Secrecy Analysis and Optimization of UAV-Assisted Communications With Hybrid SWIPT and Cooperative Jamming

Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a state-of-the-art solution for establishing communication in remote and obstructed areas. However, before UAVs can be integrated into existing communication infrastructure, it is essential to address the energy constraints and security concerns arising from their line-of-sight links. This article focuses on a UAV-enabled communication system in which a UAV relay facilitates information transfer from the source to the destination nodes when the direct link is heavily shadowed or obstructed. A nearby terrestrial passive eavesdropper can intercept information transmitted through the source-to-UAV and UAV-to-destination links. To address this, we utilize destination-aided cooperative jamming. Additionally, we consider simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) at the UAV to provide the energy required for data transmission. In particular, the UAV utilizes a hybrid-SWIPT technique to harvest energy from the radio-frequency signals. For this setup, we derive accurate expressions of secrecy outage probability and system secrecy throughput (SST) over Beaulieu-Xie distributed channels. Using the SST expression, we formulate an SST maximization problem to jointly optimize the transmit powers, power allocation, SWIPT coefficients, and UAV’s 3-D position. The formulated problem is solved using the hybrid heuristic framework, combining continuous genetic and particle swarm optimization algorithms. Numerical results demonstrate the significant enhancement in information secrecy of the system with the proposed hybrid scheme and also provide valuable insights into the system’s behavior.