Secure Transmit Beamforming for Radar-Communication System Without Eavesdropper CSI

This article studies the transmit beamforming security in the dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) system, where the radar beam also serves as the artificial jamming to suppress potential eavesdropper channels. Unlike previous researches, which assumed that the lone target might be a potential eavesdropper on the adversary side, this paper analyses a more generic scenario in which the eavesdroppers' channel state information (CSI) is unknown. The eavesdropping rate should be limited to guarantee transmission confidentiality, which is intractable owing to the unknown CSI. To address this issue, we present the long-term eavesdropping signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) as a more tractable security metric. Based on the long-term eavesdropping SINR, the sum rate maximization (SRM) and jamming power maximization (JPM) transmission scheme are investigated. For the SRM scheme, we propose a zero-forcing (ZF) suboptimal algorithm to solve the non-convex fractional programming (FP) problem, and for the JPM scheme, the resultant problem is solved via the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique. Finally, numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed beamforming approaches.

Automated summary

This article investigates the transmit beamforming security in the dual-functional radar-communication system and proposes the long-term eavesdropping SINR as a tractable security metric. It also explores the sum rate maximization and jamming power maximization transmission schemes.