Covert Communication via Action-Dependent States

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: ZivariFard, Hassan, Wang, Xiaodong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author ZivariFard, Hassan
Wang, Xiaodong
author_facet ZivariFard, Hassan
Wang, Xiaodong
contents This paper studies covert communication over channels with ADSI when the state is available either non-causally or causally at the transmitter. Covert communication refers to reliable communication between a transmitter and a receiver while ensuring a low probability of detection by an adversary, which we refer to as `warden'. It is well known that in a point-to-point DMC, it is possible to communicate on the order of $\sqrt{N}$ bits reliably and covertly over $N$ channel uses while the transmitter and the receiver are required to share a secret key on the order of $\sqrt{N}$ bits. This paper studies achieving reliable and covert communication of positive rate, i.e., reliable and covert communication on the order of N bits in N channel uses, over a channel with ADSI while the transmitter has non-causal or causal access to the ADSI, and the transmitter and the receiver share a secret key of negligible rate. We derive achievable rates for both the non-causal and causal scenarios by using block-Markov encoding and secret key generation from the ADSI, which subsumes the best achievable rates for channels with random states. We also derive upper bounds, for both non-causal and causal scenarios, that meet our achievable rates for some special cases. As an application of our problem setup, we study covert communication over channels with rewrite options, which are closely related to recording covert information on memory, and show that a positive covert rate can be achieved in such channels. As a special case of our problem, we study the AWGN channels and provide lower and upper bounds on the covert capacity that meet when the transmitter and the receiver share a secret key of sufficient rate and when the warden's channel is noisier than the legitimate receiver channel. As another application of our problem setup, we show that cooperation can lead to a positive covert rate in Gaussian channels.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_13212
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Covert Communication via Action-Dependent States
ZivariFard, Hassan
Wang, Xiaodong
Information Theory
This paper studies covert communication over channels with ADSI when the state is available either non-causally or causally at the transmitter. Covert communication refers to reliable communication between a transmitter and a receiver while ensuring a low probability of detection by an adversary, which we refer to as `warden'. It is well known that in a point-to-point DMC, it is possible to communicate on the order of $\sqrt{N}$ bits reliably and covertly over $N$ channel uses while the transmitter and the receiver are required to share a secret key on the order of $\sqrt{N}$ bits. This paper studies achieving reliable and covert communication of positive rate, i.e., reliable and covert communication on the order of N bits in N channel uses, over a channel with ADSI while the transmitter has non-causal or causal access to the ADSI, and the transmitter and the receiver share a secret key of negligible rate. We derive achievable rates for both the non-causal and causal scenarios by using block-Markov encoding and secret key generation from the ADSI, which subsumes the best achievable rates for channels with random states. We also derive upper bounds, for both non-causal and causal scenarios, that meet our achievable rates for some special cases. As an application of our problem setup, we study covert communication over channels with rewrite options, which are closely related to recording covert information on memory, and show that a positive covert rate can be achieved in such channels. As a special case of our problem, we study the AWGN channels and provide lower and upper bounds on the covert capacity that meet when the transmitter and the receiver share a secret key of sufficient rate and when the warden's channel is noisier than the legitimate receiver channel. As another application of our problem setup, we show that cooperation can lead to a positive covert rate in Gaussian channels.
title Covert Communication via Action-Dependent States
topic Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.13212