Average Age of Information Minimization in Reliable Covert Communication on Time-Varying Channels

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new approach for reliable covert communication in dynamic channels, focusing on minimizing the age of information by considering channel variation and detection constraints.

Contribution

It proposes a novel constraint linking AoI and AoC, addressing packet size and detection probability in time-varying covert communication environments.

Findings

Proposed constraint improves AoI minimization in covert communications.

Simulation shows better performance compared to conventional methods.

Effective in maintaining low detection probability while ensuring information freshness.

Abstract

In this letter, we propose reliable covert communications with the aim of minimizing age of information (AoI) in the time-varying channels. We named the time duration that channel state information (CSI) is valid as a new metric, as age of channel variation (AoC). To find reliable covert communication in a fresh manner in dynamic environments, this work considers a new constraint that shows a relation between AoI and AoC. With the aid of the proposed constraint, this paper addresses two main challenges of reliable covert communication with the aim of minimizing AoI: 1) users packets with desirable size; 2) guaranteeing the negligible probability of Willies detection, in time-varying networks. In the simulation results, we compare the performance of the proposed constraint in reliable covert communication with the aim of minimizing AoI with conventional optimization of the requirement of information freshness in covert communications.