Multi-IRS-Aided Secure Communication in UAV-MEC Networks

Abstract

With the merits of high mobility and easy deployment, mounting mobile edge computing (MEC) servers on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can efficiently fulfill the task offloading of ground users (GUs) over a large area. Nevertheless, data security is a challenging issue for the computation offloading in UAV-MEC networks, especially when there exist flying eavesdroppers. An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted secure communication scheme for a UAV-MEC network is proposed in this paper, wherein multiple IRSs are utilized to help the secure computation offloading from GUs against a UAV eavesdropper. Our aim is to maximize the secure computation capacity through the joint optimization of the IRS phase-shift, allocation of communication and computing resources and trajectory of UAV. We firstly solve the problem under a fixed UAV trajectory by alternating optimization to obtain the resource allocation and IRS phase-shift, wherein Dinkebach and Taylor expansion methods are used to transform the subproblems into tractable forms. Then, by adopting the proximal policy optimization, a joint optimization approach which further incorporates the UAV trajectory optimization is proposed. Numerical results verify that compared with benchmarks, the proposed scheme efficiently improves the system secure computation capacity.