A Covert Jamming Scheme Against an Intelligent Eavesdropper in Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract

In this work, we design a covert jamming scheme against an intelligent Eve towards physical layer security in a cooperative cognitive radio networks. To protect the primary message from being decoded by an intelligent eavesdropper (Eve), a secondary user is picked as a friendly jammer that transmits artificial noise (AN) to the Eve. However, the intelligent Eve can detect the existence of AN, and thus the AN is inclined to be covertly transmitted at a lower detection probability, thereby mistaking the AN as background noise by the Eve. In this article, firstly, by using a binary hypothesis testing, the detection error probability (DEP) is explicitly derived for detection performance analysis of the Eve in the perfect as well as statistical channel state information (CSI) scenario, separately. With the DEP, a covert jamming scheme is formulated to transmit the AN in both cases. Then, an optimization problem is formulated, and then recast into a two-part problem to maximize the secrecy performance with the covert jamming scheme in the perfect CSI case. Finally, the effective secrecy throughput is maximized under convert constraints in the statistical CSI case. Numerical results are provided to validate the DEP at the Eve and secrecy performance analysis.