Secure Communications in Near-Filed ISCAP Systems with Extremely Large-Scale Antenna Arrays

TL;DR

This paper proposes a joint beamforming design for secure near-field ISCAP systems with extremely large-scale antenna arrays, optimizing secrecy, sensing, and energy transfer while mitigating eavesdropping.

Contribution

It introduces an optimal joint beamforming approach using SDR and fractional programming, along with ZF and MRT alternatives, for secure multi-functional ISCAP systems.

Findings

Enhanced secrecy rate with joint beamforming in near-field ELAA systems

Effective jamming of eavesdroppers using dedicated sensing/energy beams

Improved performance when CU, target, and ERs are at same angle but different distances

Abstract

This paper investigates secure communications in a near-field multi-functional integrated sensing, communication, and powering (ISCAP) system with an extremely large-scale antenna arrays (ELAA) equipped at the base station (BS). In this system, the BS sends confidential messages to a single communication user (CU), and at the same time wirelessly senses a point target and charges multiple energy receivers (ERs). It is assumed that the ERs and the sensing target are potential eavesdroppers that may attempt to intercept the confidential messages intended for the CU. We consider the joint transmit beamforming design to support secure communications while ensuring the sensing and powering requirements. In particular, the BS transmits dedicated sensing/energy beams in addition to the information beam, which also play the role of artificial noise (AN) for effectively jamming potential eavesdroppers. Building upon this, we maximize the secrecy rate at the CU, subject to the maximum \ac{crb} constraints for target sensing and the minimum harvested energy constraints for the ERs. Although the formulated joint beamforming problem is non-convex and challenging to solve, we acquire the optimal solution via the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and fractional programming techniques together with a one-dimensional (1D) search. Subsequently, we present two alternative designs based on zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming and maximum ratio transmission (MRT), respectively. Finally, our numerical results show that our proposed approaches exploit both the distance-domain resolution of near-field ELAA and the joint beamforming design for enhancing secure communication performance while ensuring the sensing and powering requirements in ISCAP, especially when the CU and the target and ER eavesdroppers are located at the same angle (but different distances) with respect to the BS.