Secrecy Rate Maximization for UAV-Mounted Six-Dimensional Movable IRS-Assisted ISAC Systems

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a key enabling technology for 6G wireless networks, but its broadcast nature raises a physical-layer security concern when the sensing target can act as a potential eavesdropper. Although intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) can enhance wireless propagation and improve secrecy, existing secure IRS-assisted ISAC designs are mostly limited to fixed deployments and passive phase control, which offer limited spatial adaptability in line-of-sight-dominated low-altitude scenarios. To address this limitation, we investigate an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-mounted six-dimensional movable IRS-assisted secure ISAC system, where the IRS location, orientation, and reflection coefficients are jointly optimized with the BS beamformer to maximize the secrecy rate under communication quality-of-service (QoS), power, unit-modulus, and visibility constraints. The resulting problem is highly non-convex due to the coupled active/passive beamforming variables and the location-and-orientation-dependent (pose-dependent) channel responses. To solve it efficiently, we develop a three-block alternating optimization (AO) framework, in which the active beamformer, IRS pose, and passive reflection vector are updated via linearized ADMM, warm-started particle swarm optimization, and Riemannian gradient descent, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed design significantly outperforms fixed-location and orientation-only baselines, highlighting the importance of joint translation, rotation, and phase control for secure ISAC.