Covert Communication With the Help of Relay and Channel Uncertainty

Covert communication aims to hide the existence of the transmissions to guarantee the security in wireless communications. In this letter, channel uncertainty is exploited to achieve covert communication in relay networks. The transmitter Alice sends messages to the legitimate receiver Bob with the help of a relay, while the warden Willie wants to detect the existence of the transmission. The channel uncertainty introduces confusions to degrade the performance of Willie’s detection. We show that Alice can transmit <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${O}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>(<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) bits in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${n}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> channel uses covertly with the help of relay and channel uncertainty. Numerical results are shown to illustrate the achievability and the performance of the considered scenario.