Leveraging UAV-RIS Reflects to Improve the Security Performance of Wireless Network Systems

In this letter, a novel application method of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) is proposed, which installs a RIS on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) rather than fixed to buildings. When the location information of the eavesdropper is unknown, the UAV’s rapid deployment and RIS’s ability to change the transmission channel are utilized to dynamically optimize the UAV’s flight trajectory and RIS’s phase shift. The trajectory of the UAV and phase shift of the RIS are optimized to avoid the risk of potential eavesdropping and improve the average downlink secrecy rate of the system. This letter utilizes Q-learning and Deep Q-network (DQN) algorithms to solve the problem. Experiments show that RIS can reduce the flight distance of the UAV on the premise of ensuring security. The scenarios where the two algorithms are applicable are analyzed, and the DQN algorithm is more suitable for the scenarios of large state and action spaces. Also, the experimental results imply that the RIS-assisted UAV improves the average downlink secrecy rate and system security.