Enhancing MIMO Covert Communications via Intelligent Reflecting Surface

This letter investigates the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) covert communication aided by intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) against a multi-antenna warden. We establish a design framework for IRS-assisted MIMO covert communication system, which aims to maximize covert rate by jointly optimizing the transmit covariance matrix R at transmitter and phase shift matrix Q at IRS. Due to the unit modulus constraint of Q and the highly coupling of R and Q, we propose an alternating optimization algorithm to solve it. Specifically, the sub-problem of optimizing R for given Q is convex, and we can derive a closed-form solution. Then, we propose a minorization-maximization algorithm to tackle the sub-problem of optimizing Q for fixed R, where we translate the problem to the maximization of a proper lower bound of the objective function which is then solved by the sequential rank-one constraint relaxation algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of boosting covert rate under the surveillance of a multi-antenna warden.

Automated summary

This letter investigates the MIMO covert communication system assisted by intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) against a multi-antenna warden. An optimization algorithm is proposed to jointly optimize the transmit covariance matrix at transmitter and phase shift matrix at IRS to maximize covert rate. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of boosting covert rate under the surveillance of a multi-antenna warden.