Physical Layer Security for Sensing-Communication-Computing-Control Closed Loop: A Systematic Security Perspective

2026-03-01

AI Summary

This study addresses the security challenges in wireless sensing–communication–computation–control (SC3) closed-loop systems, which are inherently vulnerable to eavesdropping due to the open nature of wireless links and cannot be adequately protected by conventional physical-layer security approaches. To overcome this limitation, the work proposes a novel closed-loop structural-level physical-layer security paradigm, using closed-loop negative entropy (CNE) as the performance metric. The framework jointly optimizes transmission delay, power, bandwidth, and computational resources across both sensor–edge hub and hub–robot links while satisfying end-to-end security constraints. By leveraging Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions and monotonic optimization theory, the non-convex joint optimization problem is solved to global optimality. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly enhances closed-loop performance and achieves superior security compared to traditional link-level designs by exploiting the intrinsic structure of the closed-loop system.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Learning to Search
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

In industrial automation or emergency rescue, sensors and robots work together with the help of an edge information hub (EIH) containing both communication and computing modules. Typically, the EIH collects the sensing data via the sensor-to-EIH link, processes data and then makes decisions on board before sending commands to the robot via the EIH-to-robot link. This forms a sensing-communication-computing-control (SC3) closed loop. In practice, the inherent openness of wireless links within the closed loop leads to susceptibility to eavesdropping. To this end, this paper refines the conventional physical layer security (PLS) approach with a systematic thinking to safeguard the SC3 closed loop. The closed-loop negentropy (CNE), a new metric for the performance of the whole SC3 closed loop, is maximized under the closed-loop security constraint. The transmit time, power, bandwidth of both wireless links, and the computing capability, are jointly designed. The optimization problem is non-convex. We leverage the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions and the monotonic optimization (MO) theory to derive its globally optimal solution. Simulation results show the performance gain of the proposed systematic approach, and reveal the advantage of exploiting the closed-loop structure-level PLS over the link-level or sum-link-level designs.

Problem

• Physical Layer Security
• Sensing-Communication-Computing-Control
• Closed-loop System
• Eavesdropping
• Wireless Security

Innovation

• Physical Layer Security
• SC3 Closed Loop
• Closed-loop Negentropy
• Monotonic Optimization
• Joint Resource Allocation