Six-dimensional mobility for secrecy enhancement in ISAC

Determine how to exploit six-dimensional mobility, comprising three-dimensional position and three-dimensional orientation control, to improve secrecy performance in integrated sensing and communication systems.

Background

The paper identifies a gap in existing intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted secure transmission research: most prior designs use fixed IRS deployments with passive phase tuning and focus primarily on sum-rate maximization, coverage extension, or beam alignment. In low-altitude line-of-sight-dominated environments, a UAV-mounted six-dimensional movable IRS can additionally control its position and orientation, potentially reshaping path loss, propagation angles, aperture projection, and the spatial separation between a legitimate user and a sensing target that may act as an eavesdropper. The paper explicitly presents the exploitation of this six-dimensional mobility for secrecy improvement in ISAC systems as unresolved. The proposed work formulates and numerically studies one such UAV-mounted six-dimensional movable IRS-assisted secure ISAC design, thereby addressing the stated problem within the specific system model and optimization framework developed in the paper.