Joint Relay Selection and Power Optimization for Covert Aerial Terrestrial Integrated Networks

Covert communication has become a hot topic in the wireless transmission field due to the ability to secure transmitted data by hiding the wireless transmissions. Given the extensive use of drone communications and its urgent demand for security, we investigate covert communications in aerial terrestrial integrated networks (ATINs), where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) tries to send private messages to a remote user via multiple terrestrial relays under the supervisions of the warden. On this foundation, one covert scheme for joint power control and relay selection has been proposed. Subsequently, we derive the detection capabilities at warden, and the effective covert rate (ECR) of link from UAV to user. Furthermore, a power optimization problem is designed to maximize ECR with covertness constraint. Finally, numerical results are presented to verify the achievable covert performance of system and prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.