Dual Security for MIMO-OFDM ISAC Systems: Artificial Ghosts or Artificial Noise

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dual-security framework for MIMO-OFDM ISAC systems that uses artificial noise and ghosts to protect against passive eavesdroppers in both sensing and communication, without needing their channel information.

Contribution

It proposes a novel two-layer security scheme that jointly protects sensing and communication in ISAC systems by designing beamformers to inject artificial noise and create artificial ghosts, without requiring eavesdroppers' CSI.

Findings

Effectively reduces eavesdroppers' ability to intercept communication.

Impairs sensing eavesdroppers' target detection capabilities.

Preserves legitimate users' communication and sensing performance.

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enables the efficient sharing of wireless resources to support emerging applications, but it also gives rise to new sensing-based security vulnerabilities. Here, potential communication security threats whereby confidential messages intended for legitimate users are intercepted, but also unauthorized receivers (Eves) can passively exploit target echoes to infer sensing parameters without users being aware. Despite these risks, the joint protection of sensing and communication security in ISAC systems remains unexplored. To address this challenge, this paper proposes a two-layer dual-secure ISAC framework that simultaneously protects sensing and communication against passive sensing Eves and communication Eves, without requiring their channel state information (CSI). Specifically, transmit beamformers are jointly designed to inject artificial noise (AN) to introduce interference to communication Eves, while deliberately distorting the reference signal available to sensing Eves to impair their sensing capability. Furthermore, the proposed design generates artificial ghosts (AGs) with fake angle-range-velocity profiles observable by all receivers. Legitimate receivers can suppress these AGs, whereas sensing Eves cannot, thereby significantly reducing their probability of correctly detecting the true targets. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed framework effectively enhances both communication and sensing security, while preserving the performance of communication users and legitimate sensing receivers.