Leveraging UAV-assisted communications to improve secrecy for URLLC in 6G systems

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will be essential to support mission-critical applications of Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) in futuristic Sixth-Generation (6G) networks. However, several security vulnerabilities and attacks have plagued previous generations of communication systems; thus, physical layer security, especially against eavesdroppers, is vital, especially for upcoming 6G networks. In this regard, UAVs have appeared as a winning candidate to mitigate security risks. In this paper, we leverage UAVs to propose two methods. The first method utilizes a UAV as Decode-and-Forward (DF) relay, whereas the second method utilizes a UAV as a jammer to mitigate eavesdropping attacks for URLLC between transmitter and receiver devices. Moreover, we present a low-complexity algorithm that outlines the two aforementioned methods of mitigating interception, i.e. increasing secrecy rate, and we compare them with the benchmark null method in which there is a direct communication link between transmitter and receiver without the UAV DF relay. Additionally, simulation results show the effectiveness of such methods by improving the secrecy rate and its dependency on UAV height, blocklength, decoding error probability and transmitter-receiver separation distance. Lastly, we recommend the best method to enhance the secrecy rate in the presence of an eavesdropper based on our simulations.