Dual-UAV-Enabled Secure Communication and Sensing for A2G-ISAC Systems with Maneuverable Jamming

2025-05-13

AI Summary

Joint optimization of secure communication and multi-target sensing remains challenging in air-to-ground integrated sensing and communication (A2G-ISAC) systems. Method: This paper proposes a dual-UAV cooperative framework: a source UAV performs both communication and mono-/bistatic radar sensing, while a maneuverable jamming UAV suppresses ground eavesdroppers via trajectory design and artificial noise transmission, simultaneously aiding multi-target detection. For the first time, a controllable jamming UAV is incorporated into A2G-ISAC; we jointly optimize 3D trajectories, beamforming, and power allocation for both UAVs, explicitly modeling residual interference and integrating a hybrid radar sensing mechanism. Non-convex optimization is addressed using trust-region successive convex approximation (SCA), semidefinite relaxation (SDR), and block coordinate descent. Results: Experiments demonstrate significant improvement in average secrecy rate (ASR) under sensing accuracy and power constraints, achieving simultaneous enhancement of communication security and multi-target detection performance.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Security and privacy of machine learning and AI applications
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a dual-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled secure communication and sensing (SCS) scheme for an air-to-ground integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, in which a dual-functional source UAV and jamming UAV collaborate to enhance both the secure communication and target sensing performance. From a perspective of hybrid monostatitc-bistatic radar, the jamming UAV maneuvers to aid the source UAV to detect multiple ground targets by emitting artificial noise, meanwhile interfering with the ground eavesdropper. Residual interference is considered to reflect the effects of imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) on the receive signal-plus-interference-to-noise ratios, which results in a degraded system performance. To maximize the average secrecy rate (ASR), the dual-UAV trajectory and dual-UAV beamforming are jointly optimized subject to the transmit power budget, UAV maneuvering constraint, and sensing requirements. To tackle the highly complicated non-convex ASR maximization problem, the dual-UAV trajectory and dual-UAV beamforming are optimized for the secure communication (SC) purpose and the SCS purpose, sequentially. In the SC phase, a block coordinate descent algorithm is proposed to optimize the dual-UAV trajectory and dual-UAV beamforming iteratively, using the trust-region successive convex approximation (SCA) and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) techniques. Then, a weighted distance minimization problem is formulated to determine the dual-UAV maneuvering positions suitable for the SCS purpose, which is solved by a heuristic greedy algorithm, followed by the joint optimization of source beamforming and jamming beamforming.

Problem

• Enhancing secure communication and target sensing in A2G-ISAC systems using dual-UAV collaboration
• Optimizing dual-UAV trajectory and beamforming to maximize average secrecy rate under constraints
• Addressing residual interference effects from imperfect successive interference cancellation on system performance

Innovation

• Dual-UAV collaboration for secure communication and sensing
• Joint optimization of trajectory and beamforming for secrecy
• Trust-region SCA and SDR techniques for non-convex optimization