Energy-Efficient UAV Covert Communications via Metaheuristic Optimization

Abstract

Wireless communication systems increasingly require not only confidentiality but also transmission undetectability, motivating covert communications. This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enabled covert communication system where a UAV serves a legitimate receiver in the presence of multiple active and colluding wardens with imperfect location information. We maximize covert energy efficiency (CEE) by jointly optimizing the UAV's 3D trajectory and transmit power while accounting for energy. To address the resulting non-convex problem with robust covertness constraints, we develop Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)-based metaheuristic algorithms and compare them with a Block Coordinate Descent with Successive Convex Approximation (BCD-SCA) benchmark. Numerical results show that the proposed methods improve CEE while satisfying covertness constraints.

arXiv comment6 pages, 6 figures. Presented at ATC 2026