodic secrecy capacity for the two scenarios. Simulation results verify the analytical derivations, where the results highlight the importance of the derived secrecy metrics, especially the impact of the distance between Alice and Eve on the overall performance.

DOI
10.1109/ictc46691.2019.8939911

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In this paper, we study the strictly positive secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the ergodic secrecy capacity of a wiretap unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system where a UAV transmitter (Alice) is trying to send a message to a ground receiver (Bob) while an eavesdropper (Eve) is attempting to eavesdrop on the legitimate communication link. We study the performance of the system in two cases, first, when Eve is on the ground and an Air-to-Ground channel model is adopted between Alice, Bob and Eve. In the second case, Eve is a UAV drone that is located at the same altitude as Alice and the channel between Alice and Eve follows an Air-to-Air channel model. We derive closed form expressions of the SOP and ergodic secrecy capacity for the two scenarios. Simulation results verify the analytical derivations, where the results highlight the importance of the derived secrecy metrics, especially the impact of the distance between Alice and Eve on the overall performance.
Abstract In this research work, we study the secrecy performance of Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the vicinity of an interfering and eavesdropping UAVs. More precisely, firstly a case when the ground user communicates with the intended UAV where two unwanted UAVs operate in the vicinity, has been investigated. It is also considered that the wiretapping UAV also suffers interference from different UAV. The modelling of the UAV communication system considers the impact of small-scale fading, line-of-sight (LoS) probability, altitude and 3D coordinate of all the three involved UAVs. To this end, analytical expression has been derived for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) for the system considering simultaneous effects of eavesdropping and interference. The analysis for secrecy capacity has also been conducted to derive analytical formula. The results are extended to a case when multiple interfering and eavesdropping UAVs function to derive the expression for the SOP. Importantly, the numerical simulation of the derived results show that the effect of eavesdropper can be minimized by placing an interferer in the vicinity of the wiretap source. Moreover, the impact of power transmitted during wiretapping by the eavesdropper appears to be more compared to distance from intended UAV.
In this article, we study the secrecy performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted relay communication system, where a ground base station (GBS) intends to send confidential information to the ground legitimate user Bob with the help of a UAV relay in the presence of multiple aerial and ground eavesdroppers. We consider the height-dependent probabilistic line-of-sight and the generalκ\kappaκ-μ\muμshadowed channel fading model in the system. To enhance the secrecy performance, the GBS and UAV relay apply directional beamforming transmission while implementing protection zones around their intended receiving destinations. We then derive the approximate closed-form expressions of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) under different aerial and ground eavesdropperscolluding strategies. To get insights, we also obtain the SOP expression over Rayleigh fading as a special case. After discussing the impacts of transmitting and multiple aerial and ground eavesdropping parameters on the SOP, we show that the optimal altitude of UAV relay exists with the minimal SOP value under different urban environments. We also show that UAV eavesdroppers have a larger effect on the system performance than ground eavesdroppers.
In this paper, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to ground communication system with spatially random eavesdroppers account on both ground and airspace is considered. UAV tries to transmit information to a legitimate receiver on the ground while a group of eavesdroppers on the ground and another group of eavesdropping UAVs in the airspace try to overhear the delivered information. The locations of all terminals are randomly distributed in the coverage space of the source UAV. The statistical characteristics of the received signal-to-noise ratio at all terminals considering two kinds of communication environment are characterized. The analytical expressions for secrecy outage probability are derived. Finally, simulation is carried out to verify the correctness of our analytical model.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been extensively utilized in various scenarios due to their flexible mobility and rapid on-demand deployment. It becomes necessary and urgent to examine the secrecy performance of the UAV communication systems due to the open characteristics of the transmission technologies employed in UAV systems. In this paper, we investigate the physical layer security of the UAV communication system, in which the ground base station sends secret messages to the UAV hovering in the air, while a random number of eavesdroppers are randomly located around the ground base station. Using the Poisson point process theory, we obtain the exact and approximate expressions of the cumulative distribution function for the signal-to-noise ratio of the ground-to-air link, and then the analytical expressions of the secrecy outage probability and the average secrecy rate are derived. Finally, the accuracy of the analytical results is validated by Monte Carlo simulation.
In this paper, we study an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted relaying communication system, where a ground base station (GBS) intends to send information to a legitimate ground user (Bob) with the help of a UAV relay, in the presence of a passive ground eavesdropper (Eve). In particular, assuming an urban operating environment, we analyze and derive the closed-form approximation of the intercept probability and the ergodic secrecy rate. Through analytical and numerical results, we examine the effect of different system parameters on secrecy performance.
In this study, we investigate the secrecy outage performance achieved by opportunistic relaying for a low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm secure communication system in the presence of multiple UAV-eavesdroppers. In the primary channel, multiple UAV-transmitters are connected to a ground station via the ground-to-air (G2A) wireless backhaul and a UAV-transmitter and UAV-relay are selected to transmit the source signal to a far ground destination under air-to-air and air-to-ground Nakagami-m fading links. In the eavesdropping channel, maximum ratio combining is applied across multiple UAV-eavesdroppers for intercepting the legitimate transmissions from both the selected UAV-transmitter and UAV-relay. The backhaul reliability and eavesdropping probability are introduced to reflect the practical constraints on the G2A wireless backhaul and UAV-eavesdropper cooperation, respectively. The closed-form expression for the secrecy outage probability is derived in terms of the UAV cooperation, backhaul reliability, eavesdropping probability, and Nakagami-m fading parameters. In the high signal-to-noise ratio region, the asymptotic secrecy outage probability is also derived. It is shown that the secrecy diversity gain achieved by opportunistic relaying is jointly determined by the UAV cooperation and shape factors of Nakagami-m fading links in the primary channel. The analytical secrecy outage metrics achieved by opportunistic relaying are verified by Monte Carlo simulation results.