Secure Beamforming for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Equipped Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) attracts significant interest due to its passive nature and low power consumption. RIS equipped with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is utilized to further improve the performance of a wireless network. However, the secrecy of UAV-RIS faces challenges under imperfect channel state information (CSI), especially when UAV-RIS is paired with beamforming under various propagation channels. In this article, we outline possible security requirements in UAV-RIS beamforming use cases while considering real-world situations. Then, we present a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based beamforming approach for secure UAV-RIS beamforming to enhance the performance of communication channels. The proposed solution for secure beamforming for UAV-RIS connectivity offers appreciable performance improvements over conventional methods. Finally, we determine several intriguing future research directions and challenges. © 2018 IEEE.