Joint Optimization of a UAV's Trajectory and Transmit Power for Covert Communications

Abstract

This work considers covert communications in the context of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks, aiming to hide a UAV for transmitting critical information out of a scenario that is monitored and where communication is not allowed. Specifically, the UAV as a transmitter intends to transmit information to a legitimate receiver (Bob) covertly in order to avoid being detected by a warden (Willie) with location uncertainties at Bob and/or Willie. In order to enhance the considered covert communication performance, we prefer to jointly optimize the UAV's trajectory and transmit power in terms of maximizing the average covert transmission rate from the UAV to Bob subject to transmission outage constraint and covertness constraint. The formulated optimization problem is difficult to tackle directly due to the intractable constraints. As such, we first employ conservative approximation to transform a constraint into a deterministic form and then apply the first-order restrictive approximation to transform the optimization problem into a convex form. By applying the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique, an efficient iterative algorithm is developed to solve the optimization problem. Our examination shows that the developed joint trajectory and transmit power optimization scheme achieves significantly better covert communication performance as compared to a benchmark scheme.

References in corpus (6)

• Wireless Communications with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Opportunities and Challenges
• Limits of Reliable Communication with Low Probability of Detection on AWGN Channels
• Cyclical Multiple Access in UAV-Aided Communications: A Throughput-Delay Tradeoff
• Gaussian Signalling for Covert Communications
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Cited by in corpus (15)

• RIS Empowered Near-Field Covert Communications
• Sum Rate Maximization for Movable Antenna Enhanced Multiuser Covert Communications
• Physical Layer Security for Integrated Sensing and Communication: A Survey
• Physical Layer Security for UAV Communications in 5G and Beyond Networks
• Pilot-Based Channel Estimation Design in Covert Wireless Communication
• Secure mm-Wave Communications with Imperfect Hardware and Uncertain Eavesdropper Location
• Optimal Transmit Power and Flying Location for UAV Covert Wireless Communications
• UAV-Enabled Covert Wireless Data Collection
• UAV-Enabled Confidential Data Collection in Wireless Networks
• UAV-enabled Secure Communication with Finite Blocklength
• UAV-Enabled Cooperative Jamming for Covert Communications
• Harvest-and-Opportunistically-Relay: Analyses on Transmission Outage and Covertness
• Covert Wireless Communication in Presence of a Multi-Antenna Adversary and Delay Constraints
• Latency-Minimized Design of Secure Transmissions in UAV-Aided Communications
• Robust Trajectory and Transmit Power Optimization for Secure UAV-Enabled Cognitive Radio Networks