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IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference

Physical Layer Security Over UAV-to-Ground Channels with Shadowing

Remon A. Polus, Claude D’Amours, Burak Kantarcı

Published Jun 1, 2023• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With the notable interest in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-to-ground communications, new fading channel models that take into account the effects of shadowing have been proposed for beyond 5G networks. Guaranteeing physical layer security of the UAV-to-ground channels is essential for the transmission of confidential messages in the presence of an eavesdropper. In this paper, we examine physical layer security metrics, such as the average secrecy capacity, the secrecy outage probability, and the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity, in UAV-to-ground communications with shadowing. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to verify the analytical expressions. Finally, the effect of the fading parameters on the system performance is studied.

DOI
10.1109/vtc2023-spring57618.2023.10199179

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With the notable interest in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-to-ground communications, new fading channel models that take into account the effects of shadowing have been proposed for beyond 5G networks. Guaranteeing physical layer security of the UAV-to-ground channels is essential for the transmission of confidential messages in the presence of an eavesdropper. In this paper, we examine physical layer security metrics, such as the average secrecy capacity, the secrecy outage probability, and the probability of strictly positive secrecy capacity, in UAV-to-ground communications with shadowing. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to verify the analytical expressions. Finally, the effect of the fading parameters on the system performance is studied.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be extensively utilized in various Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios due to their flexible mobility and rapid on-demand deployment. It becomes necessary and urgent to investigate the secrecy performance of the UAV IoT communication systems because of the open characteristics of wireless channels. In this article, the physical layer security of UAV IoT communication systems is studied, in which a ground IoT device transmits some confidential messages to a UAV hovering in the air, while a random number of eavesdroppers are randomly positioned around the ground source. The ground-to-air channel is assumed to experience Rician fading for the case of line-of-sight propagation and Rayleigh fading for the case of nonline-of-sight propagation, respectively. In addition, in order to improve the security of the system, we also investigate the secrecy performance of the UAV IoT system with a friendly UAV that generates jamming signals to distract the eavesdroppers. Utilizing the stochastic geometry theory, the cumulative distribution functions for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio of the main and eavesdropping links are derived, and then the analytical expressions of the secrecy outage probability and the average secrecy rate are obtained. Finally, the accuracy of the analytical results is verified by Monte Carlo simulation.
In this paper, we study physical layer security of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted communication system, where a UAV collects data from a sensor node and UAV-eavesdropper tends to overhear confidential information. In particular, assuming Fisher-Snedecor fading environment, we derive the closed-form expression of the intercept probability and we examine the effect of different system/channel parameters on this performance metric. Numerical results are also presented to verify analytical result; and to highlight the impact of specific fading/shadowing conditions over the main-UAV link and UAV-eavesdropper’s link, as well as the impact of UAVs’ positions.
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.
Owing to flexible management and low overhead, wireless physical layer security (PLS) has been applied to support many critical applications (e.g., data dissemination) of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-based mobile communication networks in emergency scenarios. Although the impact of static network scenarios or receiver mobility on PLS has been well studied, there is no much work that studies the impact of UAV-based transmitter mobility on PLS. To fill this gap, in this paper, we investigate PLS of a scenario, where a random mobile UAV-based transmitter transmits information to a static ground entity under Rayleigh fading channel. More specifically, we consider a communication system, in which a mobile UAV hovers over a region to collect information and then disseminates this information to a static ground network entity in a confidential manner under the presence of an eavesdropper. Because of popularity and practicality, the UAV is assumed to hover following the random way point (RWP) mobility model. We investigate the secrecy characteristics of the UAV under steady running state in terms of ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC), positive secrecy capacity probability (PSCP) and secrecy outage probability (SOP) for the communication between the UAV and the receiver. We then investigate the secrecy performance of the proposed system while considering the pause time of the RWP mobility model adopted by the UAV. We further extend our proposed theoretical model to other realistic scenarios, including the presence of multiple cooperative and non-cooperative eavesdroppers, and study the PSCP and SOP metrics of the corresponding system. Furthermore, we propose three types of secrecy improvement strategies for the considered communication model. We strike a good trade-off between the secrecy improvement and transmit outage probability. Extensive simulations have been conducted to validate our theoretical analysis as well as the effectiveness of the proposed secrecy improvement strategies.
Due to its high mobility and flexible deployment, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is drawing unprecedented interest in both military and civil applications to enable agile wireless communications and provide ubiquitous connectivity. Mainly operating in an open environment, UAV communications can benefit from dominant line-of-sight links; however, it on the other hand renders the UAVs more vulnerable to malicious eavesdropping or jamming attacks. Recently, physical layer security (PLS), which exploits the inherent randomness of the wireless channels for secure communications, has been introduced to UAV systems as an important complement to the conventional cryptography-based approaches. In this paper, a comprehensive survey on the current achievements of the UAV-aided wireless communications is conducted from the PLS perspective. We first introduce the basic concepts of UAV communications including the typical static/mobile deployment scenarios, the unique characteristics of air-to-ground channels, as well as various roles that a UAV may act when PLS is concerned. Then, we introduce the widely used secrecy performance metrics and start by reviewing the secrecy performance analysis and enhancing techniques for statically deployed UAV systems, and extend the discussion to a more general scenario where the UAVs' mobility is further exploited. For both cases, respectively, we summarize the commonly adopted methodologies in the corresponding analysis and design, then describe important works in the literature in detail. Finally, potential research directions and challenges are discussed to provide an outlook for future works in the area of UAV-PLS in 5G and beyond networks.