Enhancing Physical Layer Security in Dual-Function Radar-Communication Systems With Hybrid Beamforming Architecture

• Published in: IEEE wireless communications letters Vol. 13; no. 6; pp. 1566 - 1570
• Main Authors: Xu, Lingyun, Wang, Bowen, Li, Huiyong, Cheng, Ziyang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.06.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Beamforming; Communications systems; Dual-function radar-communication; hybrid beamforming; Hybrid systems; Interference; Optimization; physical layer security; Radar; Radar detection; Radio frequency; Security; Signal to noise ratio; Wireless communication
• ISSN: 2162-2337; 2162-2345
• DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2024.3382035

In this letter, we investigate enhancing the physical layer security (PLS) for the dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) system with hybrid beamforming (HBF) architecture. To enhance PLS in the considered DFRC system, we propose a novel HBF architecture, which introduces a new integrated sensing and security (I2S) symbol. The secure HBF design problem for DFRC is formulated by maximizing the minimum legitimate user communication rate subject to radar signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio, eavesdropping rate, hardware and power constraints. To solve this non-convex problem, we propose an alternating optimization based method to jointly optimize transmit and receive beamformers. Numerical simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and show the superiority of the proposed I2S-aided HBF architecture for achieving DFRC and enhancing PLS.