Dynamic Role Allocation in Cooperative Secure UAV-ISAC Networks

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel physical-layer security framework for multi-UAV Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) networks operating in adversarial environments. To maximize the sum secrecy rate of legitimate ground users (GUs) while satisfying minimum sensing beampattern-gain constraints for target illumination, we introduce a dynamic role allocation mechanism in which each UAV can switch, on a per-time-slot basis, between an ISAC mode—combining coherent communications with radar sensing—and a dedicated artificial noise (AN) jammer mode. The resulting optimization is cast as a highly coupled Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Program (MINLP) that jointly optimizes binary role indicators, transmit beamforming and sensing covariance matrices, and UAV trajectories. We solve this problem with a tailored Alternating Optimization (AO) algorithm that integrates a penalty-based Convex-Concave Procedure (CCP) for the binary role subproblem, Semidefinite Relaxation (SDR) for the beamforming subproblem, and a trust-region Successive Convex Approximation (SCA) for the trajectory subproblem. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed dynamic-role architecture consistently outperforms both a static dedicated-jammer scheme and a fully optimized all-ISAC embedded-AN benchmark, confirming that its secrecy advantage arises from adaptive spatial-functional specialization rather than from artificial-noise transmission alone. Furthermore, we characterize the fundamental tradeoff between secrecy performance and stringent sensing beampattern-gain constraints, showing that moderate sensing requirements can be accommodated with no secrecy penalty.