Joint Trajectory and Beamforming Optimization for UAV-Enabled Full-Duplex ISAC Systems with Covert Communication

This paper investigates a UAV-enabled full-duplex (FD) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system designed for covert downlink communication and uplink overt information exchange. Aiming to serve multiple covert communication users (CCUs) and detect a radar target simultaneously, the system operates within a finite flight duration, leveraging the UAV’s dynamic trajectory to enhance operational flexibility. To address the challenges posed by coupling between sensing, communication, and UAV trajectory, we jointly optimize the UAVs trajectory, uplink power allocation, and beamforming strategies for downlink and radar operations. The formulated optimization problem maximizes the minimum transmission rate (TR) across CCUs while ensuring constraints on sensing SINR, uplink TR, system covertness, and total power budget. To tackle the non-convexity, we propose a sequential convex approximation (SCA)-based algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in balancing the trade-off between communication secrecy and sensing performance, highlighting the UAV’s potential in adaptive ISAC deployment.