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 International Conference on Communications workshops

A Sensing-Based Two-Phase Secure ISAC Framework

Qi Zhang, Shihao Yan, Xiaobo Zhou, Feng Shu, Derrick Wing Kwan Ng, Robert Schober

Published Jun 8, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper develops a two-phase secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework, where a dual-functional transmitter (Alice) detects the existence of a potential eavesdropper (Eve) as a sensing target in the first phase. In the second phase, Alice adapts her secure transmission strategy based on the sensing outcome of the first phase. A distinct aspect of our proposed two-phase framework is the derivation of the overall effective secrecy rate across both phases. This is achieved by seamlessly incorporating the a priori probability of Eve’s presence, the sensing false alarm rate, and the sensing detection probability directly into the effective secrecy rate as weighting coefficients. For system design, we aim to maximize the overall effective secrecy rate subject to Alice’s average transmit power remaining below a predetermined threshold. To address the resulting non-convex design problem, an algorithm based on semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and double-layer optimization is proposed. Our numerical results show that the proposed two-phase secure ISAC framework significantly enhances the secrecy rate compared to a conventional physical layer security (PLS) system if Eve is present with a low probability.

DOI
10.1109/iccworkshops67674.2025.11162369

Related papers

ISAC-Enhanced Secrecy Communication: A Two-Stage Artificial Noise-Assisted Secure Beamforming Design

Lu Lv, Jingxuan Fu, Yunpeng Feng +2 more

Empowered by the integrated sensing and communication capability, this paper proposes a new two-stage artificial noise (AN)-assisted secure beamforming design towards physical layer security enhancement. Specifically, in the first stage a nearly omni-directional AN is used for sensing the eavesdropper, where the AN is radiated istropically except in the direction of the communication user. With the known channel knowledge of the eavesdropper, a spatially AN is transmitted in the second stage to deliberately degrade the eavesdropper. To balance the sensing and secure communication performance, we aim to maximize the effective secrecy rate by jointly optimize the time allocation and the transmit beamforming in both stages. A efficient optimization algorithm based on weighted minimum mean square error is then developed to solve the formulated non-convex problem. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance advantage of our proposed design over the existing benchmark schemes in terms of achieving a larger effective secrecy rate.

IEEE Communications Letters•Nov 19, 2025•2 citations

Two-Stage Framework for Sensing Assisted Covert Communications

Bingrong Qian, Shihao Yan, Qingqing Wu +2 more

In this work, we propose a two-stage integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework for exploiting the benefits of utilizing ISAC's detection capability in covert communications. Specifically, in the first stage a full-duplex transceiver Bob detects the presence of a warden Willie while performing uplink transmissions to another transceiver Alice. Then, in the second stage Bob helps Alice's covert downlink transmission via jamming as per his detection outcome in the first stage. We optimally design the covert ISAC system to maximize the formulated overall covert rate subject to a covertness constraint, an average power constraint at Bob, and an uplink rate requirement. As shown in our examinations, the proposed two-stage framework significantly outperforms a benchmark scheme without the detection function in terms of achieving a higher covert rate. This, for the first time, explicitly demonstrates the superiorities of using ISAC's detection function to enhance covert communications.

IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology•Jan 28, 2025•15 citations

Near-Field Assisted Secure ISAC System: Synergistic Enhancement Between Sensing and Secure Transmission

Zhuochen Chen, Shengqi Zhu, Ximin Li

In this letter, we propose a near-field secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system architecture, where the ISAC system simultaneously performs target detection and tracking while transmitting communication information to downlink users. However, in the presence of malicious eavesdropping devices, the security of communication transmission in ISAC systems cannot be guaranteed. Near-field effects introduce an additional advantage in the distance dimension, which improves the accuracy of target distance and angle estimation. Simultaneously, beamforming can be spatially focused at specific points to prevent information leakage. Motivated by these benefits, We construct a weighted optimization framework aimed at jointly maximizing the overall secrecy rate and reducing the Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) for target estimation in near-field scenarios, while adhering to communication demands and total power limitations of the system. By integrating fractional programming (FP) and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) techniques, we jointly optimize the transmit waveform covariance matrix and the beamforming vectors to enhance both sensing accuracy and secure transmission performance simultaneously. Numerical results reveal that the secure near-field ISAC scheme can effectively achieve a synergy enhancement between sensing and secure communication while maintaining reliable system performance.

IEEE Communications Letters•Jul 25, 2025•1 citation

Security of Integrated Sensing and Communication Systems with Hybrid Eavesdroppers

Meiding Liu, Zhengchun Zhou, Qiao Shi +4 more

In this paper, we consider the joint beamforming design in secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, where the active eavesdropper intercepts the transmitted confidential information with an external passive eavesdropper. To improve the sensing performance while preventing the potential eavesdropping, the base station transmits a signal consisting of information symbols and sensing waveform, in which the sensing waveform is also used as artificial noise to interfere with eavesdroppers. Under this setup, we formulate the communication and sensing beamforming design problem, which aims to enhance the transmit beampattern performance, while ensuring the quality of service (QoS) of communication transmission and the secure communication constraint. Furthermore, we propose the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) algorithm to solve the non-convex problem. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in both sensing and secure communication.

IEEE International Conference on Signal, Information and Data Processing (ICSIDP)•Nov 22, 2024•1 citation

Secure Transmission for MISO Integrated Sensing and Communication Secrecy Systems

Yajie Zhang, Zengbao Zhu, Qimei Cui +2 more

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) can reuse the same spectrum and hardware resources for communication and radar sensing, which is a promising technology to alleviate spectrum congestion. Recently, there has been an increasing research interest in the physical layer secrecy aspects of ISAC systems. This paper studies a basic multiple-input single-output ISAC secrecy system, where a multi-antenna base station transmits a unified signal to sense a point target and communicate to a single-antenna receiver in the presence of$K$single antenna eavesdroppers. Under this setup, a sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constrained secrecy rate maximization problem has been formulated. We showed that the problem can be reformulated as a convex semidefinite programming problem and proved that beamforming is the optimal transmission scheme. We derived two low-complexity semiclosed-form optimal beamforming solutions and one suboptimal closed-form solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed solutions attain the optimum of the sensing SNR constrained secrecy rate maximization problem and have lower computational complexity than the existing method.

International Conference on Communications•Jun 9, 2024•6 citations

Exploring Passive Eves With Self-Refine Sensing: A Novel ISAC-Aided Secure Communication System With STAR-RIS

Yun Wen, Gaojie Chen, Yanqun Tang +4 more

Physical layer security (PLS) has emerged as a promising technology to protect critical and sensitive information against unauthorized devices. To address the key challenge of acquiring channel state information (CSI) of passive eavesdroppers in PLS implementation, we propose a novel sensing-assisted PLS scheme with the aid of reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS). It employs a self-refine sensing scheme utilizing the artificial noise (AN) signals to iteratively estimate the eavesdroppers’ positions for CSI calculation. We aim to maximize the secrecy capacity based on the sensing-estimated CSI while tracking the eavesdroppers in full-duplex (FD) mode with integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) signals comprising artificial noise (AN). This is achieved by jointly designing the beamforming vector of information signals, the beamforming vector of AN signals, and the coefficients of the STAR-RIS. To optimize these coupled variables, we introduce an alternating optimization (AO) scheme to solve the problem recursively. In particular, we tackle the non-convexity of the beamforming optimizations for information and AN signals with the successive convex approximation (SCA) scheme and adopt a semi-definite relaxation (SDR) scheme to design the reflection and refraction coefficients of the STAR-RIS. The numerical results validate that the proposed scheme ensures secure communications against multiple eavesdroppers without any prior eavesdropper channel information. In addition, the proposed scheme can significantly improve SC performance by up to 66. 7% compared to the benchmarks without the sensing-assisted function.

IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications•Jul 23, 2025•3 citations
This paper develops a two-phase secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework, where a dual-functional transmitter (Alice) detects the existence of a potential eavesdropper (Eve) as a sensing target in the first phase. In the second phase, Alice adapts her secure transmission strategy based on the sensing outcome of the first phase. A distinct aspect of our proposed two-phase framework is the derivation of the overall effective secrecy rate across both phases. This is achieved by seamlessly incorporating the a priori probability of Eve’s presence, the sensing false alarm rate, and the sensing detection probability directly into the effective secrecy rate as weighting coefficients. For system design, we aim to maximize the overall effective secrecy rate subject to Alice’s average transmit power remaining below a predetermined threshold. To address the resulting non-convex design problem, an algorithm based on semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and double-layer optimization is proposed. Our numerical results show that the proposed two-phase secure ISAC framework significantly enhances the secrecy rate compared to a conventional physical layer security (PLS) system if Eve is present with a low probability.
Empowered by the integrated sensing and communication capability, this paper proposes a new two-stage artificial noise (AN)-assisted secure beamforming design towards physical layer security enhancement. Specifically, in the first stage a nearly omni-directional AN is used for sensing the eavesdropper, where the AN is radiated istropically except in the direction of the communication user. With the known channel knowledge of the eavesdropper, a spatially AN is transmitted in the second stage to deliberately degrade the eavesdropper. To balance the sensing and secure communication performance, we aim to maximize the effective secrecy rate by jointly optimize the time allocation and the transmit beamforming in both stages. A efficient optimization algorithm based on weighted minimum mean square error is then developed to solve the formulated non-convex problem. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance advantage of our proposed design over the existing benchmark schemes in terms of achieving a larger effective secrecy rate.
In this work, we propose a two-stage integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework for exploiting the benefits of utilizing ISAC's detection capability in covert communications. Specifically, in the first stage a full-duplex transceiver Bob detects the presence of a warden Willie while performing uplink transmissions to another transceiver Alice. Then, in the second stage Bob helps Alice's covert downlink transmission via jamming as per his detection outcome in the first stage. We optimally design the covert ISAC system to maximize the formulated overall covert rate subject to a covertness constraint, an average power constraint at Bob, and an uplink rate requirement. As shown in our examinations, the proposed two-stage framework significantly outperforms a benchmark scheme without the detection function in terms of achieving a higher covert rate. This, for the first time, explicitly demonstrates the superiorities of using ISAC's detection function to enhance covert communications.
In this letter, we propose a near-field secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system architecture, where the ISAC system simultaneously performs target detection and tracking while transmitting communication information to downlink users. However, in the presence of malicious eavesdropping devices, the security of communication transmission in ISAC systems cannot be guaranteed. Near-field effects introduce an additional advantage in the distance dimension, which improves the accuracy of target distance and angle estimation. Simultaneously, beamforming can be spatially focused at specific points to prevent information leakage. Motivated by these benefits, We construct a weighted optimization framework aimed at jointly maximizing the overall secrecy rate and reducing the Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) for target estimation in near-field scenarios, while adhering to communication demands and total power limitations of the system. By integrating fractional programming (FP) and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) techniques, we jointly optimize the transmit waveform covariance matrix and the beamforming vectors to enhance both sensing accuracy and secure transmission performance simultaneously. Numerical results reveal that the secure near-field ISAC scheme can effectively achieve a synergy enhancement between sensing and secure communication while maintaining reliable system performance.
In this paper, we consider the joint beamforming design in secure integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, where the active eavesdropper intercepts the transmitted confidential information with an external passive eavesdropper. To improve the sensing performance while preventing the potential eavesdropping, the base station transmits a signal consisting of information symbols and sensing waveform, in which the sensing waveform is also used as artificial noise to interfere with eavesdroppers. Under this setup, we formulate the communication and sensing beamforming design problem, which aims to enhance the transmit beampattern performance, while ensuring the quality of service (QoS) of communication transmission and the secure communication constraint. Furthermore, we propose the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) algorithm to solve the non-convex problem. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in both sensing and secure communication.
Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) can reuse the same spectrum and hardware resources for communication and radar sensing, which is a promising technology to alleviate spectrum congestion. Recently, there has been an increasing research interest in the physical layer secrecy aspects of ISAC systems. This paper studies a basic multiple-input single-output ISAC secrecy system, where a multi-antenna base station transmits a unified signal to sense a point target and communicate to a single-antenna receiver in the presence ofKKKsingle antenna eavesdroppers. Under this setup, a sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constrained secrecy rate maximization problem has been formulated. We showed that the problem can be reformulated as a convex semidefinite programming problem and proved that beamforming is the optimal transmission scheme. We derived two low-complexity semiclosed-form optimal beamforming solutions and one suboptimal closed-form solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed solutions attain the optimum of the sensing SNR constrained secrecy rate maximization problem and have lower computational complexity than the existing method.
Physical layer security (PLS) has emerged as a promising technology to protect critical and sensitive information against unauthorized devices. To address the key challenge of acquiring channel state information (CSI) of passive eavesdroppers in PLS implementation, we propose a novel sensing-assisted PLS scheme with the aid of reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS). It employs a self-refine sensing scheme utilizing the artificial noise (AN) signals to iteratively estimate the eavesdroppers’ positions for CSI calculation. We aim to maximize the secrecy capacity based on the sensing-estimated CSI while tracking the eavesdroppers in full-duplex (FD) mode with integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) signals comprising artificial noise (AN). This is achieved by jointly designing the beamforming vector of information signals, the beamforming vector of AN signals, and the coefficients of the STAR-RIS. To optimize these coupled variables, we introduce an alternating optimization (AO) scheme to solve the problem recursively. In particular, we tackle the non-convexity of the beamforming optimizations for information and AN signals with the successive convex approximation (SCA) scheme and adopt a semi-definite relaxation (SDR) scheme to design the reflection and refraction coefficients of the STAR-RIS. The numerical results validate that the proposed scheme ensures secure communications against multiple eavesdroppers without any prior eavesdropper channel information. In addition, the proposed scheme can significantly improve SC performance by up to 66. 7% compared to the benchmarks without the sensing-assisted function.