On the Secrecy Enhancement of an Integrated Ground-Aerial Network With a Hybrid FSO/THz Feeder Link

Elmehdi Illi*, Marwa Qaraqe

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

High-altitude platforms(HAPs)-aided terrestrial-aerial communication technology based on free-space optical (FSO) and terahertz (THz) feeder links has been attracting notable interest recently due to its great potential in reaching a higher data rate and connectivity. Nonetheless, the presence of harsh vertical propagation environments and potential aerial eavesdroppers are two of the main challenges limiting the reliability and security of such a technology. In this work, a secrecy-enhancing scheme for HAP-aided ground-aerial communication is proposed. The considered network consists of HAP-assisted communication between a ground station and a legitimate user under the threat of an aerial and ground eavesdropper. Thus, the proposed scheme leverages HAP diversity by exploiting the presence of multiple flying HAPs and the use of a hybrid FSO/THz transmission scheme to offer better resilience against eavesdropping attacks. An analytical secrecy outage probability (SOP) expression is derived for the scheme in consideration. Results manifest the notable gain in security of the proposed scheme with respect to both the single-HAP and THz feeder-based benchmark ones, where the proposed scheme's SOP is decreased by four orders of magnitude using four HAPs with respect to the first benchmark scheme, while a 5-dB secrecy gain is manifested with respect to the second benchmark one.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8431-8447
Number of pages17
JournalIEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
Volume60
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Keywords

  • Atmospheric attenuation
  • Eavesdropping
  • Free-space optics
  • Optical beams
  • Pointing errors
  • Radio frequency
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Signal to noise ratio
  • Terahertz communications
  • high-altitude platforms (HAPs)
  • physical layer security (PLS)
  • terahertz (THz) communication

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