Anti-Malicious ISAC Using Proactive Monitoring

In this paper, we investigate proactive monitoring to mitigate malicious activities in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. Our focus is on a scenario where a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) architecture is exploited by malicious actors. Malicious actors use multiple access points (APs) to illegally sense a legitimate target while communicating with users (UEs), one of which is suspected of illegal activities. In our approach, a proactive monitor overhears the suspicious UE and simultaneously sends a jamming signal to degrade the communication links between the APs and suspicious UE. Simultaneously, the monitor sends a precoded jamming signal toward the legitimate target to hinder the malicious sensing attempts. We derive closed-form expressions for the sensing signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR), as well as the received SINR at the UEs and overheard SINR at the monitor. The simulation results show that our anti-malicious CF-mMIMO ISAC strategy can significantly reduce the sensing performance while offering excellent monitoring performance.