Secure and covert communication strategy of UAV based on hybrid RF/FSO system

Abstract

The hybrid radio frequency (RF)/free-space optical (FSO) system can improve communication security by using complimentary characteristics and mitigating the risks of RF links being susceptible to co-channel interference (CCI) and malicious eavesdropping. We investigate the secure and covert communication performance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a hybrid RF/FSO system. In terms of secure communication, UAVs employ the strategy of transmitting private data concurrently through RF and FSO links, considering two modes based on active eavesdropping by a malicious user. Closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and effective secrecy throughput (EST) are derived. With respect to covert communication, the communication strategy is to utilize the RF link to generate interfering signals, thus aiding the FSO signals in accomplishing covert communication. We formulate an optimization problem that maximizes the EST while considering transmit power and user-acceptable detection error probability. A two-stage gradient-based iterative solution algorithm is proposed. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed secure and covert communication strategy based on the hybrid RF/FSO system, which is expected to enhance the communication security of UAVs in the RF-challenged environment.