Optimal pulse-position modulation order and transmit power in covert communications

Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Li, Ruide;Cui, Jinglu;Huang, Tao;Yang, Lei;Shihao, Yan
Abstract

This work tackles the joint optimization of the modulation order L and transmit power P of pulse-position modulation (PPM) in covert communications. Specifically, we consider two scenarios where L used by the PPM at a transmitter Alice for communicating with a receiver Bob is known and unknown to the warden Willie, respectively. In the former scenario, our numerical examination obtained based on our analysis indicates that the optimal L is generally 2 , which is mainly due to the fact that Willie's detection performance increases with L when he knows it. Interestingly, in the latter scenario, we show that the optimal L is 2 when the covertness constraint is strict, while it is 4 when the covertness constraint is relaxed. The main reason is that Willie's detection performance does not depend on L when he does not know it, and the bit error rate for L=2 is close to that for L=4 when the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely low caused by the strict covertness constraint, while L=2 requires less bandwidth and may achieve a higher bandwidth efficiency. Furthermore, we theoretically prove that the covert communication performance is better when Willie does not know L relative to when he knows L.

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology

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Volume

71

ISBN/ISSN

1939-9359

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Issue

5

Pages Count

6

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Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

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EISSN

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DOI

10.1109/TVT.2022.3151197