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IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

On the Physical Layer Security of the Cooperative Rate-Splitting-Aided Downlink in UAV Networks

Hamed Bastami, Mehdi Letafati, Majid Moradikia, Ahmed Abdelhadi, Hamid Behroozi, Lajos Hanzo

Published Jan 1, 2021• 44 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found compelling applications in intelligent logistics, search and rescue as well as in air-borne Base Station (BS). However, their communications are prone to both channel errors and eavesdropping. Hence, we investigate the max-min secrecy fairness of UAV-aided cellular networks, in which Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) aided downlink transmissions are employed by each multi-antenna UAV Base Station (UAV-BS) to safeguard the downlink of a two-user Multi-Input Single-Output (MISO) system against an external multi-antenna Eavesdropper (Eve). Realistically, only Imperfect Channel State Information (ICSI) is assumed to be available at the transmitter. Additionally, we consider a realistic total power constraint and guarantee the specific Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the legitimate users. To handle the worst-case channel uncertainty of the legitimate users and an external Eve, we conceive a robust secure resource allocation algorithm, which maximizes the minimum worst-case secrecy rate of the legitimate users. Based on the CRS principle, the transmitter splits and encodes the messages of legitimate users into common as well as private streams and the user having stronger CSI is asked to help the cell-edge user by opportunistically forwarding its decoded common message. In contrast to the existing schemes adopted in the literature for ensuring secure transmission of the first cooperative phase only, in our proposed solution the common message has a twin-fold mission. Explicitly, apart from serving as the desired message, it also acts as Artificial Noise (AN) for drowning out Eve without consuming extra power. This is in stark contrast to the conventional AN designs. In the second phase, the pure AN is directed towards the Eve, deploying a robust Maximum Ratio Transmitter (MRT) beamformer at the UAV-BS. To solve the resultant non-convex optimization problem we resort to the Sequential Parametric Convex Approximation (SPCA) method together with a bespoke initialization algorithm to avoid any failure due to infeasibility. Our simulation results confirm that the proposed secure transmission scheme outperforms the existing cooperative benchmarkers.

DOI
10.1109/tifs.2021.3122989

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found compelling applications in intelligent logistics, search and rescue as well as in air-borne Base Station (BS). However, their communications are prone to both channel errors and eavesdropping. Hence, we investigate the max-min secrecy fairness of UAV-aided cellular networks, in which Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) aided downlink transmissions are employed by each multi-antenna UAV Base Station (UAV-BS) to safeguard the downlink of a two-user Multi-Input Single-Output (MISO) system against an external multi-antenna Eavesdropper (Eve). Realistically, only Imperfect Channel State Information (ICSI) is assumed to be available at the transmitter. Additionally, we consider a realistic total power constraint and guarantee the specific Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the legitimate users. To handle the worst-case channel uncertainty of the legitimate users and an external Eve, we conceive a robust secure resource allocation algorithm, which maximizes the minimum worst-case secrecy rate of the legitimate users. Based on the CRS principle, the transmitter splits and encodes the messages of legitimate users into common as well as private streams and the user having stronger CSI is asked to help the cell-edge user by opportunistically forwarding its decoded common message. In contrast to the existing schemes adopted in the literature for ensuring secure transmission of the first cooperative phase only, in our proposed solution the common message has a twin-fold mission. Explicitly, apart from serving as the desired message, it also acts as Artificial Noise (AN) for drowning out Eve without consuming extra power. This is in stark contrast to the conventional AN designs. In the second phase, the pure AN is directed towards the Eve, deploying a robust Maximum Ratio Transmitter (MRT) beamformer at the UAV-BS. To solve the resultant non-convex optimization problem we resort to the Sequential Parametric Convex Approximation (SPCA) method together with a bespoke initialization algorithm to avoid any failure due to infeasibility. Our simulation results confirm that the proposed secure transmission scheme outperforms the existing cooperative benchmarkers.
In this paper, we consider max-min fairness for a downlink two-user multi-input single-output (MISO) system with imperfect channel state information available at transmitter (CSIT) taking into account the total power constraint and the physical layer security. To handle the worst-case channel uncertainty of a potential eavesdropper (PE), we study the robust secure resource allocation algorithm which maximizes the minimum achieved worst-case secrecy rate among single-antenna legitimate users. In contrast to existing schemes adopted in the literature, we propose a rate-splitting (RS)-based secure transmission scheme, which advocates the dual use of a common message serving both as a desired message and artificial noise (AN) for legitimate users and the PE, respectively. Considering the non-convex resource allocation algorithm design problem, we apply the majorization maximization (MM) method to obtain a suboptimal iterative algorithm. In each iteration, a rank-constrained semi-definite program (SDP) is solved optimally by SDP relaxation (SDR). Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed robust secure beamforming scheme in the MISO-RS secure transmission system outperforms that of several baselines.
In this paper, we consider max-min fairness for a downlink two-user multi-input single-output (MISO) system with imperfect channel state information available at transmitter (CSIT) taking into account the total power constraint and the physical layer security. Considering the worst-case channel uncertainty for a potential eavesdropper (PE), we study the robust secure beamforming algorithm design which maximizes the minimum achieved worst-case secrecy rate among single-antenna legitimate users. In contrast to existing schemes adopted in the literatures, we propose a rather unorthodox rate splitting (RS) scheme which advocates the dual use of a common message serving both as a desired message and artificial noise (AN) for legitimate users and the PE, respectively. The algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem which is generally intractable. As a compromise approach, we apply the successive convex approximation (SCA) method which facilitates the design of a low-complexity suboptimal iterative algorithm. In each iteration, a rank-constrained semi-definite program (SDP) is solved optimally by SDP relaxation (SDR). Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed robust secure beamforming scheme in the MISO-RS secure transmission system outperforms that of the non-robust counterpart. Moreover, our results also unveil that the proposed RS scheme can achieve a superior performance compared to the existing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes and the traditional scheme.
In this paper, we employ Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) technique to enhance the Secrecy Sum Rate (SSR) for the Multiple Input Single Output (MISO) Broadcast Channel (BC), consisting of two legitimate users and one eavesdropper, with perfect Channel State Information (CSI) available at all nodes. For CRS based on the three-node relay channel, the transmitter splits and encodes the messages of legitimate users into common and private streams based on Rate-Splitting (RS). With the goal of maximizing SSR, the proposed CRS strategy opportunistically asks the relaying legitimate user to forward its decoded common message. During the transmission, the eavesdropper keeps wiretapping silently. To ensure secure transmission, the common message is used for the dual purpose, serving both as a desired message and Artificial Noise (AN) without consuming extra transmit power comparing to the conventional AN design. Taking into account the total power constraint and the Physical Layer (PHY) security, the precoders and timeslot allocation are jointly optimized by solving the nonconvex SSR maximization problem based on Sequential Convex Approximation (SCA) algorithm. Numerical results show that the proposed CRS secure transmission scheme outperforms existing Multi-User Linear Precoding (MU-LP) and Cooperative Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (C-NOMA) strategies. Therefore, CRS is a promising strategy to enhance the PHY security in Multi-antenna BC systems.
In this paper, we study secure cooperative transmission for the multiple-input-single-output multiple-eavesdropper (MISOME) systems, where a source (Alice) aims to send confidential messages to a legitimate user (Bob) with the aid of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enabled friendly jammer (Charlie) in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers (Eves). To further guarantee the secrecy performance, artificial noise (AN) beamforming together with cooperative Jamming (CJ) has been utilized in this considered system with only location and statistical channel state information of the Eves. Specifically, taking imperfect channel state information (CSI) between Charlie and Bob into account, we derive the exact closed-form expression of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and develop an efficient scheme to solve the secrecy rate maximization (SRM) problem which has been verified as a convex one under certain SOP. Moreover, we propose an optimal UAV placement strategy to further enhance secrecy performance. The numerical results are provided to validate that the system security would seriously degenerate with channel uncertainty. Besides, the proposed scheme is verified to outperform the terrestrial CJ scheme in improving the secrecy rate and secure energy efficiency (EE) performance under perfect CSI or tolerable channel estimation errors. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed UAV placement strategy in enhancing transmission security and the applicability of the proposed scheme has also been demonstrated.
The broadcast nature of air-to-ground line-of-sight (LoS) wireless channel imposes a great challenge in secure unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications. To address this issue, this paper investigates UAV-ground communications from the physical-layer security perspective. Specifically, the investigated scenario includes a UAV serving as the base station (BS) that transmits confidential signals to a legitimate ground user, and there are multiple eavesdroppers on the ground with unknown position information. To further enhance the secrecy performance of the UAV-ground communications, an idle UAV can be employed to serve as a friendly jammer, which can transmit jamming signals to confuse the eavesdroppers. In our proposed strategy, the flying trajectory and the transmit power for both the UAVs are jointly optimized by maximizing the worst-case secrecy rate (WCSR) of the system. Considering the intractability of the formulated non-convex problem, we further provide a block coordinate descent-based iterative optimization method. Simulations verify that our proposed algorithm can significantly improve the average WCSR in comparison with the existing works.
Cooperative communications enabled by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can enlarge the transmission distance and coverage area. However, there is a serious issue of information security in UAV-cooperative wireless networks due to the broadcast feature of air-to-ground wireless channel. The framework of physical layer security provides an alternative technology to cope with this problem. Therefore, based on physical layer security, this paper focuses on maximizing the secrecy rate of a UAV-cooperative wireless networks by allocating the optimal power to the transmitter and the UAV. To deal with the difficulties of the resulting optimization problem, difference of convex (DC) programming is introduced to transform the primal problem into a series of convex subproblems which can be solved iteratively by some available convex optimization algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed optimal power allocation algorithm can achieve a higher secrecy rate than the maximum power allocation algorithm does.