Privacy Rate

In some situations, a user would like to communicate without detection. It has been shown that it is impossible to achieve positive rate while remaining undetectable to a third party. However, that work assumes that the detector is certain about their own noise power, which inherently has uncertainty because that knowledge is based on a measurement. By exploiting this uncertainty the transmitter can achieve a positive rate while remaining undetectable to a third party. This positive rate is quantified in numerous scenarios: Single Input Single Output (SISO) Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channels (with channel state information (CSI) and channel distribution information (CDI)), and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Rayleigh channels. Finally, building on previous work, it is shown that for a detector to lower their maximum possibility of an error, they should not take as many samples as possible–a counterintuitive result. This is explained in more detail in the last chapter.M.S

Perfectly Covert Communication with a Reflective Panel

This work considers the problem of \emph{perfect} covert communication in wireless networks. Specifically, harnessing an Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS), we turn our attention to schemes that allow the transmitter to completely hide the communication, with \emph{zero energy} at the unwanted listener (Willie) and hence zero probability of detection. Applications of such schemes go beyond simple covertness, as we prevent detectability or decoding even when the codebook, timings, and channel characteristics are known to Willie. We define perfect covertness, give a necessary and sufficient condition for it in IRS-assisted communication, and define the optimization problem. For two IRS elements, we analyze the probability of finding a solution and derive its closed form. We then investigate the problem of more than two IRS elements by analyzing the probability of such a zero-detection solution. We prove that this probability converges to $1$ as the number of elements tends to infinity. We provide an iterative algorithm to find a perfectly covert solution and prove its convergence. The results are also supported by simulations, showing that a small amount of IRS elements allows for a positive rate at the legitimate user yet with zero probability of detection at an unwanted listener.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure

Performance analysis of diversity wireless systems

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Achieving Covert Wireless Communications Using a Full-Duplex Receiver

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 expression for the optimal detection performance of Willie averaged over the fading channel realizations. Furthermore, we provide guidelines for the optimal choice of artificial noise power range, and the optimal transmission probability of covert information to maximize the detection errors at Willie. Our analysis shows that the transmission of artificial noise, although causes self-interference, provides the opportunity of achieving covertness but its transmit power levels need to be managed carefully. We also demonstrate that the prior transmission probability of 0.5 is not always the best choice for achieving the maximum possible covertness, when the covert transmission probability and artificial noise power can be jointly optimized.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Sensing Aided Covert Communications: Turning Interference into Allies

In this paper, we investigate the realization of covert communication in a general radar-communication cooperation system, which includes integrated sensing and communications as a special example. We explore the possibility of utilizing the sensing ability of radar to track and jam the aerial adversary target attempting to detect the transmission. Based on the echoes from the target, the extended Kalman filtering technique is employed to predict its trajectory as well as the corresponding channels. Depending on the maneuvering altitude of adversary target, two channel models are considered, with the aim of maximizing the covert transmission rate by jointly designing the radar waveform and communication transmit beamforming vector based on the constructed channels. For the free-space propagation model, by decoupling the joint design, we propose an efficient algorithm to guarantee that the target cannot detect the transmission. For the Rician fading model, since the multi-path components cannot be estimated, a robust joint transmission scheme is proposed based on the property of the Kullback-Leibler divergence. The convergence behaviour, tracking MSE, false alarm and missed detection probabilities, and covert transmission rate are evaluated. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms achieve accurate tracking. For both channel models, the proposed sensing-assisted covert transmission design is able to guarantee the covertness, and significantly outperforms the conventional schemes.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, submitted to IEEE journals for potential publicatio