Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC)

Against Cooperative Detection and Eavesdropping Attacks for UAV Short-Packet Communications: Joint Power Control and Trajectory Optimization

Haobin Mao, Yanming Liu, Chen Zhang, Zhenyu Xiao, Han Zhu, Xiang‐Gen Xia

Published Aug 7, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided short-packet communications have been anticipated to play critical roles in future Internet of Things (IoT) networks with low latency and high reliability requirements. However, the security of transmissions in open wireless environments is seriously threatened by cooperative detection and eavesdropping attacks. To this end, we develop a new framework for UAV-aided short-packet transmissions to counteract the cooperative warden and eavesdropper, which has not been investigated yet. Specifically, we derive the false probability of the cooperative detection by employing the likelihood ratio test and the bivariate Gaussian distribution property. Then, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the covert secrecy rate (CSR) by joint UAV transmit power control and three-dimensional (3D) trajectory design. Finally, we introduce slack variables and employ the successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques to solve the formulated highly non-convex problem suboptimally. Numerical results are provided to verify the effectiveness and the superiority of our proposed solution in terms of improving the CSR.

DOI
10.1109/iccc62479.2024.10681986

Related papers

A UAV-Assisted Secure Communication System by Jointly Optimizing Transmit Power and Trajectory in the Internet of Things

Wen Tian, Xufei Ding, Guangjie Liu +2 more

Secure communication technology has attracted more and more attention to improve the security of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we discuss the maximum secrecy capacity problem for a mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted secure communication in IoT, where the UAV relays the covert information from the transmitter (Alice) to the legal receiver (Bob) without detection by an eavesdropper (Eve) though sharing the spectrum with the ground device-to-device (D2D) communications. Our design aims to maximize the sum secrecy capacity Bob received by optimizing the transmit power and the UAV’s trajectory jointly while guaranteeing that the normal communication behavior between ground D2D pairs is not affected. Therefore, we propose a jointly optimizing the transmit power and UAV trajectory algorithm (JOTUTA) based on the block coordinate descent (BCD) method. Specifically, we first transform the non-convex problem of transmit power based on a fixed UAV’s trajectory into a convex problem by D.C. (difference of two convex functions) programming. Secondly, we solve the problem of UAV’s trajectory optimization with given transmit power by the successive convex approximation (SCA) method. Experiments results show the effectiveness of JOTUTA and the advantages of improving the secrecy capacity are verified compared with existing work.

IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking•Jan 10, 2023•36 citations

Joint Trajectory Optimization and Power Control for Cognitive UAV-Assisted Secure Communications

Can Wang, Helin Yang, Liang Xiao +2 more

Cognitive unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication systems combine benefits of both the cognitive radio and UAV, which improves the spectral efficiency and communication coverage area. However, high-quality air-ground channel links maybe more vulnerable to potential eavesdropping or jamming attacks. Thus, this paper proposes a secure transmission approach assisted by deploying a cooperative UAV to transmit artificial noise to jam an active eavesdropper, in order to maximize the system secrecy rate under the quality of service (QoS) requirement of a primary device. Specifically, we jointly optimize the flight trajectory and transmission power of the cooperative jammer to maximize the system's secrecy rate under strict constraints. To achieve this, we convert the non-convex problem into an approximately convex problem using the block coordinate descent algorithm and successive convex approximation method. Simulation results show that compared to existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm in this study can significantly improve the system's secrecy rate.

Globecom•Dec 4, 2023•3 citations

Covert and Secure Communication in Untrusted UAV-Assisted Wireless Systems

Chan Gao, Linying Tian, Qiuxia Zhao +2 more

Wireless systems are of paramount importance in enabling ubiquitous data transmission for various Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, due to the broadcast nature and openness of wireless channels, such systems face inherent security challenges. Covert communication is an enabling technology for secure wireless communications while the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted covert communication is particularly promising for enhancing covert performance. This paper investigates joint covert and secure communications in a two-hop UAV-assisted wireless system, where a source S transmits a covert message to a destination D with the help of an untrusted UAV, while being subject to detection by a warden W. We first design a covert transmission scheme for the proposed system with the considerations of both covert and secure constraints. We then develop theoretical models for the warden1detection error probability and the covert-and-secure rate (CSR) from S to D. Based on these models, we further explore the optimal power control for CSR maximization under both covertness and security constraints. Finally, numerical results are presented to validate the theoretical models and demonstrate the performance of covert and secure communications in the UAV-assisted system.

IEEE Internet of Things Journal•Jun 12, 2025•13 citations

Secure UAV Communication With Cooperative Jamming and Trajectory Control

Canhui Zhong, Jianping Yao, Jie Xu

This letter presents a new cooperative jamming approach to secure the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication by leveraging jamming from other nearby UAVs to defend against the eavesdropping. In particular, we consider a two-UAV scenario when one UAV transmitter delivers the confidential information to a ground node (GN), and the other UAV jammer cooperatively sends the artificial noise to confuse the ground eavesdropper for protecting the confidentiality of the data transmission. By exploiting the fully controllable mobility, the two UAVs can adaptively adjust their locations over time (a.k.a. trajectories) to facilitate the secure communication and cooperative jamming. We assume that the two UAVs perfectly know the GN's location and partially know the eavesdropper's location a priori. Under this setup, we maximize the average secrecy rate from the UAV transmitter to the GN over one particular time period, by optimizing the UAVs' trajectories, jointly with their communicating/jamming power allocations. Although the formulated problem is non-convex, we propose an efficient solution by applying the techniques of alternating optimization and successive convex approximation.

arXiv:1812.06813•IEEE Communications Letters•Dec 25, 2018•266 citations

Joint Trajectory and Power Design in Probabilistic LoS Channel for UAV-Enabled Cooperative Jamming

Bin Duo, Hao Hu, Yilian Li +1 more

This paper proposes a mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) jamming scheme under the probabilistic line-ofsight channel model (PLCM) to improve the secrecy of ground wiretap channels, in which a friendly UAV is deployed to cooperatively transmit jamming signals to confuse the suspicious eavesdropper. Our goal is to maximize the average (expected) secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the source transmit power, UAV jamming power and trajectory for a given flight time. Since the expected secrecy rate is highly complicated with respect to the UAV trajectory, we derive a more tractable lower bound for it. Nevertheless, the resulting optimization problem remains a non-convex problem, which is difficult to solve optimally. Therefore, we propose an efficient iterative algorithm to obtain a suboptimal solution to it by applying the block coordinate descent (BCD) and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques. Simulation results show that the joint power and trajectory optimization scheme under the PLCM significantly outperforms various benchmark schemes.

International Conference on Communications•Jun 1, 2021•6 citations

UAV-Enabled Cooperative Jamming for Covert Communications

Hangmei Rao, Sa Xiao, Yan, Shihao +2 more

This work employs an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a jammer to aid a covert communication from a transmitter Alice to a receiver Bob, where the UAV transmits artificial noise (AN) with random power to deliberately create interference to a warden Willie. In the considered system, the UAV's trajectory is critical to the covert communication performance, since the AN transmitted by the UAV also generates interference to Bob. To maximize the system performance, we formulate an optimization problem to jointly design the UAV's trajectory and Alice's transmit power. The formulated optimization problem is non-convex and is normally solved by a conventional iterative (CI) method, which requires multiple approximations based on Taylor expansions and an initialization on the UAV's trajectory. In order to eliminate these requirements, this work, for the first time, develops a geometric (GM) method to solve the optimization problem. By analyzing the covertness constraint, the GM method decouples the joint optimization into optimizing the UAV's trajectory and Alice's transmit power separately. Our examination shows that the GM method can significantly outperform the CI method in terms of achieving a higher average covert rate and the complexity of the GM method is lower than that of the CI method.

arXiv:2101.07502•Jan 19, 2021•1 citation
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided short-packet communications have been anticipated to play critical roles in future Internet of Things (IoT) networks with low latency and high reliability requirements. However, the security of transmissions in open wireless environments is seriously threatened by cooperative detection and eavesdropping attacks. To this end, we develop a new framework for UAV-aided short-packet transmissions to counteract the cooperative warden and eavesdropper, which has not been investigated yet. Specifically, we derive the false probability of the cooperative detection by employing the likelihood ratio test and the bivariate Gaussian distribution property. Then, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the covert secrecy rate (CSR) by joint UAV transmit power control and three-dimensional (3D) trajectory design. Finally, we introduce slack variables and employ the successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques to solve the formulated highly non-convex problem suboptimally. Numerical results are provided to verify the effectiveness and the superiority of our proposed solution in terms of improving the CSR.
Secure communication technology has attracted more and more attention to improve the security of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we discuss the maximum secrecy capacity problem for a mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted secure communication in IoT, where the UAV relays the covert information from the transmitter (Alice) to the legal receiver (Bob) without detection by an eavesdropper (Eve) though sharing the spectrum with the ground device-to-device (D2D) communications. Our design aims to maximize the sum secrecy capacity Bob received by optimizing the transmit power and the UAV’s trajectory jointly while guaranteeing that the normal communication behavior between ground D2D pairs is not affected. Therefore, we propose a jointly optimizing the transmit power and UAV trajectory algorithm (JOTUTA) based on the block coordinate descent (BCD) method. Specifically, we first transform the non-convex problem of transmit power based on a fixed UAV’s trajectory into a convex problem by D.C. (difference of two convex functions) programming. Secondly, we solve the problem of UAV’s trajectory optimization with given transmit power by the successive convex approximation (SCA) method. Experiments results show the effectiveness of JOTUTA and the advantages of improving the secrecy capacity are verified compared with existing work.
Cognitive unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication systems combine benefits of both the cognitive radio and UAV, which improves the spectral efficiency and communication coverage area. However, high-quality air-ground channel links maybe more vulnerable to potential eavesdropping or jamming attacks. Thus, this paper proposes a secure transmission approach assisted by deploying a cooperative UAV to transmit artificial noise to jam an active eavesdropper, in order to maximize the system secrecy rate under the quality of service (QoS) requirement of a primary device. Specifically, we jointly optimize the flight trajectory and transmission power of the cooperative jammer to maximize the system's secrecy rate under strict constraints. To achieve this, we convert the non-convex problem into an approximately convex problem using the block coordinate descent algorithm and successive convex approximation method. Simulation results show that compared to existing algorithms, the proposed algorithm in this study can significantly improve the system's secrecy rate.
Wireless systems are of paramount importance in enabling ubiquitous data transmission for various Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, due to the broadcast nature and openness of wireless channels, such systems face inherent security challenges. Covert communication is an enabling technology for secure wireless communications while the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted covert communication is particularly promising for enhancing covert performance. This paper investigates joint covert and secure communications in a two-hop UAV-assisted wireless system, where a source S transmits a covert message to a destination D with the help of an untrusted UAV, while being subject to detection by a warden W. We first design a covert transmission scheme for the proposed system with the considerations of both covert and secure constraints. We then develop theoretical models for the warden1detection error probability and the covert-and-secure rate (CSR) from S to D. Based on these models, we further explore the optimal power control for CSR maximization under both covertness and security constraints. Finally, numerical results are presented to validate the theoretical models and demonstrate the performance of covert and secure communications in the UAV-assisted system.
This letter presents a new cooperative jamming approach to secure the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication by leveraging jamming from other nearby UAVs to defend against the eavesdropping. In particular, we consider a two-UAV scenario when one UAV transmitter delivers the confidential information to a ground node (GN), and the other UAV jammer cooperatively sends the artificial noise to confuse the ground eavesdropper for protecting the confidentiality of the data transmission. By exploiting the fully controllable mobility, the two UAVs can adaptively adjust their locations over time (a.k.a. trajectories) to facilitate the secure communication and cooperative jamming. We assume that the two UAVs perfectly know the GN's location and partially know the eavesdropper's location a priori. Under this setup, we maximize the average secrecy rate from the UAV transmitter to the GN over one particular time period, by optimizing the UAVs' trajectories, jointly with their communicating/jamming power allocations. Although the formulated problem is non-convex, we propose an efficient solution by applying the techniques of alternating optimization and successive convex approximation.
This paper proposes a mobile unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) jamming scheme under the probabilistic line-ofsight channel model (PLCM) to improve the secrecy of ground wiretap channels, in which a friendly UAV is deployed to cooperatively transmit jamming signals to confuse the suspicious eavesdropper. Our goal is to maximize the average (expected) secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the source transmit power, UAV jamming power and trajectory for a given flight time. Since the expected secrecy rate is highly complicated with respect to the UAV trajectory, we derive a more tractable lower bound for it. Nevertheless, the resulting optimization problem remains a non-convex problem, which is difficult to solve optimally. Therefore, we propose an efficient iterative algorithm to obtain a suboptimal solution to it by applying the block coordinate descent (BCD) and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques. Simulation results show that the joint power and trajectory optimization scheme under the PLCM significantly outperforms various benchmark schemes.
This work employs an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a jammer to aid a covert communication from a transmitter Alice to a receiver Bob, where the UAV transmits artificial noise (AN) with random power to deliberately create interference to a warden Willie. In the considered system, the UAV's trajectory is critical to the covert communication performance, since the AN transmitted by the UAV also generates interference to Bob. To maximize the system performance, we formulate an optimization problem to jointly design the UAV's trajectory and Alice's transmit power. The formulated optimization problem is non-convex and is normally solved by a conventional iterative (CI) method, which requires multiple approximations based on Taylor expansions and an initialization on the UAV's trajectory. In order to eliminate these requirements, this work, for the first time, develops a geometric (GM) method to solve the optimization problem. By analyzing the covertness constraint, the GM method decouples the joint optimization into optimizing the UAV's trajectory and Alice's transmit power separately. Our examination shows that the GM method can significantly outperform the CI method in terms of achieving a higher average covert rate and the complexity of the GM method is lower than that of the CI method.