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IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

Security Capacity Analysis of Wireless Sensor Data Transmission in UAV-Aided IoT Systems

Wei Gao, Chuan Liu, Feng Shu

Published Jan 1, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has swept across the communication industry for its superior mobility and flexibility. UAV-aided communicaiton has been widely concerned by the academia and industry in space-air-ground integrated network, disaster relief network, Internet of Thing (IoT) system and so on. With the development of UAV-aided communication technology, the performance of transmission has been significantly improved. Subsequently, the problem of security transmission of UAV-aided communication has become increasingly prominent. In this paper, the security capacity of a UAV-aided IoT system is studied. Firstly, a channel field multiple access (CFMA) wireless sensor data transmission framework is proposed in UAV-aided IoT system. It contains a UAV base station, multiple IoT terminals and several malicious users. Under this framework, the UAV base station regularly flies over the area where the IoT system is located. The IoT terminals transmit sensing data based on the CFMA scheme. At the same time, surrounding malicious users cooperatively eavesdrop the sensing data of IoT terminal. Secondly, the system security capacity is analyzed and given under proposed framework. Through analysis, it can be concluded that the CFMA framework inherently possesses anti-eavesdropping capabilities, and the security capacity differences among different users are not significant. This is highly compatible with the requirements of the UAV-IoT system. Finally, the simulation results prove that the CFMA framework can meet the sensing data security transmission in the UAV-aided IoT system.

DOI
10.1109/jsac.2026.3669128

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In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has swept across the communication industry for its superior mobility and flexibility. UAV-aided communicaiton has been widely concerned by the academia and industry in space-air-ground integrated network, disaster relief network, Internet of Thing (IoT) system and so on. With the development of UAV-aided communication technology, the performance of transmission has been significantly improved. Subsequently, the problem of security transmission of UAV-aided communication has become increasingly prominent. In this paper, the security capacity of a UAV-aided IoT system is studied. Firstly, a channel field multiple access (CFMA) wireless sensor data transmission framework is proposed in UAV-aided IoT system. It contains a UAV base station, multiple IoT terminals and several malicious users. Under this framework, the UAV base station regularly flies over the area where the IoT system is located. The IoT terminals transmit sensing data based on the CFMA scheme. At the same time, surrounding malicious users cooperatively eavesdrop the sensing data of IoT terminal. Secondly, the system security capacity is analyzed and given under proposed framework. Through analysis, it can be concluded that the CFMA framework inherently possesses anti-eavesdropping capabilities, and the security capacity differences among different users are not significant. This is highly compatible with the requirements of the UAV-IoT system. Finally, the simulation results prove that the CFMA framework can meet the sensing data security transmission in the UAV-aided IoT system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) wireless communication has recently been recognized to be inevitable and prevalent in the fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a secure transmission scheme for a wiretap channel, where a source communicates with a legitimate UAV in the presence of an eavesdropper. We consider the full-duplex active eavesdropper, which performs both eavesdropping and malicious jamming simultaneously. The source transmits artificial noise (AN) signals, in addition to information signals, to confuse this eavesdropper. By considering the ground-to-UAV channel model, we analyze the hybrid outage probability, which takes both the transmission outage probability and the secrecy outage probability into consideration. We further provide the asymptotic hybrid outage probability in a more compact form, where both the transmit power at the source and the jamming power at the eavesdropper become large with a fixed ratio. Through the analysis and the numerical results, we determine the optimal power allocation factor between information signals and AN signals as well as the operating height of UAV that minimize the hybrid outage probability. We also provide the most harmful antenna configuration of the eavesdropper to the UAV communications, and this paper can be a useful framework for the design of confidential UAV communication system.