In this paper, we consider an energy-constrained unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled mobile relay assisted secure communication system in the presence of a legitimate source-destination pair and multiple eavesdroppers with imperfect locations. The energy-constrained UAV employs the power splitting (PS) scheme to simultaneously receive information and harvest energy from the source, and then exploits the time switching (TS) protocol to perform information relaying. Furthermore, we consider a full-duplex destination node which can simultaneously receive confidential signals from the UAV and cooperatively transmit artificial noise (AN) signals to confuse malicious eavesdroppers. To further enhance the reliability and security of this system, we formulate a worst case secrecy rate maximization problem, which jointly optimizes the position of the UAV, the AN transmit power, as well as the PS and TS ratios. The formulated problem is non-convex and generally intractable. In order to circumvent the non-convexity, we decouple the original optimization problem into three subproblems; this facilitates the design of a suboptimal iterative algorithm. In each iteration, we propose a multi-dimensional search and numerical method to handle the subproblem. Numerical simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and superior performance of the proposed joint design versus the conventional schemes in the literature.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely applied for service provisioning in many domains, such as topographic mapping and traffic monitoring. These applications are complicated with huge computational resources and extremely low-latency requirements. However, the moderate computational capability and limited energy restrict the local data processing for the UAV. Fortunately, this impediment may be mitigated by utilizing wireless power transfer (WPT) and employing the multiaccess edge computing (MEC) paradigm for offloading demanding computational tasks from the UAV via wireless communications. Particularly, the offloaded information may become compromising by the eavesdropper (Eve) when UAVs offload the computational tasks to MEC servers. To address this issue, a UAV-MEC (UMEC) system with energy harvesting (EH) is studied, where the full-duplex protocol is considered to realize simultaneously receiving confidential data from the UAV and broadcasting the control instructions. It is worth noting that in our proposed scheme, these control instructions also serve as the artificial interference to confuse the Eve. To improve the energy efficiency for offloading, the computational communication resource allocation is optimized to minimize the energy consumption for UAV with the consumed and harvested energy. Specially, the worst case secrecy offloading rate and computation-latency constraint are considered, to further enhance the reliability and security of the proposed system. Since the objective optimization problem is nonconvex, we convert it into a convex one by analytical means. The semiclosed form expressions of the offloading time, offloading data size, and transmit power are, respectively, derived. Moreover, the conditions of nonoffloading, partial, and full offloading are also discussed from a physical perspective. With the specific conditions of activating the above-mentioned three offloading options, numerical results verify the performance of our proposed offloading strategy in various scenarios and show the superiority of our offloading strategy with the existing works in terms of the offloading capacity and energy efficiency.

In this article, the physical layer security (PLS) is investigated for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless communication systems, where one RIS is deployed to assist the communications between a pair of transmitter (Alice) and receiver (Bob), under a passive eavesdropper (Eve) attack. For the Eve, different from the bounded channel state information uncertainty model, the distribution of the Eve’s location is introduced into the wiretap link. In the proposed system, considering that the Eve can overhear signals transmitted from Alice or reflected by the RIS, two scenarios are studied for RIS-aided secure communication systems: one is that the Eve distributes close to Alice without the RIS orientation, and the other is that the Eve locates close to Bob and in the presence of the RIS. After investigating the probability distribution functions of the Eve’s location and the wiretap link, the novel cumulative density functions (CDFs) of the received signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) at the Eves are, respectively, derived for the two considered scenarios, taking into account the effects of RIS reflection coefficients, pathloss, and Eve’s location distribution. The closed-form expressions for the probability of the nonzero secrecy capacity and the ergodic secrecy capacity are obtained, providing insights into the impact of the Eve’s location uncertainty and the RIS design on the secrecy performance. Moreover, based on the derived CDFs for received SNRs at Eves, the secrecy outage probabilities are, respectively, analyzed. Specifically, under the constraint of the secrecy outage probability, the closed forms of the minimum required SNRs at Bob and the number of RIS elements are also obtained. Simulation and analytical results corroborate the derived expressions and reveal the tradeoff between the system’s energy efficiency and the number of RIS elements.

This survey provides a comprehensive analysis of digital twin (DT) technology as a transformative tool for advancing connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), focusing on advancements in vehicle safety, traffic management, and autonomous driving capabilities. The paper begins by discussing the foundational concepts and enabling technologies behind DT systems, setting the stage for their application in transportation networks. We review DT applications in vehicle safety, highlighting their role in real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and risk mitigation. Next, we explore the role of DT technology in optimizing traffic flow, enhancing traffic management, and enabling adaptive responses to dynamic conditions. The paper then examines the integration of DTs in intelligent and autonomous vehicles, emphasizing advancements in simulation, testing, and the development of autonomous driving functionalities. Finally, we outline future research opportunities and challenges for DT applications, providing a roadmap for their continued evolution in CAVs and ITS.

Despite various advantages of the integration of computational intelligence techniques for industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), the timely data collection is one of the main challenges for the application of the artificial intelligence (AI) model. With low-cost energy consumption, the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technique is a potential solution to the real-time data processing for intelligent transportation systems (ITSs). In this paper, an intelligent transmissive surface is introduced into the vehicular communications, enabling vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) signals to penetrate the intelligent RIS to access the base station (BS) on the opposite side of the vehicle. Considering that the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication reuses the spectrum spanned for V2I link, we investigate the ergodic capacity optimization problem for the vehicle performing V2I communications with the assistance of RIS, while meeting the low-latency and high-reliability requirements of the V2V link. The RIS transmission coefficients and power allocation of vehicles are jointly optimized, for the management of the desired and undesired vehicular communication links. To make this optimization problem trackable, the packet latency constraint is firstly converted into a data rate constraint, following the derivation of the packet loss probability. Then, the expression of optimal phase shifts are derived in a closed-form, which reveals that the performance gain brought by RIS is proportional to the number of intelligent elements, while inversely proportional to the distance from vehicle-to-BS, in a quadratic form. Moreover, in the case of discrete phase shifts, an intelligent algorithm is proposed for the beamforming design at RIS. Afterwards, with the objective to maximize the ergodic capacity of the V2I link, the optimal power allocation is also proposed. Simulation results confirm the accuracy of the proposed resource allocation strategy, and that the system performance in terms of the ergodic V2I capacity can be significantly improved by the RIS, ensuring the low-latency and high-reliability requirements of V2V communications.