Optical HAPS Eavesdropping in Vertical Heterogeneous Networks

In the next generation (6G) wireless networks, the integration of terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks is essential to provide flawless connectivity over the globe. The vital element of this architecture is the high altitude platform station (HAPS) systems, which can provide reliable and ubiquitous connectivity among satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and terrestrial users. Motivated by the importance of HAPS systems, in this paper, we provide three different use-cases for HAPS eavesdropping scenarios and investigate their physical layer security (PLS) performances. To quantify the PLS performance of the proposed setups, we perform secrecy outage probability (SOP), probability of positive secrecy (PPSC), average secrecy capacity (ASC), and secrecy throughput (ST) analyses. Furthermore, we also provide important design guidelines that can be beneficial for secure HAPS systems.