A Two-stage Game Framework to Secure Transmission in Two-Tier UAV Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a two-stage game framework to enhance physical layer security in hierarchical multi-UAV networks, effectively protecting against eavesdroppers through joint association and cooperative transmission strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage game approach combining matching and coalition formation to secure multi-UAV communications, with proven convergence and stability.

Findings

Algorithms outperform existing methods in secrecy performance

Framework effectively manages power and throughput constraints

Simulation confirms the framework's robustness and efficiency

Abstract

The multi-UAV network is promising to extend conventional networks by providing broader coverage and better reliability. Nevertheless, the broadcast nature of wireless signals and the broader coverage expose multi-UAV communications to the threats of passive eavesdroppers. Recent studies mainly focus on securing a single legitimate link, or communications between a UAV and multiple ground users in one/two-UAV-aided networks, while the physical layer secrecy analysis for hierarchical multi-UAV networks is underexplored. In this paper, we investigate a general two-tier UAV network consisting of multiple UAV transmitters (UTs) and multiple UAV receivers (URs) in the presence of multiple UAV eavesdroppers (UEs). To protect all legitimate UT-UR links against UEs at the physical layer, we design a two-stage framework consisting of a UT-UR association stage and a cooperative transmission stage. Specifically, we formulate the secure transmission problem into a many-to-one matching game followed by an overlapping coalition formation (OCF) game, taking into account the limited capabilities and the throughput requirements of URs, as well as the transmission power constraints of UTs. A matching algorithm and an OCF algorithm are proposed to solve these two sequential games whose convergences and stabilities are guaranteed theoretically. Simulation results show the superiority of our algorithms and the effectiveness of our two-stage game framework in the terms of secrecy performance.