Relay Selection for Covert Communication with an Active Warden

Abstract

In this paper, we consider covert communication with multiple relays and an active warden who not only sends jamming signals but also aims to detect the covert transmission. In the relay system with the active warden, the most critical factor is the channel between the relay and the warden, as the warden leverages this channel to transmit jamming signals while trying to detect the presence of covert communication. To mitigate the impact of the active warden, we propose a relay selection scheme that selects the relay with the minimum channel gain to the warden. We analyze the performance of the proposed scheme and demonstrate how increasing the number of relays leads to performance improvements based on analytical results. Numerical results show that the analytical predictions closely match the simulations, and our proposed scheme effectively increases the covert rate while minimizing the threat posed by the active warden.