It is challenging to covert communication under channel distribution information (CDI) uncertainty caused by limited feedback and rapid-changing channels. This letter investigates covert communication in uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems under CDI uncertainty, where a covert user (CU) and reliable user (RU) transmit messages to a legitimate receiver (Bob) threatened by a warden (Willie). RU not only transmits its public messages but also helps CU to send private messages against Willie’s detection. To protect CU’s transmission with imperfect CDI, we first study the worst case for NOMA users and obtain a lower bound of the worst-case detection error probability (DEP). In addition, both closed-form expressions for RU and CU’s connection outage probabilities are derived. Constrained by the DEP and connection outage probability, we maximize the expected covert rate (ECR) and derive the optimal power settings for RU and CU under imperfect CDI. Numerical results show that the proposed robust power setting scheme achieves a positive maximum ECR despite CDI uncertainty causing the reduction of covertness performance.

With the explosive increase in demand for wireless communication, the issue of wireless communication security has also become a growing concern. In this paper, we investigate a novel covert communication for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted uplink rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) systems, where a UAV adopts the rate-splitting (RS) strategy to increase the total transmission rate while avoiding deteriorating the covert transmission of a ground user. In the proposed system, a ground user and a UAV adopt the RSMA scheme to simultaneously communicate with a base station surveilled by an evil monitor. The UAV acts as both the transmitter and the friendly jammer to cover the ground user’s transmission with random power. To maximize the expected sum rate (ESR), we first study the RS strategy and obtain the optimal power allocation factor. Then, the closed-form of minimum detection error probability (DEP), ESR, and optimal target rate of the UAV are derived. Constrained by the minimum DEP and expected covert rate (ECR), we maximize the ESR by optimizing the position and target rate of the UAV. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the traditional NOMA systems in terms of ESR with the same DEP and ECR.

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used in various industries. However, the communication links of UAVs are also threatened by eavesdropping. To enhance physical layer security (PLS) for UAV communications, a time-division multiarray beamforming (TDMB) scheme is proposed. Multiple antenna arrays steer their beamforming vectors based on their position relative to the legitimate user (LU). Thus, angle-distance-dependent directional modulation (DM) can be achieved. Time-division means multiple antenna arrays take turns transmitting different symbols from a same packet. The receiver in undesired directions suffers from intersymbol interference (ISI) because of the path differences between the receiver and different antenna arrays. This paper shows the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) distribution with the proposed method in a 2-dimensional plane. Also, the improvement of the secrecy rate with the proposed method under different total antennas and artificial noise power is studied. Overall, these results indicate that the security rate has improved more with the proposed method, where the numbers of antennas and the power of AN are limited. Therefore, this method is suitable for UAV security communication.