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International Conference on Ubiquitous Communication (Ucom)

Comprehensive Analysis of Security and Covertness in MISO Systems with Noise Uncertainty

Bo Tian, Weiwei Yang, Xingbo Lu, Wenqiang Feng

Published Sep 19, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper investigates the joint physical layer security and covert communication in multi-input single-output (MISO) systems, aiming to enhance both the security and covertness of the system. In particular the base station, Alice, covertly transmits confidential information to the legitimate receiver, Bob, via multiple antennas, while avoiding detection by Willie, the detector, and eavesdropping by Eve. For the considered system, we analyze the covertness constraint with a noise uncertainty model at Willie's location and derive the closed-form expression for the system's average detection error probability. Next, we propose and solve the optimization problem to maximize the average security rate subject to the covertness constraint. Simulation results show that the multi-antenna at Alice with maximum ratio beamforming scheme can significantly improves the system's both security and covertness, and that the noise uncertainty at Willie's location and the nominal noise level have a substantial impact on the system's average security rate.

DOI
10.1109/ucom67224.2025.11336837

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This paper investigates the joint physical layer security and covert communication in multi-input single-output (MISO) systems, aiming to enhance both the security and covertness of the system. In particular the base station, Alice, covertly transmits confidential information to the legitimate receiver, Bob, via multiple antennas, while avoiding detection by Willie, the detector, and eavesdropping by Eve. For the considered system, we analyze the covertness constraint with a noise uncertainty model at Willie's location and derive the closed-form expression for the system's average detection error probability. Next, we propose and solve the optimization problem to maximize the average security rate subject to the covertness constraint. Simulation results show that the multi-antenna at Alice with maximum ratio beamforming scheme can significantly improves the system's both security and covertness, and that the noise uncertainty at Willie's location and the nominal noise level have a substantial impact on the system's average security rate.
This paper considers the physical layer security (PLS) and covertness of the signal transmission in a multiple-input single-output downlink adopting ultra-high reliability and low latency communication (URLLC). In the considered system, Alice transmits confidential signals to Bob in the presence of a multi-antenna eavesdropper (Eve) and a multi-antenna watchful adversary (Willie). Although artificial noise (AN) is a common PLS technique for protecting the confidential signal from wiretapping, it may reduce the communication covertness due to the additional signal emission. For maximizing the achievable secrecy rate, we propose an AN-aided secure and covert communication strategy through optimizing the information carrying beamformer and AN jointly subject to the covertness constraint. To tackle the formulated non-convex design problem, we propose a branch-reduce-and-bound (BRB)-based algorithm to solve the considered problem globally. Simulation results validate its efficiency compared with a benchmark algorithm and unveil the importance of exploiting AN.
Covert communication enforces the transmitted signal to be indistinguishable from other signals under wireless environment, making it difficult for an eavesdropper to detect and intercept the message. The most common approach within covert systems is the augmentation of artificial noise (AN), ensuring reliable transmission. However, this strategy becomes problematic when the eavesdropper's position is uncertain, as continuous amplification of interference power can precipitate a substantial decline in covert communication capacity. In this paper, we investigate the covert communication between legitimate transmitter (i.e., Alice) and full duplex receiver (i.e., Bob) in the presence of the location uncertainties of the eavesdropper (i.e., Willie). We first derive the sufficient condition for achieving covert communication through robustness analysis. Then, we derive the effective throughput to measure the covert communication capacity. Afterward, by using joint optimization technology, the optimal AN power of Bob and the number of antennas for Alice are jointly designed to maximize the effective throughput subject to a covertness constraint. Theoretical analysis indicates that reducing the AN power while increasing the number of antennas helps to improve the system capacity, the effective throughput between Alice and Bob is inversely proportional to the distance between them. Finally, the validity of our analytical approach is corroborated by simulation results.
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.
In this paper, we consider a covert communication system with a multi-antenna full-duplex (FD) receiver to enhance covert performance. More precisely, the receiver Bob (i.e., multiple antennas) selects the best antenna to receive the covert message, and then it sends artificial noise (AN) to the warden Willie causing uncertainty by utilizing an antenna among the remaining antennas. In order to take full advantage of multi-antenna technology, we consider two cases: (1) Willie does not know which antenna Bob chooses to send AN, and Willie knows only part of the channel information. (2) Willie knows which antenna Bob chooses to send AN, and Willie knows all the channel information. Based on the analysis of the optimal detection threshold, we derive the minimum detection error probability of the two cases. Furthermore, given the pre-determined convert constraints, the closed-form expression of the maximum effective convert rate is derived. When the power of AN sent by Bob is greater than that of covert message sent by the sender Alice, surprised research results are shown: (1) the detection error rate of case 1 is higher than that of case 2. (2) the effective covert rate of case 1 is always lower than that of case 2. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is more conducive to sending covert messages for Alice; in addition, the numerical results imply that the maximum effective covert rate of the system using the multi-antenna FD receiver is significantly higher than that of the traditional dual-antenna FD receiver system.
This letter investigates the robust beamforming design for an integrated sensing and covert communications system, where the transmitter (Alice) performs some sensing task and simultaneously communicates with multiple legitimate users (Bobs) covertly, evading detection by the eavesdropper (Willie). Considering the impact of imperfect channel state information (CSI) of Alice-to-Bobs and Alice-to-Willie links, we formulate a robust beamforming optimization problem to minimize the Cramér-Rao bound for sensing parameter while satisfying the total transmit power, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and covertness constraints for communication. An iterative algorithm, employing semi-definite programming and successive convex approximation, is proposed to address this challenging problem. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, highlighting the robustness of the optimized beamforming design under imperfect CSI.
Considering multi-user downlink ultra-high reliability and low latency communications (URLLC), this paper employs the artificial noise (AN) technique to establish a secure and covert broadcast communication paradigm for the first time. Specifically, a multi-antenna transmitter (Alice) broadcasts the confidential information to multiple legitimate users in the presence of a multi-antenna malicious warden (Willie) and a multi-antenna eavesdropper (Eve). It is well known that AN is an effective technique for securing the physical layer security (PLS) of signal transmissions. Nevertheless, AN emission also exposes the signal transmission and decreases the signal covertness. Taking into account the impact of short-packet URLLC transmissions, we investigate the joint optimization of the precoder and AN to maximize the secrecy rate under the covertness constraint. Although the considered problem is nonconvex, we propose a branch-reduce-and-bound (BRB)-based algorithm to solve it optimally. However, the nested-loop structure of the BRB-based algorithm incurs a high computational complexity. To strike a balance between the performance and computational complexity, we also propose a low-complexity penalty successive convex approximation (SCA)-based algorithm, whose performance approaches that of the optimal BRB-based algorithm, particularly in the low to medium transmit power regime. Simulation results demonstrate the excellent performance of our proposed optimization algorithms compared with various benchmark algorithms and unveil the importance of exploiting AN for secrecy provisioning.