Author Identifier (ORCID)
Shihao Yan: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4586-1926
Abstract
In this work, we focus on developing near-field beamforming schemes for covert wireless communications to maximize the communication quality while ensuring communication covertness, where three different antenna architectures are considered. Specifically, we first analyze the monotonicities of the throughput and the minimum detection error probability with respect to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at a legitimate receiver and a warden. Then, the formulated optimization problem is transformed into a semi-definite programming (SDP) problem via vectorizing the matrix. Lastly, a maximum signal-to-leakage ratio (MSLR) scheme with a low complexity is proposed. Our results indicate that the proposed near-field beamforming schemes facilitate covert communication in both the distance and angle dimensions. The two hybrid antenna architectures lead to a slight performance loss, but significantly reduce the circuit budget. Meanwhile, the low-complexity algorithm greatly reduces the algorithm complexity, although it exhibits a noticeable disadvantage in its covert transmission performance. Furthermore, our results indicate that the designed near-field beamforming strategies are more beneficial in meeting the covertness constraints, highlighting a feasibility of covert communications in the near-field region.
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2025
Publication Title
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Publisher
IEEE
School
School of Science
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published by IEEE. © 2025 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Shen, T., Yan, S., Zhou, X., Xia, G., & Shu, F. (2025). Near-field beamforming for covert wireless communications with finite blocklength. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2025.3598344