Optimal covert communications using pulse-position modulation

This paper shows the optimality of Pulse-Position Modulation (PPM) for covert communications over discrete-memoryless channels. Specifically, the concatenation of a random m-ary outer code of length O(m) and an inner code consisting of PPM of order m achieves the information-theoretic limits of covert communications. This suggests alternative code constructions for covert communications, in which the sparsity of the PPM symbols ensures covertness and an appropriate choice of the blocklength results in the square root law.