Covert Communication Using Null Space and 3D Beamforming

Abstract: Covert communication is often limited in rate because it is difficult to hide the signal in the background noise. Recent work has shown that jamming can significantly improve the rate at which covert communications can be conducted; however, the rate could be improved further if the jamming incident on the intended receiver can be mitigated. Here, we consider a multiple-antenna jammer that employs beamforming to place the intended receiver in the null space of the jamming and a multi-antenna transmitter equipped with three-dimensional (3D) antennas that is able to beamform toward its intended recipient. To evaluate this design, we formulate an optimization problem and present an iterative algorithm to solve it. Numerical results consider both the rate of covert communications with the proposed architecture and the gap between the result from our optimization and that obtained from exhaustive search.