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International Journal of Information Security

Multi-user covert communication in power internet of things networks

Chun Yang, Yining Ma, Binyu Xie, Yanni Li, Shuo Cong

Published Dec 23, 2024• 1 citation
Publisher
DOI
10.1007/s10207-024-00960-7

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Covert communication can prevent an adversary from knowing that a transmission has occurred between two users. In this article, we consider covert wireless communications in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) network with dense deployment, where an IoT device experiences not only the background noise but also the aggregates interference from other Tx devices. Our results show that in a dense IoT network with lower frequency AWGN channels, when the distance between Alice and the adversary Willie da,w= ω(n1/(2α)), Alice can reliably and covertly transmit O(log2√n) bits to Bob in n channel uses. In an IoT network with terahertz (THz) band, covert communication is more difficult because Willie can simply place a receiver in the narrow beam between Alice and Bob in order to detect or block their line-of-sight communications. We demonstrated that covert communication is still possible in this occasion by utilizing the reflection or diffuse scattering from a rough surface. From the physical-layer security perspective, covert communication can enhance the security of IoT network from the bottom layer.
Covert communication aims to enhance the security of the wireless communication by hiding the transmission behavior from the eavesdropper. In this paper, a spectrum mask-based multi-antenna covert communication strategy is proposed in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. Specifically, the transmitter superimposes its messages on the existing overt channel to prevent the transmission being detected by the adversary eavesdropper, which can significantly enhance communication covertness without the need for additional spectrum resources. To eliminate the interference cause to the existing overt channel, multi-antenna technology and improper Gaussian signaling (IGS) are leveraged at the covert transmitter. Moreover, maximum ratio transmission (MRT) is adopted at the covert transmitter can fully exploit the additional degrees of freedom (DoF) that the multi-antenna provides to achieve reliable and covert transmission. Firstly, the optimal detection threshold at the eavesdropper is analyzed, and minimum error detection probability is then calculated, which indicates the worst-case from the covert transmitter’s perspective. In this scenario, a joint transmit power and IGS factor optimization problem is proposed to maximize the covert throughput under the covertness constraints. Secondly, the optimization problem is divided into three subproblems based on the power relationship, then the optimal transmit power and IGS factor are solved, respectively. Finally, extensive simulation is executed to demonstrate that under the given covertness constraints, the proposed strategy can effectively improve the covert communication performance of the multi-antenna system in IoT networks.
The cell-free (CF) network architecture has promising applications in Internet of Things (IoT) networks due to its dynamic and adaptive nature in resource allocation. However, due to the openness of wireless channels and the information interaction of sensitive data, the security issues of CF IoT networks have become more severe, especially in the case of powerful opponents. In this article, a high-level secure transmission technique is utilized to protect the privacy of users, which is called covert communication. Specifically, in the CF IoT network conceived, one IoT device secretly transmits sensitive information to an access point (AP) under the cover of a selected jammer to avoid being detected by other curious IoT devices, which are regarded as potential eavesdroppers (Eves) and determined by the central processing unit (CPU) based on greedy degree. Then, we analyze the joint impact of jamming and greedy degree on the detection error probability (DEP) for Eve, and determine Eve’s minimum DEP as well as the corresponding optimal threshold. To enhance energy efficiency while ensuring communication security, three jamming scheduling schemes have been proposed, namely, the jamming scheduling for both the receiver (Bob) and Eve (JSBE), the jamming scheduling for Eve (JSE), and the jamming scheduling for Bob (JSB). Numerical results indicate that greedy degree dominates the average minimum DEP for Eve when IoT devices tend to be lightweight. Furthermore, JSBE scheme demonstrates superiority in terms of covert rate, covert outage probability (COP), and covert energy efficiency (CEE), which provides an effective solution for high-security transmission of energy-constrained nodes in CF IoT networks.