Covert UAV Communication with Interference Uncertainty

In this paper, we analyze the covert UAV-to-UAV (U2U) communication with the ground warden under a Poisson field of ground interferers and the blockage effect of air-to-ground propagations. With the aid of stochastic geometry, we derive the average covert probability and connection outage probability to quantify the covert communication performance for the scenarios with and without interference. By comparing the two scenarios, the introduction of interference increases the minimum average covert probability. Increasing both the density and transmission power of interferers can improve the average covert probability. However, the improvement of covertness is achieved by increasing the connection outage probability. To capture the competing requirements of covertness and reliability, we analyze the effective covert communication rate defined as the product of the average covert probability, connection success probability, and data transmission rate. The UAV transceiver can also flexibly raise its flight altitude to improve effective covert communication rate. Moreover, our results reveal that covert U2U communication performs better in high blockage environments such as dense urban. In summary, this study provides theoretical guidance for designing covert U2U communication systems.