A Secure UAV Cooperative Communication Framework: Prospect Theory Based Approach

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have attracted extensive attention from both industry and academia owing to their high mobility, line-of-sight (LoS) characteristics of air-to-ground (A2G) channels, and low cost. However, the broadcast nature of wireless transmission and the LoS characteristics of A2G channels are vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks, which leads to severe security issues. To enhance the security of UAV communication, we propose a framework that multiple UAVs cooperate to resist attacks (MURA). Specifically, we first introduce an efficient incentive scheme based on the coalition game to motivate UAVs to participate in a coalition. By forming a grand coalition, we demonstrate that each individual UAV can maximize its utility. Additionally, we propose a secure UAV communication scheme designed to counter eavesdropping attacks. Two distinct types of scenarios are considered in UAV communication. In a completely rational scenario, in which participants make decisions aiming to maximize their utility, we utilize the Stackelberg game to model the interactions between UAVs and attacker. The existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium solution are proved, and the equilibrium solution is obtained. In the context of an imperfectly rational scenario, we employ the prospect theory (PT) to effectively capture the underlying rationality exhibited by the players. The PT valuations of the players, i.e., UAV and attacker, are deduced in detail. Meanwhile, the convergence of the PT valuations of UAV and attacker is proved. Finally, extensive simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively improve the utility of legal UAVs and ensure the security of the UAV networks compared with benchmarks.