Queue Stability-Constrained Robust Secure Beamforming for Low-Altitude UAV-ISAC Systems

OUYANG Jian; REN Wei; XU Ba; LIU Xiaoyu; JIANG Wanmu

doi:10.11999/JEIT260275

Volume 48 Issue 9

Sep. 2026

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OUYANG Jian, REN Wei, XU Ba, LIU Xiaoyu, JIANG Wanmu. Queue Stability-Constrained Robust Secure Beamforming for Low-Altitude UAV-ISAC Systems[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology, 2026, 48(9): 3779-3789. doi: 10.11999/JEIT260275

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OUYANG Jian, REN Wei, XU Ba, LIU Xiaoyu, JIANG Wanmu. Queue Stability-Constrained Robust Secure Beamforming for Low-Altitude UAV-ISAC Systems[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology, 2026, 48(9): 3779-3789. doi: 10.11999/JEIT260275

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Queue Stability-Constrained Robust Secure Beamforming for Low-Altitude UAV-ISAC Systems

doi: 10.11999/JEIT260275 cstr: 32379.14.JEIT260275

OUYANG Jian^{1, 2
,
,},
REN Wei¹,
XU Ba³,
LIU Xiaoyu¹,
JIANG Wanmu¹

1.
School of Communication and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210003, China
2.
Key Laboratory of Intelligent Support Technology for Complex Environments, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
3.
Sixty-third Research Institute, National University of Defense Technology, Nanjing 210007, China

Funds: The National Natural Science Foundation of China (62601414), The Key Laboratory of Intelligent Support Technology for Complex Environments, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (B3202501), The Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (25KJD510011), The Natural Science Research Start up Foundation of Recruiting Talents of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (NY224068)

Received Date: 2026-03-16
Accepted Date: 2026-06-24
Rev Recd Date: 2026-06-24

Available Online: 2026-07-04

Publish Date: 2026-09-18

Abstract

Abstract

Objective To address antenna array angle errors caused by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) jitter, transmission instability resulting from random data arrivals, and secure transmission in multi-eavesdropper scenarios for low-altitude Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) systems, a robust secure beamforming algorithm subject to queue stability constraints is proposed. The proposed algorithm minimizes the long-term average transmit power while maintaining data queue stability and enhancing beamforming robustness against UAV jitter. Methods An optimization problem is formulated to minimize the long-term average transmit power subject to constraints on data queue stability, minimum secrecy rate, sensing performance, and maximum transmit power. Because the long-term stochastic optimization problem is difficult to solve directly, the Lyapunov optimization framework is employed to transform it into a sequence of short-term optimization subproblems. To address antenna array angle errors caused by UAV jitter within each time slot, the Second-Order Taylor Series Expansion (STSE) and the S-Procedure are jointly employed to approximate the non-convex problem with a tractable convex formulation. A robust secure beamforming algorithm based on penalty-based successive convex approximation is then developed. Results and Discussions Simulation results demonstrate the effects of the number of antennas, minimum secrecy rate threshold, sensing beam gain threshold, UAV jitter error, and Lyapunov weight factor on the system transmit power. As shown in Fig. 3, the communication beamformer provides additional sensing gain for the sensing area, whereas the sensing beamformer enhances communication security by directing interference toward potential eavesdroppers. These results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in jointly improving sensing and secure communication performance. Furthermore, by exploiting the dual-function characteristics of the communication and sensing beamformers, the proposed ISAC scheme achieves higher resource utilization efficiency than the separated sensing-and-communication scheme, as shown in Fig. 5. Figure 6 further shows that, compared with the non-robust scheme, the proposed robust scheme consistently satisfies the minimum secrecy rate requirement under various angle errors. In addition, Fig. 8 demonstrates that the proposed queue-aware scheme effectively suppresses transmit power fluctuations caused by random data arrivals, providing better transmission stability than the scheme without queue constraints. Conclusions A robust secure beamforming method for UAV-ISAC systems subject to queue stability constraints is investigated. The Lyapunov optimization framework transforms the long-term stochastic optimization problem into a sequence of short-term optimization subproblems. The STSE and the S-Procedure are jointly employed to convert the non-convex constraints caused by UAV jitter into tractable convex forms. A robust secure beamforming algorithm based on penalty-based successive convex approximation is then developed to efficiently solve the resulting deterministic short-term optimization subproblems. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively addresses random data arrivals, UAV jitter, and eavesdropping threats, thereby ensuring the stability and security of downlink data transmission in low-altitude UAV-ISAC systems.
- UAV,
- ISAC,
- Queue stability,
- Lyapunov optimization,
- Robust secure beamforming

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References(19)

References

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