Multi‐antenna joint covert communication with a public communication link over wireless fading channel

Abstract This paper studies multi‐antenna covert communication exploiting a public communication link over the wireless fading channel. In particular, a relatively practical covert communication scenario is considered for the first time, where a warden with radiometer may improve its detection accur...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yuda Lin, Liang Jin, Kaizhi Huang, You Zhou
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2021-03-01
Series:IET Communications
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1049/cmu2.12100
Description
Summary:Abstract This paper studies multi‐antenna covert communication exploiting a public communication link over the wireless fading channel. In particular, a relatively practical covert communication scenario is considered for the first time, where a warden with radiometer may improve its detection accuracy by jointly detecting uplink covert pilot and downlink covert communication. To this end, a joint covert communication system, jointly considering uplink covert pilot, imperfect channel state information issue and downlink covert communication, is proposed and further studied. Specifically, the detection performance of warden and the covertness performance of system are comprehensively studied, respectively. Afterwards, an optimization problem for covert capacity is formulated to maximize overall performance. Then, with our analysis and simplification, an optimal power allocation algorithm is designed for covert capacity accordingly. Our examination shows a win‐win situation has been achieved in the proposed system, that is, covert communication would rarely affect the normal communication of public link and occupy its communication resources. Interestingly enough, we analytically find an invariance property of downlink covert communication that covertness performance is not impacted by noise levels or warden's position. Based on this extraordinary finding, we conclude that the downlink covert communication system can perfectly combat with a powerful warden adopting power trend test method, while the joint covert communication system may resist that through a pilot deception scheme.
ISSN:1751-8628
1751-8636