In covert communication, Alice tries to communicate with Bob without being detected by a warden Willie. When the distance between Alice and Bob becomes large compared with the distance between Alice and Willie(s), the performance of covert communication will be degraded. In this case, multihop message transmission via intermediate relays can help to improve the performance. Hence, in this paper, multi-hop covert communication over a moderate size network and in the presence of multiple collaborating Willies is considered. The relays can transmit covertly using either a single key for all relays or different independent keys at the relays. For each case, we develop efficient algorithms to find optimal paths with maximum throughput and minimum end-to-end delay between Alice and Bob. As expected, employing multiple hops significantly improves the ability to communicate covertly versus the case of a single-hop transmission. Furthermore, at the expense of more shared key bits, analytical results and numerical simulations demonstrate that the multi-hop covert communication with different independent keys at the relays has better performance than the multi-hop covert communication with a single key. of Arizona, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests span quantum limits of optical communications, quantum key distribution and repeaters, optical quantum computing, and quantum sensing. He has led various projects funded by the DoD on topics related to quantum enhanced photonic information processing.
Specifically, in REF , the optimal path is chosen for a covert communication network in the presence of multiple collaborating wardens.
Multi-Hop Routing in Covert Wireless Networks
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Computer Science Mathematics