Aerial intelligent reflecting surface for improving the secrecy performance of wireless systems with hardware impairments

Abstract

SummaryIt has been confirmed that the aerial intelligent reflecting surface (AIRS) can dramatically improve the coverage and quality of service of wireless communication systems. This paper proposes to exploit an AIRS to enhance the physical layer security (PLS) of wireless communication systems. In particular, the AIRS flies at convenient positions for enhancing legitimate channel gain and reducing eavesdropping channel gain. Moreover, the worst‐case security is determined where the legitimate user is affected by hardware impairments (HIs) while the eavesdropper hardware is ideal (ID). The analytical expression of secrecy outage probability (SOP) of the considered systems (referred to as the AIRS‐HI systems) is derived over realistic Nakagami‐ channels recommended for application in the fifth and beyond generations (5G & B5G). To clarify the behaviors of the considered systems, the asymptotic expressions of signal‐to‐distortion‐plus‐noise ratio (SDNR) at the legitimate user, signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) at the eavesdropper, and SOP are also provided. Monte‐Carlo simulations are employed to confirm the accuracy of the derived theorem. Numerical results confirm that the SOP of the AIRS‐HI systems is dramatically higher than the SOP of the AIRS‐ID systems. In other words, a strong effect of HIs on the SOP of the AIRS‐HI systems is clearly indicated. Consequently, utilizing the high transmit power is not an effective solution to improve the secrecy performance of the AIRS‐HI systems. In contrast, it is essential to employ an appropriate transmit power tailored to the specific system parameters. Furthermore, the considerable advantages of incorporating AIRS are demonstrated through a comparison between the SOPs of AIRS‐HI systems and HI systems lacking AIRS. Additionally, a comprehensive examination of AIRS‐HI system behaviors is conducted by varying various system parameters, including the predefined secrecy rate, HI level, the number of reflecting elements (REs) in AIRS, WiFi network frequency, AIRS altitude, bandwidth, and channel fading order. These observations lead to the identification of numerous recommended solutions for enhancing the SOP performance of the considered AIRS‐HI systems.