Secrecy Rate Analysis of UAV-Enabled mmWave Networks Using Matérn Hardcore Point Processes

Communications aided by low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as an effective solution to provide large coverage and dynamic capacity for both military and civilian applications, especially in unexpected scenarios. However, because of their broad coverage, UAV communications are prone to passive eavesdropping attacks. This paper analyzes the secrecy performance of UAVs networks at the millimeter wave band and takes into account unique features of air-to-ground channels and practical constraints of UAV deployment. To be specific, it explores the 3-D antenna gain in the air-to-ground links and uses the Matérn hardcore point process to guarantee the safety distance between the randomly deployed UAV base stations. In addition, we propose the transmit jamming strategy to improve the secrecy performance in which part of UAVs send jamming signals to confound the eavesdroppers. Simulation results verify our analysis and demonstrate the impact of different system parameters on the achievable secrecy rate. It is also revealed that optimizing the density of jamming UAVs will significantly improve security of UAV-enabled networks.