Sensing Security Oriented OFDM-ISAC Against Multi-Intercept Threats

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel approach to enhance sensing security in ISAC systems against advanced multi-intercept adversaries by analyzing cyclic spectrum features and introducing a new security metric.

Contribution

It introduces a new ergodic cyclic spectrum metric and formulates an ISAC design that explicitly considers sensing security against sophisticated threats.

Findings

The proposed metric effectively characterizes sensing security.

The optimized ISAC design improves security performance.

Simulation results validate the approach's effectiveness.

Abstract

In recent years, security has emerged as a critical aspect of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. While significant research has focused on secure communications, particularly in ensuring physical layer security, the issue of sensing security has received comparatively less attention. This paper addresses the sensing security problem in ISAC, particularly under the threat of multi-intercept adversaries. We consider a realistic scenario in which the sensing target is an advanced electronic reconnaissance aircraft capable of employing multiple signal interception techniques, such as power detection (PD) and cyclostationary analysis (CA). To evaluate sensing security under such sophisticated threats, we analyze two critical features of the transmitted signal: (i) power distribution and (ii) cyclic spectrum. Further, we introduce a novel ergodic cyclic spectrum metric which leverages the intrinsic mathematical structure of cyclostationary signals to more comprehensively characterize their behavior. Building on this analysis, we formulate a new ISAC design problem that explicitly considers sensing security, and we develop a low-complexity, efficient optimization approach to solve it. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed metric is both effective and insightful, and that our ISAC design significantly enhances sensing security performance in the presence of multi-intercept threats.