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arXiv:2107.00210

Secure Transmission with Different Security Requirements Based on Covert Communication and Information-Theoretic Security in Presence of Friendly Jammer

Pooya Baee, Farid Samsami Khodadad, Moslem Forouzesh

Published Sep 8, 2022• 0 citations
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Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we investigate joint information-theoretic security andcovert communication on a network in the presence of a single transmit-ter (Alice), a friendly jammer, a single untrusted user, two legitimateusers, and a single warden (Willie). In the considered network, one of theauthorized users, Bob, needs a secure communication, and therefore hismessage must be sent securely, and at the same time, the other autho-rized user, Carol, needs covert communication, i.e., the existence of hiscommunication with the transmitter should not be detected by the war-den, Willie. In the proposed network model, it is assumed that for covertcommunication requirements, Alice will use an on-off strategy to sendthe data to the legitimate receivers of the network, so that it decides onthe sending of data at any specific time slot. One of the main challengesin covert communication is low data rate because we have to reduce thetransmission power such that the main message gets to hide in back-ground noise. In the proposed network, a jammer is employed to destroy the eavesdropper and warden’s channel. To eliminate the interferencecreated by the jammer, it has been proposed that the used jammer in thenetwork be friendly. In this study, in addition to using joint security ofinformation theory and covert communication, we examine the averagetransmission rate according to the limitations and requirements of covertcommunication and the requested quality of service by users, by creatingartificial noise in the network which is generated by a friendly jammer.

DOI
10.21203/rs.3.rs-2022238/v1

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Abstract In this paper, we investigate joint information-theoretic security andcovert communication on a network in the presence of a single transmit-ter (Alice), a friendly jammer, a single untrusted user, two legitimateusers, and a single warden (Willie). In the considered network, one of theauthorized users, Bob, needs a secure communication, and therefore hismessage must be sent securely, and at the same time, the other autho-rized user, Carol, needs covert communication, i.e., the existence of hiscommunication with the transmitter should not be detected by the war-den, Willie. In the proposed network model, it is assumed that for covertcommunication requirements, Alice will use an on-off strategy to sendthe data to the legitimate receivers of the network, so that it decides onthe sending of data at any specific time slot. One of the main challengesin covert communication is low data rate because we have to reduce thetransmission power such that the main message gets to hide in back-ground noise. In the proposed network, a jammer is employed to destroy the eavesdropper and warden’s channel. To eliminate the interferencecreated by the jammer, it has been proposed that the used jammer in thenetwork be friendly. In this study, in addition to using joint security ofinformation theory and covert communication, we examine the averagetransmission rate according to the limitations and requirements of covertcommunication and the requested quality of service by users, by creatingartificial noise in the network which is generated by a friendly jammer.
Abstract This paper addresses the power allocation problem in a network where joint information-theoretic secrecy and covert communication are required. In this network, a single transmitter (Alice) sends information to two legitimate users (Bob and Carol). There is also an untrusted user who attempts to detect the content of Bob’s message and a warden (Willie) who wants to detect the existence of communication between Alice and the two users. Thus, Carol requires covert transmission, and Bob requires secure and covert communication. The network utilizes a friendly jammer to address these demands and overcome the low transmission rate of covert communication. To achieve covert communication, Alice sends both users’ data simultaneously in selected time slots to hide it from Willie, while the jammer continuously transmits signals in all time slots. The objective is to maximize the average transmission rate over the allocated powers of Bob, Carol, and the jammer while meeting the two users’ requirements. A novel iterative algorithm is proposed to obtain an effective solution. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method can enhance the network’s average rate while satisfying the users’ demands.
In this article, we investigate joint information-theoretic secrecy and covert communication in a single-input-multioutput (SIMO) system where a transmitter (Alice) is communicating with two legitimate users (Bob and Carol). We consider that an untrusted user and a warden node are also present in the network attempting to attack the secure and covert communications to Bob and Carol, respectively. Specifically, Bob requires secure communications such that his messages from Alice are not decoded by the untrusted user, while Carol requires covert communications such that her messages from Alice are not detected by the warden. To do so, we consider that Alice transmits Carol's messages during selected time slots to hide them from the warden while also transmitting Bob's messages in each time slot contentiously. We formulate an optimization problem with the aim of maximizing the average rate subject to a covert communication requirement and a secure communications constraint. Since the proposed optimization problem is nonconvex, we utilize successive convex approximation to obtain a tractable solution. Moreover, we extend our proposed system model to multiple antenna Alice scenario and find beamforming vectors so that the average sum rate is maximized. Furthermore, we consider practical assumptions that Alice has imperfect knowledge of the warden's location and imperfect channel state information (CSI) of Bob and Carol. Our numerical examples highlight that the imperfect CSI at Carol has a more detrimental impact on the average rate compared to imperfect CSI at Bob.
Covert communication considers the ability of transmitter Alice to communicate reliably to receiver Bob without being detected by warden Willie. Previous work has generally considered a discrete-time model, and, in the standard Alice-Bob-Willie scenario, it has been shown that a discrete-time model captures the salient aspects of the underlying continuous-time covert communications system. However, in the presence of a jammer assisting Alice, where it has been shown in previous work that Alice can achieve a positive covert rate on a discrete-time model, we demonstrate here that a straightforward extension of the discrete-time construction to the continuous-time system does not guarantee a positive covert rate, hence indicating that the discrete-time model does not capture the salient aspects of the continuous-time system in such a scenario. This is because Willie is able to exploit excess bandwidth for co-channel interference suppression, as we demonstrate with an interference cancellation receiver. Hence, for the case when Alice is assisted by an uninformed jammer, we consider the continuous-time channel directly and study whether efficient covert communication can still be achieved against any possible receiver that Willie might employ. By presenting and characterizing an approach much different than that suggested by previous work for discrete-time systems in such a scenario, we establish thatO(WT)\mathcal {O}(WT)O(WT)information bits can be transmitted covertly and reliably on a continuous-time channel of asymptotic bandwidthWWWinTTTseconds, regardless of the receiver that Willie employs. This is done for two separate scenarios: 1) when there is perfect frame synchronization between Alice and the jammer’s signals; 2) when there is no frame synchronization between Alice and the jammer’s signals. Numerical results are provided to validate the theory.
In practice, Internet of Things (IoT) applications may face two different hostile attacks, i.e., overhearing the broadcasted data and detecting the presence of data communication. Previous works have assumed that only one of these attacks is present in the network and have addressed these attacks separately. In this article, we investigate the security of a simple but practical IoT-based point-to-point communication which is facing with the above-mentioned two attacks under some realistic assumptions. In other words, we aim to protect the data against two adversary nodes, namely Eve (who tries to capture the broadcasted data) and warden Willie (who tries to detect the presence of data communication between legitimate nodes). To tackle these attacks, we jointly employ the information-theoretic security and covert communication techniques. To hide information from Willies, we force the source to transmit its message in the selected time slot and the multiple-antennas cooperative jammer to inject jamming during all time slots contentiously which leads to deceive Eves and Willies jointly. To enhance the performance of this security design, we formulate an optimization problem, with the goal of maximizing the secrecy rate subject to power constraints at the source and jammer, while satisfying a covert communication requirement. Since the mentioned optimization problem is nonconvex, we propose an algorithm to solve it. Then, to obtain further insights, we extend our proposed system model to noncolluding and colluding Willies. Next, we study a practical communication scenario, where the source has uncertainty about Willie’s location and knows the channel state information (CSI) of Eves imperfectly. Our numerical results highlight that a more accurate estimation of Willie’s location has a more positive efficacy on the secrecy performance compared to the case with more accuracy of Eves’ CSI estimation.
Recent work has established that when transmitter Alice wishes to communicate reliably to recipient Bob without detection by warden Willie, with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels between all parties, communication is limited to O(√n) bits in n channel uses. However, this assumes that Willie has an accurate statistical characterization of the channel. When Willie has uncertainty about such and his receiver is limited to a threshold test on the received power, Alice can transmit covertly with a power that does not decrease with n, thus conveying O(n) bits covertly and reliably in n uses of an AWGN channel. Here, we consider covert communication of O(n) bits in n channel uses while generalizing the environment and removing any restrictions on Willie's receiver. We assume that an uninformed “jammer” is present to help Alice, and we consider AWGN and block fading channels. In some scenarios, Willie's optimal detector is a threshold test on the received power. When the channel between the jammer and Willie has multiple fading blocks per codeword, a threshold test on the received power is not optimal. However, we establish that Alice can remain covert with a transmit power that does not decrease with n even when Willie employs an optimal detector.
Recent works have considered the ability of transmitter Alice to communicate reliably to receiver Bob without being detected by warden Willie. These works generally assume a standard discrete-time model. But the assumption of a discrete-time model in standard communication scenarios is often predicated on its equivalence to a continuous-time model, which has not been established for the covert communications problem. Here, we consider the continuous-time channel directly and study if efficient covert communication can still be achieved. We assume that an uninformed jammer is present to assist Alice, and we consider additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels between all parties. For a channel with approximate bandwidth W, we establish constructions such that O(WT) information bits can be transmitted covertly and reliably from Alice to Bob in T seconds for two separate scenarios: 1) when the path-loss between Alice and Willie is known; and 2) when the path-loss between Alice and Willie is unknown.