On the Physical Layer Security of Automotive Dual-Function Radar-Communication Systems

• Published in: IEEE internet of things journal Vol. 11; no. 3; p. 1
• Main Authors: Jiang, Zheng-Ming, Rihan, Mohamed, Deng, Qijun, Mohamed, Ehab Mahmoud, Khalaf, Haitham, Wang, Xiaojun, Omar, Rasha S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.02.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Array signal processing; Automobile industry; Automobiles; Communication; Communications systems; Complexity theory; Convexity; dual function radar-communication (DFRC); Industrial development; inexact block coordinate descent algorithm; Optimization; Physical layer security; Radar; Security; Semidefinite programming; Signal to noise ratio; Transceivers
• ISSN: 2327-4662; 2327-4662
• DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2023.3301771

The automotive industry has witnessed flourishing development in the last few years with the hope of achieving fully autonomous driving. In parallel, dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) systems are being developed to tackle the spectrum scarcity challenge and integrate radar and communication transceivers into a unified system. However, with a DFRC system, critical information may be intercepted by unauthorized people in the target vehicle. Therefore, the physical layer security of the DFRC system needs to be given considerable attention. To improve the security of information transmission, artificial noise (AN) is used to interfere with eavesdroppers. The main objective of this work is to maximize the secrecy rate of vehicles subject to both radar signal-to-noise ratio (SINR) and communication transmit power constraints. To overcome the difficulty caused by the existence of the non-convex Shannon capacity formula in the formulated problem, we convert the secrecy rate optimization to an equivalent bi-convex optimization problem. Furthermore, due to the non-convexity of the formulated design problem, we exploit an inexact block coordinate descent (IBCD) algorithm based on Semi-definite Programming (SDP) to obtain the optimal solution. Moreover, to reduce the complexity of the SDP-based IBCD algorithm, a Bi-search-based IBCD algorithm is employed for single target scenarios. Finally, numerical simulations are used to demonstrate the superiority of using the AN approach to enhance the performance of the DFRC system in terms of the secrecy rate.