Work

Covert ISAC: From Hiding Communication to Communication-and-Sensing State Covertness

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This letter proposes a covert integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) framework protecting communicationonly, sensing-only, and joint-operation states through Kullback- Leibler (KL) leakage constraints, where a common-reference analysis derives bounds on state information leakage and fourstate classification error. A robust beamforming problem is formulated to maximize the minimum sensing gain under imperfect warden-channel knowledge and finite-blocklength (FBL) requirements. A two-stage successive second-order cone programming (SOCP) algorithm first obtains the sensing boundary, then reduces leakage while retaining a prescribed gain fraction. Numerical results show that all-state protection controls leakage with limited sensing loss, whereas single-state designs may expose other operations.

Source: IEEE Communications Letters

DOI: 10.1109/lcomm.2026.3743055