Enhancing Physical Layer Security in Cognitive Radio-Enabled NTNs with Beyond Diagonal RIS

Beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (BD-RIS) have emerged as a transformative technology for enhancing wireless communication by intelligently manipulating the propagation environment. This paper explores the potential of BD-RIS in improving cognitive radio enabled multilayer non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). It is assumed that a high-altitude platform station (HAPS) has set up the primary network, while an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) establishes the secondary network in the HAPS footprint. We formulate a joint optimization problem to maximize the secrecy rate by optimizing BD-RIS phase shifts and the secondary transmitter power allocation while controlling the interference temperature from the secondary network to the primary network. To solve this problem efficiently, we decouple the original problem into two sub-problems, which are solved iteratively by relying on alternating optimization. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of BD-RIS in cognitive radio-enabled multilayer NTNs to accommodate the secondary network while satisfying the constraints imposed from the primary network.