Secure UAV-Enabled Communication Using Han–Kobayashi Signaling

This paper proposes Han-Kobayashi signaling (HKS), under which each pair of users decodes a common message to improve their throughput, for UAV-enabled multi-user communication. Given that only a single transmit antenna is used and thus there is no null space of users' channels for inserting an artificial noise that would effectively help to jam an eavesdropper without interfering the users' desired signals, a new information and artificial noise transfer scheme to address physical layer security (PLS) for the considered networks is investigated. Under this scheme, the UAV sends the confidential information to its users within a fraction of the time slot and sends the artificial noise within the remaining fraction. Accordingly, the problem of jointly optimizing the time-fraction, bandwidth and power allocation to maximize the users' worst secrecy throughput is formulated. New inner approximations are proposed for developing path-following algorithms for its computation. Simulation shows that the proposed information and artificial noise transfer enables not only HKS but also orthogonal multi-access and nonorthogonal multi-access to provide PLS for UAV-enabled communication even when the eavesdropper is in the best channel condition. HKS outperforms the other two schemes in terms of users' worst secrecy throughput.