In this paper, intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) are employed to enhance the physical layer security in a challenging radio environment. In particular, a multi-antenna access point (AP) has to serve multiple single-antenna legitimate users, which do not have line-of-sight communication links, in the presence of multiple multi-antenna potential eavesdroppers whose channel state information (CSI) is not perfectly known. Artificial noise (AN) is transmitted from the AP to deliberately impair the eavesdropping channels for security provisioning. We investigate the joint design of the beamformers and AN covariance matrix at the AP and the phase shifters at the IRSs for maximization of the system sum-rate while limiting the maximum information leakage to the potential eavesdroppers. To this end, we formulate a robust non-convex optimization problem taking into account the impact of the imperfect CSI of the eavesdropping channels. To address the non-convexity of the optimization problem, an efficient algorithm is developed by capitalizing on alternating optimization, a penalty-based approach, successive convex approximation, and semidefinite relaxation. Simulation results show that IRSs can significantly improve the system secrecy performance compared to conventional architectures without IRS. Furthermore, our results unveil that, for physical layer security, uniformly distributing the reflecting elements among multiple IRSs is preferable over deploying them at a single IRS.

In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation algorithm design for multicarrier solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication systems. In particular, the UAV is powered by the solar energy enabling sustainable communication services to multiple ground users. We study the joint design of the 3D aerial trajectory and the wireless resource allocation for maximization of the system sum throughput over a given time period. As a performance benchmark, we first consider an off-line resource allocation design assuming non-causal knowledge of the channel gains. The algorithm design is formulated as a mixed-integer non-convex optimization problem taking into account the aerodynamic power consumption, solar energy harvesting, a finite energy storage capacity, and the quality-of-service requirements of the users. Despite the non-convexity of the optimization problem, we solve it optimally by applying monotonic optimization to obtain the optimal 3D-trajectory and the optimal power and subcarrier allocation policy. Subsequently, we focus on the online algorithm design that only requires real-time and statistical knowledge of the channel gains. The optimal online resource allocation algorithm is motivated by the off-line scheme and entails a high computational complexity. Hence, we also propose a low-complexity iterative suboptimal online scheme based on the successive convex approximation. Our simulation results reveal that both the proposed online schemes closely approach the performance of the benchmark off-line scheme and substantially outperform two baseline schemes. Furthermore, our results unveil the tradeoff between solar energy harvesting and power-efficient communication. In particular, the solar-powered UAV first climbs up to a high altitude to harvest a sufficient amount of solar energy and then descends again to a lower altitude to reduce the path loss of the communication links to the users it serves.

In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation design for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted full-duplex (FD) cognitive radio systems. In particular, a secondary network employs an FD base station (BS) for serving multiple half-duplex downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) users simultaneously. An IRS is deployed to enhance the performance of the secondary network while helping to mitigate the interference caused to the primary users (PUs). The DL transmit beamforming vectors and the UL receive beamforming vectors at the FD BS, the transmit power of the UL users, and the phase shift matrix at the IRS are jointly optimized for maximization of the total spectral efficiency of the secondary system. The design task is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem taking into account the imperfect knowledge of the PUs’ channel state information (CSI) and their maximum interference tolerance. Since the maximum interference tolerance constraint is intractable, we apply a safe approximation to transform it into a convex constraint. To efficiently handle the resulting approximated optimization problem, which is still non-convex, we develop an iterative block coordinate descent (BCD)-based algorithm. This algorithm exploits semidefinite relaxation, a penalty method, and successive convex approximation and is guaranteed to converge to a stationary point of the approximated optimization problem. Our simulation results do not only reveal that the proposed scheme yields a substantially higher system spectral efficiency for the secondary system than several baseline schemes, but also confirm its robustness against CSI uncertainty. Besides, our results illustrate the tremendous potential of IRS for managing the various types of interference arising in FD cognitive radio networks.

In this paper, we investigate robust resource allocation algorithm design for multiuser downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication systems, where we account for the various uncertainties that are unavoidable in such systems and, if left unattended, may severely degrade system performance. We jointly optimize the two-dimensional (2-D) trajectory and the transmit beamforming vector of the UAV for minimization of the total power consumption. The algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem taking into account the imperfect knowledge of the angle of departure (AoD) caused by UAV jittering, user location uncertainty, wind speed uncertainty, and polygonal no-fly zones (NFZs). Despite the non-convexity of the optimization problem, we solve it optimally by employing monotonic optimization theory and semidefinite programming relaxation which yields the optimal 2-D trajectory and beamforming policy. Since the developed optimal resource allocation algorithm entails a high computational complexity, we also propose a suboptimal iterative low-complexity scheme based on successive convex approximation to strike a balance between optimality and computational complexity. Our simulation results reveal not only the significant power savings enabled by the proposed algorithms compared to two baseline schemes, but also confirm their robustness with respect to UAV jittering, wind speed uncertainty, and user location uncertainty. Moreover, our results unveil that the joint presence of wind speed uncertainty and NFZs has a considerable impact on the UAV trajectory. Nevertheless, by counteracting the wind speed uncertainty with the proposed robust design, we can simultaneously minimize the total UAV power consumption and ensure a secure trajectory that does not trespass any NFZ.

In this paper, we investigate the robust resource allocation design for secure communication in an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system. A multi-antenna dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) base station (BS) serves multiple single-antenna legitimate users and senses for targets simultaneously, where already identified targets are treated as potential single-antenna eavesdroppers. The DFRC BS scans a sector with a sequence of dedicated beams, and the ISAC system takes a snapshot of the environment during the transmission of each beam. Based on the sensing information, the DFRC BS can acquire the channel state information (CSI) of the potential eavesdroppers. Different from existing works that focused on the resource allocation design for a single snapshot, in this paper, we propose a novel optimization framework that jointly optimizes the communication and sensing resources over a sequence of snapshots with adjustable durations. Besides, artificial noise (AN) is exploited by the BS for joint sensing and physical layer security provisioning. To this end, we jointly optimize the duration of each snapshot, the beamforming vector, and the covariance matrix of the AN for maximization of the system sum secrecy rate over a sequence of snapshots while guaranteeing a minimum required average achievable rate and a maximum information leakage constraint for each legitimate user. The resource allocation algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem, where we account for the imperfect CSI of both the legitimate users and the potential eavesdroppers. To make the problem tractable, we derive a bound for the uncertainty region of the potential eavesdroppers’ small-scale fading based on a safe approximation, which facilitates the development of a block coordinate descent-based iterative algorithm for obtaining an efficient suboptimal solution. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed scheme can significantly enhance the physical layer security of ISAC systems compared to three baseline schemes. Moreover, compared to the conventional multi-stage approach for ISAC system design, the proposed approach based on variable-length snapshots not only facilitates a highly-directional offline sensing beam design but also allows us to flexibly prioritize communication or sensing depending on the application scenario.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted mobile edge computing (MEC) has recently attracted significant attention due to its superior capability to reduce the energy consumption and the latency of MEC offloading. In this paper, a general hybrid NOMA-MEC offloading strategy is proposed, which includes conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and pure NOMA based offloading as special cases. A multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to minimize the energy consumption for MEC offloading, and a low-complexity resource allocation solution is derived and shown to be Pareto-optimal. Furthermore, by analyzing the properties of the obtained resource allocation solution, important insights regarding NOMA-MEC offloading are obtained. For example, it is proved that pure NOMA-MEC offloading cannot outperform hybrid NOMA-MEC. In addition, a precise condition under which NOMA-MEC outperforms OMA-MEC is established, and shown to match the one previously developed for the two-user special case. Furthermore, the developed analytical results also establish an interesting analogy between the proposed hybrid NOMA-MEC power allocation scheme and the well-known water-filling strategy.