515 research outputs found
Optimal Throughput for Covert Communication Over a Classical-Quantum Channel
This paper considers the problem of communication over a memoryless
classical-quantum wiretap channel subject to the constraint that the
eavesdropper on the channel should not be able to learn whether the legitimate
parties are using the channel to communicate or not. Specifically, the relative
entropy between the output quantum states at the eavesdropper when a codeword
is transmitted and when no input is provided must be sufficiently small.
Extending earlier works, this paper proves the "square-root law" for a broad
class of classical-quantum channels: the maximum amount of information that can
be reliably and covertly transmitted over uses of such a channel scales
like . The scaling constant is also determined.Comment: Corrected version of a paper presented at ITW 2016. In the ITW paper,
the denominator in the main formula (10) was incorrect. The current version
corrects this mistake and adds an appendix for its derivatio
Covert Communication over Classical-Quantum Channels
The square root law (SRL) is the fundamental limit of covert communication
over classical memoryless channels (with a classical adversary) and quantum
lossy-noisy bosonic channels (with a quantum-powerful adversary). The SRL
states that covert bits, but no more, can be reliably
transmitted in channel uses with bits of secret
pre-shared between the communicating parties. Here we investigate covert
communication over general memoryless classical-quantum (cq) channels with
fixed finite-size input alphabets, and show that the SRL governs covert
communications in typical scenarios. %This demonstrates that the SRL is
achievable over any quantum communications channel using a product-state
transmission strategy, where the transmitted symbols in every channel use are
drawn from a fixed finite-size alphabet. We characterize the optimal constants
in front of for the reliably communicated covert bits, as well as
for the number of the pre-shared secret bits consumed. We assume a
quantum-powerful adversary that can perform an arbitrary joint (entangling)
measurement on all channel uses. However, we analyze the legitimate
receiver that is able to employ a joint measurement as well as one that is
restricted to performing a sequence of measurements on each of channel uses
(product measurement). We also evaluate the scenarios where covert
communication is not governed by the SRL
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