Secure Pinching Antenna-aided ISAC

2025-07-17

AI Summary

To address the challenge of simultaneously ensuring communication security for legitimate users and enabling effective malicious target detection in Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) systems, this paper proposes a dual-functional secure ISAC architecture based on a Punched Antenna (PA). The design jointly optimizes the PA’s physical layout, secure beamforming, and artificial noise (AN) covariance matrix under total power constraints to synergistically enhance both communication secrecy and radar sensing performance. Innovatively integrating a multi-waveguide PA structure with directional AN injection, the approach overcomes the performance limitations of conventional uniform linear arrays (ULAs). Experimental results demonstrate a 30 dB illumination power gain over ULAs and a 3 dB improvement over equidistant PA configurations, significantly boosting target detection sensitivity and information-theoretic secrecy rate.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search
• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship

Abstract

In this letter, a pinching antenna (PA)-aided scheme for establishing a secure integrated sensing and communication system (ISAC) is investigated. The underlying system comprises a dual-functional radar communication (DFRC) base station (BS) linked to multiple waveguides to serve several downlink users while sensing a set of malicious targets in a given area. The PA-aided BS aims at preserving communication confidentiality with the legitimate users while being able to detect malicious targets. One objective of the proposed scheme is to optimize the PA locations, based on which an optimal design of the legitimate signal beamforming and artificial noise covariance matrices is provided to maximize the network's sensing performance, subject to secrecy and total power constraints. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme through numerical examples and compare that against a traditional DFRC ISAC system with a uniform linear array of half-wavelength-spaced antennas. We show that the proposed scheme outperforms the baseline PA-aided scheme with equidistant PAs by $3$ dB in terms of illumination power, while it can provide gains of up to $30$ dB of the same metric against a traditional ISAC system with half-wavelength-space uniform linear arrays.

Problem

• Secure ISAC system with pinching antenna for confidentiality and sensing
• Optimize PA locations and beamforming for enhanced sensing performance
• Compare performance against traditional DFRC ISAC systems

Innovation

• Pinching antenna enhances secure ISAC system
• Optimizes antenna locations and beamforming design
• Outperforms traditional systems by significant margins