Joint Optimization for Secure Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted UAV Networks

This letter proposes a novel secure intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system, where the UAV sends confidential messages to a legitimate receiver, in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. We aim to maximize the secrecy rate by jointly designing the trajectory, the power control of UAV and the phase shifters of the IRS from the physical layer security perspective. Because the formulated problem is non-convex and intractable, we propose an iterative algorithm based on successive convex approximation (SCA) to solve this problem. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and show that the secrecy rate is significantly improved with the assistance of the IRS.