Gridded UAV Swarm for Secrecy Rate Maximization with Unknown Eavesdropper

TL;DR

This paper proposes a grid-based UAV swarm approach that maximizes secrecy rate through coordinated beamforming and jamming, even with an unknown eavesdropper, by optimizing UAV trajectories and power allocation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel UAV swarm formation and beamforming strategy for secrecy enhancement against unknown eavesdroppers, including optimal UAV number and placement.

Findings

Effective UAV-aided jamming scheme demonstrated

Optimal number of UAVs identified for secrecy rate saturation

Optimal eavesdropper location radius determined

Abstract

This paper considers grid formation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm for maximizing the secrecy rate in the presence of an unknown eavesdropper. In particular, the UAV swarm performs coordinated beamforming onto the null space of the legitimate channel to jam the eavesdropper located at an unknown location. By nulling the channel between the legitimate receiver and the UAV swarm, we obtain an optimal trajectory and jamming power allocation for each UAV enabling wideband single ray beamforming to improve the secrecy rate. Results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed UAV-aided jamming scheme as well as the optimal number of UAVs in the swarm necessary to observe a saturation effect in the secrecy rate. We also show the optimal radius of the unknown but constrained location of the eavesdropper.