Covert or low probability of detection communication is crucial to protect user privacy and provide a strong security. We analyze the joint impact of imperfect knowledge of the channel gain (channel uncertainty) and noise power (noise uncertainty) on the average probability of detection error at the eavesdropper and the covert throughput in Rayleigh fading channel. We characterize the covert throughput gain provided by the channel uncertainty as well as the covert throughput loss caused by the channel fading as a function of the noise uncertainty. Our result shows that the channel fading is essential to hiding the signal transmission, particularly when the noise uncertainty is below a threshold and/or the receive SNR is above a threshold. The impact of the channel uncertainty on the average probability of detection error and covert throughput is more significant when the noise uncertainty is larger.
Covert or low probability of detection communication is crucial to protect user privacy and provide a strong security. We analyze the joint impact of imperfect knowledge of the channel gain (channel uncertainty) and noise power (noise uncertainty) on the average probability of detection error at the eavesdropper and the covert throughput in Rayleigh fading channel. We characterize the covert throughput gain provided by the channel uncertainty as well as the covert throughput loss caused by the channel fading as a function of the noise uncertainty. Our result shows that the channel fading is essential to hiding the signal transmission, particularly when the noise uncertainty is below a threshold and/or the receive SNR is above a threshold. The impact of the channel uncertainty on the average probability of detection error and covert throughput is more significant when the noise uncertainty is larger.
Covert communications can hide the very existence of wireless transmissions and thus are able to address privacy issues in numerous applications of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we adopt channel inversion power control (CIPC) to achieve covert communications in Rayleigh fading wireless networks, where a transmitter can possibly hide itself from a warden while transmitting information to a receiver. The CIPC can guarantee a constant signal power at the receiver, which removes the requirement that the receiver has to know the channel state information in order to coherently decode the transmitter's signal. Specifically, we examine the performance of the achieved covert communications in terms of the effective covert rate (ECR), which quantifies the amount of information that the transmitter can reliably convey to the receiver subject to the warden's total error probability being no less than some specific value. The noise uncertainty at the warden serves as the enabler of covert communications. For fairness, we also consider noise uncertainty at the legitimate receiver. Our examination shows that increasing the noise uncertainty at the warden and the receiver simultaneously may not continuously improve the ECR achieved in the considered system model.
The motivation of this thesis is to contribute to the improvement of the physical-layer secrecy and privacy of wireless communication. Firstly, the rate and power adaptation technique is investigated to improve the energy efficiency of the physical-layer secrecy. We present the optimum rate and power adaptation rule that maximizes the average secrecy energy efficiency(SEE) subject to an average transmission power constraint. The SEE is defined as the outage secrecy capacity, the largest secrecy rate, such that the outage probability is less than a certain value, divided by the total power consumption (bits per joule). We also characterize the SEE gain provided by varying the rate and/or the power, and discuss the impact of the number of antennas on the optimum adaptation rule. Secondly, the joint impact of imperfect knowledge of the channel gain (channel uncertainty) and noise power (noise uncertainty) at the adversary is investigated to improve the physical-layer privacy. We characterize the covert throughput gain provided by the channel uncertainty as well as the covert throughput loss caused by the channel fading as a function of the noise uncertainty. We also show the impact the channel uncertainty on the total detection error probability and the covert throughput. Our result shows that the channel fading is crucial to hiding the signal transmission, particularly when the noise uncertainty is low and/or the receive SNR is high. The impact of the channel uncertainty on the total detection error probability and the covert throughput is more significant when the noise uncertainty is larger. Finally, hiding a covert (private) message in non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems by superimposing (embedding) it under other messages is proposed.We determine the total detection error probability (sum of false alarm and missed detection probability), the adversary's optimum detection strategy that minimizes the total detection error probability, and the communicator's optimum message hiding strategy that maximizes the total detection error probability. Additionally, we explore exploiting the channel variations to further increase the total detection error probability. We show that the total detection error probability increases and converges to 1 as the number of users increases and that the total detection error probability, hence the covert rate, can be increased by increasing the transmission power when the channel variation is exploited.
This paper investigates the achievable message transmission rate of covert communication over slow fading channels where the channel coefficient remains unchanged over a finite transmission block. Such communication is often implemented with an extremely low transmission power aiming to achieve low probability of detection by the eavesdropper and under tolerable probability of decoding error for the legitimate receiver. The exact expression of achievability and asymptotic covert bounds are derived, which are shown in accordance with the square root law in AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) channels with large transmission blocks. The case that the eavesdropper has unknown channel state information is also studied in the paper.
In this paper, we investigate covert communications under multiple-antenna eavesdropping, and explore the impact of the channel state information (CSI) at the adversary on the covertness of the system with noise uncertainty. We first analyze the detection performance of the adversary without the CSI of the eavesdropping channel. Specially, the generalized likelihood ratio (GLR) detection is adopted to handle this scenario. Then, a more practical scenario with the uncertain noise power at the adversary is considered, and the covertness of the system is analyzed. In addition, the optimal transmit power at the legitimate transmitter is derived theoretically to maximize the covert throughput. Finally, we present numerical results to compare the covert throughputs when the adversary knows or doesn't know the CSI. The results demonstrate the significance of unknown CSI at the adversary when considering the covert throughput of the system.
In covert communication, adaptive power control can help balance reliability and covertness, particularly when working with a cooperative jammer. Recent studies considering adaptive power control in covert communications typically assume perfect channel estimation at the transmitter. However, channel estimation is imperfect in practice, resulting in inaccurate power allocation with degraded covertness performance. This paper investigates the effect of channel estimation error on jammer-assisted covert communication. We model channel estimation error in covert communication and analyze its impact on the covertness throughput. Simulation results show that estimation uncertainty leads to degraded throughput compared to perfect channel state information (CSI).
Covert communication enhances the security of information transmission by protecting communication behavior, which has been widely investigated in various wireless communication systems. In this paper, we develop a covert Internet of things (IoT) network, where energy-limited IoT nodes selectively transmit information or artificial noise based on channel state information. Specifically, if the channel gains of all legitimate links are less than a given threshold, the energy-limited node emits artificial noise, otherwise, it transmits covert information. Meanwhile, we adopt the strategy of channel inversion power control (CIPC) to hide the location information of the nodes. Then, we derive Willie's detection error probability (DEP), propose an optimization problem for covert throughput, and obtain the optimal threshold and transmission energy. The results indicate that the probability of covert transmission significantly affects Willie's DEP. Moreover, the average covert throughput can be maximized by a relatively small threshold.