A Game-Theoretic Approach to Achieve Covert Communication in Cognitive Radio Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a covert cooperative cognitive radio (CCCR) system, where multiple primary transmitters (PTs) transmit information with the aid of multiple secondary transmitters (STs) in order to conserve power consumption. In return, by opportunistically accessing PT's spectrum, STs send confidential information to a secondary receiver (SR) in the presence of external eavesdropper (Eve). Aiming to maximize covert rate, we model our CCCR framework as an evolutionary game in which each PT and ST make decisions based on their utility histories. By introducing the evolutionary game, we propose a game-oriented secondary user scheduling (G-SUS) scheme to find when multiple STs determine to access PTs' spectrum. Moreover, we analyze covert performance of the proposed scheme and obtain a closed-form expression for Eve's detection error probability. Numerical results show that, the minimal detection error probability at Eve can be effectively impacted by creating channel uncertainty and noise uncertainty. Furthermore, the results also demonstrate the proposed scheme can converge quickly, which stimulates its practical implementation.