In this work, for the first time, we tackle channel estimation design with pilots in the context of covert wireless communication. Specifically, we consider Rayleigh fading for the communication channel from a transmitter to a receiver and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) for the detection channel from the transmitter to a warden. Before transmitting information signals, the transmitter has to send pilots to enable channel estimation at the receiver. Using a lower bound on the detection error probability, we first prove that transmitting pilot and information signals with equal power can minimize the detection performance at the warden, which is confirmed by the minimum detection error probability achieved by the optimal detector based on likelihood ratio test. This motivates us to consider the equal transmit power in the channel estimation and then optimize channel use allocation between pilot and information signals in covert wireless communication. Our analysis shows that the optimal number of the channel uses allocated to pilots increases as the covertness constraint becomes tighter. In addition, our examination shows that the optimal percentage of all the available channel uses allocated to channel estimation decreases as the total number of channel uses increases.
Covert communication hides the transmission of a message from a watchful adversary while ensuring reliable information decoding at the receiver, providing enhanced security in wireless communications. In this letter, covert communication in the presence of a multi-antenna adversary and under delay constraints is considered. Under the assumption of quasi-static wireless fading channels, we analyze the effect of increasing the number of antennas employed at the adversary on the achievable throughput of covert communication. It is shown that in contrast to a single-antenna adversary, a slight inc…
Covert wireless communication can prevent an adversary from knowing the existence of user's transmission, thus provide stronger security protection. In AWGN channels, a square root law was obtained and the result shows that Alice can reliably and covertly transmit $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ bits to Bob in n channel uses in the presence of a passive eavesdropper (Willie). However, existing work presupposes that Willie is static and only samples the channels at a fixed place. If Willie can dynamically adjust the testing distance between him and Alice according to his sampling values, his detection …
Covert communication aims to shield the very existence of wireless transmissions in order to guarantee a strong security in wireless networks. In this work, for the first time we examine the possibility and achievable performance of covert communication in one-way relay networks. Specifically, the relay opportunistically transmits its own information to the destination covertly on top of forwarding the source's message, while the source tries to detect this covert transmission to discover the illegitimate usage of the recourse (e.g., power, spectrum) allocated only for the purpose of forwardin…
Covert communication can prevent the adversary from knowing that a wireless transmission has occurred. In the additive white Gaussian noise channels, a square root law is obtained and the result shows that Alice can reliably and covertly transmit $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$ bits to Bob in $n$ channel uses. If additional "friendly" node near the adversary can inject artificial noise to aid Alice in hiding her transmission attempt, covert throughput can be improved, i.e., Alice can covertly transmit $\mathcal{O}(\min\{n,λ^{α/2}\sqrt{n}\})$ bits to Bob over $n$ uses of the channel ($λ$ is the density…
Widely-deployed encryption-based security prevents unauthorized decoding, but does not ensure undetectability of communication. However, covert, or low probability of detection/intercept (LPD/LPI) communication is crucial in many scenarios ranging from covert military operations and the organization of social unrest, to privacy protection for users of wireless networks. In addition, encrypted data or even just the transmission of a signal can arouse suspicion, and even the most theoretically robust encryption can often be defeated by a determined adversary using non-computational methods such …
In this work, we propose a covert communication scheme where the transmitter attempts to hide its transmission to a full-duplex receiver, from a warden that is to detect this covert transmission using a radiometer. Specifically, we first derive the detection error rate at the warden, based on which the optimal detection threshold for its radiometer is analytically determined and its expected detection error rate over wireless fading channels is achieved in a closed-form expression. Our analysis indicates that the artificial noise deliberately produced by the receiver with a random transmit pow…
This paper explores a new secure wireless communication paradigm where the physical layer security technology is applied to counteract both the detection and eavesdropping attacks, such that the critical covertness and secrecy properties of the communication are jointly guaranteed. We first provide theoretical modeling for covertness outage probability (COP), secrecy outage probability (SOP) and transmission probability (TP) to depict the covertness, secrecy and transmission performances of the paradigm. To understand the fundamental security performance under the new paradigm, we then define …
In this paper, we study covert communication in wireless networks consisting of a transmitter, Alice, an intended receiver, Bob, a warden, Willie, and a Poisson field of interferers. Bob and Willie are subject to uncertain shot noise due to the ambient signals from interferers in the network. With the aid of stochastic geometry, we analyze the throughput of the covert communication between Alice and Bob subject to given requirements on the covertness against Willie and the reliability of decoding at Bob. We consider non-fading and fading channels. We analytically obtain interesting findings on…
Covert communications hide the transmission of a message from a watchful adversary while ensuring a certain decoding performance at the receiver. In this work, a wireless communication system under fading channels is considered where covertness is achieved by using a full-duplex (FD) receiver. More precisely, the receiver of covert information generates artificial noise with a varying power causing uncertainty at the adversary, Willie, regarding the statistics of the received signals. Given that Willie's optimal detector is a threshold test on the received power, we derive a closed-form expres…
This paper studies multi-antenna-aided covert communications coexisting with randomly located wardens and interferers, considering both centralized and distributed antenna systems (CAS/DAS). The throughput performance of the covert communication is analyzed and optimized under a stochastic geometry framework, where the joint impact of the small-scale channel fading and the large-scale path loss is examined. To be specific, two probabilistic metrics, namely, the covert outage probability and the connectivity probability, are adopted to characterize the covertness and reliability of the transmis…
In this paper, we investigate the optimal design of a wireless-powered covert communication (WP-CC) system, in which a probabilistic accumulate-then-transmit (ATT) protocol is proposed to maximize the communication covertness subject to a quality-of-service (QoS) requirement on communication. Specifically, in the considered WP-CC system, a full-duplex (FD) receiver transmits artificial noise (AN) to simultaneously charge an energy-constrained transmitter and to confuse a warden's detection on the transmitter's communication activity. With the probabilistic ATT protocol, the transmitter sends i…
In this paper, we study covert communications between {a pair of} legitimate transmitter-receiver against a watchful warden over slow fading channels. There coexist multiple friendly helper nodes who are willing to protect the covert communication from being detected by the warden. We propose an uncoordinated jammer selection scheme where those helpers whose instantaneous channel gains to the legitimate receiver fall below a pre-established selection threshold will be chosen as jammers radiating jamming signals to defeat the warden. By doing so, the detection accuracy of the warden is expected…
In this work, we adopt channel inversion power control (CIPC) to achieve covert communications aided by a full-duplex receiver. Specifically, the transmitter varies the power and phase of transmitted signals as per the channel to the receiver, such that the receiver can decode these signals without knowing the channel state information. This eliminates the required feedback from the transmitter to the receiver, which aids hiding the transmitter from a warden. The truncated CIPC and conventional CIPC schemes are proposed and examined, where for truncated CIPC covert transmission ceases when the…
Covert communications enable a transmitter to send information reliably in the presence of an adversary, who looks to detect whether the transmission took place or not. We consider covert communications over quasi-static block fading channels, where users suffer from channel uncertainty. We investigate the adversary Willie's optimal detection performance in two extreme cases, i.e., the case of perfect channel state information (CSI) and the case of channel distribution information (CDI) only. It is shown that in the large detection error regime, Willie's detection performances of these two cas…
We study the effect of node mobility on the throughput scaling of the covert communication over a wireless adhoc network. It is assumed that $n$ mobile nodes want to communicate each other in a unit disk while keeping the presence of the communication secret from each of $Θ(n^s)$ non-colluding wardens ($s>0$). Our results show that the node mobility greatly improves the throughput scaling, compared to the case of fixed node location. In particular, for $0<s<1$, the aggregate throughput scaling is shown to be linear in $n$ when the number of channel uses that each warden uses to judge the prese…
This paper jointly optimizes the flying location and wireless communication transmit power for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) conducting covert operations. This is motivated by application scenarios such as military ground surveillance from airborne platforms, where it is vital for a UAV's signal transmission to be undetectable by those within the surveillance region. Specifically, we maximize the communication quality to a legitimate ground receiver outside the surveillance region, subject to: a covertness constraint, a maximum transmit power constraint, and a physical location constraint d…
Covert communication conceals the transmission of the message from an attentive adversary. Recent work on the limits of covert communication in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels has demonstrated that a covert transmitter (Alice) can reliably transmit a maximum of $\mathcal{O}\left(\sqrt{n}\right)$ bits to a covert receiver (Bob) without being detected by an adversary (Warden Willie) in $n$ channel uses. This paper focuses on the scenario where other friendly nodes distributed according to a two-dimensional Poisson point process with density $m$ are present in the environment. We pr…
This work examines the performance gain achieved by deploying an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in covert communications. To this end, we formulate the joint design of the transmit power and the IRS reflection coefficients by taking into account the communication covertness for the cases with global channel state information (CSI) and without a warden's instantaneous CSI. For the case of global CSI, we first prove that perfect covertness is achievable with the aid of the IRS even for a single-antenna transmitter, which is impossible without an IRS. Then, we develop a penalty successive c…
This paper investigates the covert communications via cooperative jamming and relay selection in a wireless relay system, where a source intends to transmit a message to its destination with the help of a selected relay, and a warden attempts to detect the existence of wireless transmissions from both the source and relay, while friendly jammers send jamming signals to prevent warden from detecting the transmission process. To this end, we first propose two relay selection schemes, namely random relay selection (RRS) and max-min relay selection (MMRS), as well as their corresponding cooperativ…
Fundamental Scaling Laws of Covert Communication in the Presence of Block Fading
Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts at Amherst（马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校曼宁信息与计算机科学学院）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts at Amherst（马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校电气与计算机工程系）
Intelligent reflection surface (IRS) is emerging as a promising technique for future wireless communications. Considering its excellent capability in customizing the channel conditions via energy-focusing and energy-nulling, it is an ideal technique for enhancing wireless communication security and privacy, through the theories of physical layer security and covert communications, respectively. In this article, we first present some results on applying IRS to improve the average secrecy rate in wiretap channels, to enable perfect communication covertness, and to deliberately create extra rando…
We consider that a transmitter covertly communicates with multiple receivers under the help of a friendly jammer. The messages intended for different receivers are transmitted in mutually orthogonal frequency bands. An adversary observes all these frequency bands aiming at detecting whether or not communication occurs, while the friendly jammer broadcasts jamming signals to degrade the detection performance of the adversary. We consider a block Rayleigh fading channel model and evaluate the performance of covert communication in two situations: 1) the wireless channels vary slowly such that th…
We consider the problem of covert communication over wireless adhoc networks in which (roughly) $n$ legitimate nodes (LNs) and $n^κ$ for $0<κ<1$ non-communicating warden nodes (WNs) are randomly distributed in a square of unit area. Each legitimate source wants to communicate with its intended destination node while ensuring that every WN is unable to detect the presence of the communication. In this scenario, we study the throughput scaling law. Due the covert communication constraint, the transmit powers are necessarily limited. Under this condition, we introduce a preservation region around…
Covert communication, also known as low probability of detection (LPD) communication, prevents the adversary from knowing that a communication is taking place. Recent work has demonstrated that, in a three-party scenario with a transmitter (Alice), intended recipient (Bob), and adversary (Warden Willie), the maximum number of bits that can be transmitted reliably from Alice to Bob without detection by Willie, when additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels exist between all parties, is on the order of the square root of the number of channel uses. In this paper, we begin consideration of ne…
The covert capacity is characterized for a non-coherent fast Rayleigh-fading wireless channel, in which a legitimate user wishes to communicate reliably with a legitimate receiver while escaping detection from a warden. It is shown that the covert capacity is achieved with an amplitude-constrained input distribution that consists of a finite number of mass points including one at zero and numerically tractable bounds are provided. It is also conjectured that distributions with two mass points in fixed locations are optimal.
The optimization of the pilot overhead in single-user wireless fading channels is investigated, and the dependence of this overhead on various system parameters of interest (e.g., fading rate, signal-to-noise ratio) is quantified. The achievable pilot-based spectral efficiency is expanded with respect to the fading rate about the no-fading point, which leads to an accurate order expansion for the pilot overhead. This expansion identifies that the pilot overhead, as well as the spectral efficiency penalty with respect to a reference system with genie-aided CSI (channel state information) at the…
We consider a cell-free wireless system operated in Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode with user-centric clusters of remote radio units (RUs). Since the uplink pilot dimensions per channel coherence slot is limited, co-pilot users might incur mutual pilot contamination. In the current literature, it is assumed that the long-term statistical knowledge of all user channels is available. This enables Minimum Mean-Square Error channel estimation or simplified dominant subspace projection, which achieves significant pilot decontamination under certain assumptions on the channel covariance matrices. Ho…
We consider a scalable user-centric wireless network with dynamic cluster formation as defined by Björnsson and Sanguinetti. Several options for scalable uplink (UL) processing are examined including: i) cluster size and SNR threshold criterion for cluster formation; ii) UL pilot dimension; iii) local detection and global (per cluster) combining. We use a simple model for the channel vector spatial correlation, which captures the fact that the propagation between UEs and RRHs is not isotropic. In particular, we define the ideal performance based on ideal but partial CSI, i.e., the CSI that can…
Wireless secret key generation (W-SKG) from shared randomness (e.g., from the wireless channel fading realizations), is a well established scheme that can be used for session key agreement. W-SKG approaches can be of particular interest in delay constrained wireless networks and notably in the context of ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) in beyond fifth generation (B5G) systems. However, W-SKG schemes are known to be malleable over the so called "advantage distillation" phase, during which observations of the shared randomness are obtained at the legitimate parties. As an examp…
To meet the goal of ten-fold increase in spectral efficiency, multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) techniques capable of achieving high spatial multiplexing gains are expected to be an essential component of fifth-generation (5G) radio access systems. This increase in multiplexing gain, made possible by equipping base stations with a large number of antennas, entails a proportional increase in channel state information (CSI) acquisition overhead. This article addresses the problem of reducing this CSI overhead by optimizing the amount of time-frequency resources allocated for cha…
In this paper, we consider fundamental communication limits over a compound channel. Covert communication in the information-theoretic context has been primarily concerned with fundamental limits when the transmitter wishes to communicate to legitimate receiver(s) while ensuring that the communication is not detected by an adversary. This paper, however, considers an alternative, and no less important, setting in which the object to be masked is the state of the compound channel. Such a communication model has applications in the prevention of malicious parties seeking to jam the communication…
Communications in the terahertz band (THz) (0.1--10~THz) have been regarded as a promising technology for future 6G and beyond wireless systems, to overcome the challenges of evergrowing wireless data traffic and crowded spectrum. As the frequency increases from the microwave band to the THz band, new spectrum features pose unprecedented challenges to wireless communication system design. The molecular absorption effect is one of the new THz spectrum properties, which enlarges the path loss and noise at specific frequencies. This brings in a double-edged sword for THz wireless communication sy…
Channel estimation is challenging for the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless communications. Since the number of coefficients of the cascaded channel among the base station (BS), the RIS and the user equipments (UEs) is the product of the number of BS antennas, the number of RIS elements, and the number of UEs, the pilot overhead can be prohibitively high. In this paper, we propose a two-timescale channel estimation framework to exploit the property that the BS-RIS channel is high-dimensional but quasi-static, while the RIS-UE channel is mobile but low-dimensional. Specifi…
We consider a scalable user-centric cell-free massive MIMO network with distributed remote radio units (RUs), enabling macrodiversity and joint processing. Due to the limited uplink (UL) pilot dimension, multiuser interference in the UL pilot transmission phase makes channel estimation a non-trivial problem. We make use of two types of UL pilot signals, sounding reference signal (SRS) and demodulation reference signal (DMRS) pilots, for the estimation of the channel subspace and its instantaneous realization, respectively. The SRS pilots are transmitted over multiple time slots and resource bl…
Surveillance performance is studied for a wireless eavesdropping system, where a full-duplex legitimate monitor eavesdrops a suspicious link efficiently with the artificial noise (AN) assistance. Different from the existing work in the literature, the suspicious receiver in this paper is assumed to be capable of detecting the presence of AN. Once such receiver detects the AN, the suspicious user will stop transmission, which is harmful for the surveillance performance. Hence, to improve the surveillance performance, AN should be transmitted covertly with a low detection probability by the susp…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are envisioned to be extensively employed for assisting wireless communications in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. On the other hand, terahertz (THz) enabled intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is expected to be one of the core enabling technologies for forthcoming beyond-5G wireless communications that promise a broad range of data-demand applications. In this paper, we propose a UAV-mounted IRS (UIRS) communication system over THz bands for confidential data dissemination from an access point (AP) towards multiple ground user equipments (UEs) in IoT ne…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can manipulate the wireless communication environment by controlling the coefficients of RIS elements. However, due to the large number of passive RIS elements without signal processing capability, channel estimation in RIS assisted wireless communication system requires high pilot overhead. In the second part of this invited paper, we propose to exploit the double-structured sparsity of the angular cascaded channels among users to reduce the pilot overhead. Specifically, we first reveal the double-structured sparsity, i.e., different angular cascaded c…
Future wireless communication systems will evolve toward multi-functional integrated systems to improve spectrum utilization and reduce equipment sizes. A joint radar and communication (JRC) system, which can support simultaneous information transmission and target detection, has been regarded as a promising solution for emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles. In JRC, data security and privacy protection are critical issues. Thus, we first apply covert communication into JRC and propose a joint radar and covert communication (JRCC) system to achieve high spectrum utilization and sec…
We investigate a pilot allocation problem in wireless networks over Markovian fading channels. In wireless systems, the Channel State Information (CSI) is collected at the Base Station (BS), in particular, this paper considers a pilot-aided channel estimation method (TDD mode). Typically, there are less available pilots than users, hence at each slot the scheduler needs to decide an allocation of pilots to users with the goal of maximizing the long-term average throughput. There is an inherent tradeoff in how the limited pilots are used: assign a pilot to a user with up-to-date CSI and good ch…
We analyze a cooperative wireless communication system with finite block length and finite battery energy, under quasi-static Rayleigh fading. Source and relay nodes are powered by a wireless energy transfer (WET) process, while using the harvested energy to feed their circuits, send pilot signals to estimate channels at receivers, and for wireless information transmission (WIT). Other power consumption sources beyond data transmission power are considered. The error probability is investigated under perfect/imperfect channel state information (CSI), while reaching accurate closed-form approxi…
Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications（重庆邮电大学）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学）
The upcoming industrial revolution requires deployment of critical wireless sensor networks for automation and monitoring purposes. However, the reliability of the wireless communication is rendered unpredictable by mobile elements in the communication environment such as humans or mobile robots which lead to dynamically changing radio environments. Changes in the wireless channel can be monitored with frequent pilot transmission. However, that would stress the battery life of sensors. In this work a new wireless channel estimation technique, Veni Vidi Dixi, VVD, is proposed. VVD leverages the…
This work concerns wireless cellular networks applying massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology. In such a system, the base station in a given cell is equipped with a very large number (hundreds or even thousands) of antennas and serves multiple users. Estimation of the channel from the base station to each user is performed at the base station using an uplink pilot sequence. Such a channel estimation procedure suffers from pilot contamination. Orthogonal pilot sequences are used in a given cell but, due to the shortage of orthogonal sequences, the same pilot sequences must be …
Pilot contamination attack (PCA) in a time division duplex wireless communication system is considered, where an eavesdropper (Eve) attacks the reverse pilot transmission phase in order to wiretap the data transmitted from a transmitter, Alice, to a receiver, Bob. We propose a new PCA scheme for Eve, wherein Eve does not emit any signal by itself but uses an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to reflect the pilot sent by Bob to Alice. The proposed new PCA scheme, referred to as IRS-PCA, increases the signal leakage from Alice to the IRS during the data transmission phase, which is then refle…
