Covert Wireless Communication in Presence of a Multi-Antenna Adversary and Delay Constraints

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a multi-antenna adversary impacts covert wireless communication under delay constraints, revealing that additional antennas significantly reduce throughput even with relaxed covertness.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of the effect of multiple antennas at the adversary on covert communication throughput under delay constraints, highlighting the drastic impact of increased antennas.

Findings

Multiple antennas at the adversary drastically reduce covert throughput.

Increasing adversary antennas impacts throughput even with relaxed covertness.

Analysis is based on quasi-static wireless fading channels.

Abstract

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 increase in the number of adversary's antennas drastically reduces the covert throughput, even for relaxed covertness requirements.