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International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP)

Secrecy Rate- Distortion Tradeoff for Integrated Sensing and Communication With an Untrusted Sensing Node

Qi Gong, Yao Liu, Min Li, Lawrence Ong

Published Oct 24, 2024• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) tech-nology combines communication and sensing functionalities through a unified signal waveform. While this integration offers potential benefits such as improved spectrum sharing and reduced processing costs, it also poses security challenges. Specifically, when the communication receiver and sensing entity operate as separate nodes, maintaining message secrecy from the sensing entity becomes crucial. To address this challenge, we propose a two-receiver state-dependent ISAC model that includes an untrusted sensing node. In this model, the ISAC transmitter aims to convey a message to the communication receiver while enabling the sensing of channel state for an untrusted sensing receiver, all while keeping the message secret from the untrusted sensing receiver. We consider the fundamental tradeoff between secure communication rate and sensing distortion within this model, which is characterized by the secrecy capacity-distortion function. To establish an inner bound on the secrecy capacity-distortion tradeoff region, we adopt an input-constrained wiretap coding approach. In addition, we present an outer bound on the tradeoff region by independently deriving the necessary conditions on the rate and on the sensing distortion. We also provide two illustrative examples that highlight the utilities of these bounds and demonstrate the superiority of the unified signal waveform over a separation-based approach via time-sharing.

DOI
10.1109/wcsp62071.2024.10826739

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Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) tech-nology combines communication and sensing functionalities through a unified signal waveform. While this integration offers potential benefits such as improved spectrum sharing and reduced processing costs, it also poses security challenges. Specifically, when the communication receiver and sensing entity operate as separate nodes, maintaining message secrecy from the sensing entity becomes crucial. To address this challenge, we propose a two-receiver state-dependent ISAC model that includes an untrusted sensing node. In this model, the ISAC transmitter aims to convey a message to the communication receiver while enabling the sensing of channel state for an untrusted sensing receiver, all while keeping the message secret from the untrusted sensing receiver. We consider the fundamental tradeoff between secure communication rate and sensing distortion within this model, which is characterized by the secrecy capacity-distortion function. To establish an inner bound on the secrecy capacity-distortion tradeoff region, we adopt an input-constrained wiretap coding approach. In addition, we present an outer bound on the tradeoff region by independently deriving the necessary conditions on the rate and on the sensing distortion. We also provide two illustrative examples that highlight the utilities of these bounds and demonstrate the superiority of the unified signal waveform over a separation-based approach via time-sharing.
This work models a secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system as a wiretap channel with action-dependent channel states and channel output feedback, e.g., obtained through reflections. The transmitted message is split into a common and a secure message, both of which must be reliably recovered at the legitimate receiver, while the secure message needs to be kept secret from the eavesdropper. The transmitter actions, such as beamforming vector design, affect the corresponding state at each channel use. The action sequence is modeled to depend on both the transmitted message and channel output feedback. For perfect channel output feedback, the secrecy-distortion regions are provided for physically-degraded and reversely-physically-degraded secure ISAC channels with transmitter actions. The corresponding rate regions when the entire message should be kept secret are also provided. The results are illustrated through characterizing the secrecy-distortion region of a binary example.
Sensing privacy and communication confidentiality play fundamentally different but interconnected roles in adversarial wireless environments. Capturing this interplay within a single physical-layer framework is particularly challenging in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, where the same waveform simultaneously serves dual purposes. We study a secure ISAC system in which a monostatic transmitter simultaneously sends a confidential message to a legitimate receiver and senses an environmental state, while a passive adversary attempts both message decoding and state estimation. We partially characterize the fundamental trade-offs among three performance measures: the transmitter's secrecy rate, its detection exponent, and the adversary's detection exponent. Beyond the joint input distribution that governs overall performance, the trade-offs are further shaped by the transmitter's ability to extract keys via feedback and hide both the content and structure of the codewords via wiretap and resolvability codes. We derive an achievable region, and illustrate the resulting design trade-offs through a numerical example.
This paper considers an information theoretic model for secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) with the goal of establishing fundamental limits in low-latency scenarios. In this secure ISAC model, a message is transmitted through a state-dependent wiretap channel with decoder-side state availability. The model is studied under a strong secrecy constraint when only a part of the transmitted message should be kept secret. First, the secrecy-distortion rate region is established for a degraded channel by treating the model as a special case of a feed-backed secure ISAC model. Finite-length inner bounds are then proved by applying nonasymptotic random binning techniques. Bounds on the rates have a similar form to common finite-length bounds, and the distortion bound follows from a bound for letter-typical sequences.
We consider a secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) scenario, where a signal is transmitted through a state-dependent wiretap channel with one legitimate receiver with which the transmitter communicates and one honest-but-curious target that the transmitter wants to sense. The secure ISAC channel is modeled as two state-dependent fast-fading channels with correlated Rayleigh fading coefficients and independent additive Gaussian noise components. Delayed channel outputs are fed back to the transmitter to improve the communication performance and to estimate the channel state sequence. We establish and illustrate an achievable secrecy-distortion region for degraded secure ISAC channels under correlated Rayleigh fading, for which we show that the signal-to-interference-plus-noise is not a sufficient statistic. We also evaluate the inner bound for a large set of parameters to derive practical design insights. The presented results include parameter ranges for which the secrecy capacity of a classical wiretap channel setup is surpassed and for which the channel capacity is approached. Thus, we illustrate for correlated Rayleigh fading cases that our secure ISAC methods can (i) eliminate the need for the legitimate receiver to have a statistical advantage over the eavesdropper and (ii) provide communication security with minimal rate penalty.
We consider a secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) scenario, in which a signal is transmitted through a state-dependent wiretap channel with one legitimate receiver with which the transmitter communicates and one honest-but-curious target that the transmitter wants to sense. The secure ISAC channel is modeled as two state-dependent fast-fading channels with correlated Rayleigh fading coefficients and independent additive Gaussian noise components. Delayed channel outputs are fed back to the transmitter to improve the communication performance and to estimate the channel state sequence. We establish and illustrate an achievable secrecy-distortion region for degraded secure ISAC channels under correlated Rayleigh fading. We also evaluate the inner bound for a large set of parameters to derive practical design insights for secure ISAC methods. The presented results include in particular parameter ranges for which the secrecy capacity of a classical wiretap channel setup is surpassed and for which the channel capacity is approached.
Bistatic sensing refers to scenarios where the transmitter (illuminating the target) and the sensing receiver (estimating the target state) are physically separated, in contrast to monostatic sensing, where both functions are co-located. In practical settings, bistatic sensing may be required either due to inherent system constraints or as a means to mitigate the strong self-interference encountered in monostatic configurations. A key practical challenge in bistatic radio-frequency radar systems is the synchronization and calibration of the separate transmitter and sensing receiver. In this paper, we are not concerned with these signal processing aspects and take a complementary information-theoretic perspective on bistatic integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Namely, we aim to characterize the capacity-distortion function—the fundamental tradeoff between communication capacity and sensing accuracy. We consider a general discrete channel model for a bistatic ISAC system and derive a multi-letter representation of its capacity-distortion function. Then, we establish single-letter upper and lower bounds and provide exact single-letter characterizations for degraded bistatic ISAC channels. Numerical examples illustrate the theoretical results, highlighting the benefits of ISAC over separate communication and sensing, as well as the role of leveraging communication to assist sensing in bistatic systems.