Covert Data Communications in Cell-Free Internet-of-Things Networks

Cell-free wireless communications is a new paradigm within the future 6G networks towards implementation of the Internet of intelligence with connected people and things. In a cell-free network, a large number of distributed access points are connected to a central processing unit and serve a smaller number of users over the same time-frequency resources. The system has shown great potential in improving network performance in some perspectives compared to the co-located and conventional small-cell systems. The next-generation Internet-of-Things systems could be dispersed over large areas under a cell-free network setting. This has given rise to security concerns stemming from the exposure of wireless channels and the exponential growth of connected devices. In this talk, a novel covert downlink transmission scheme is presented that jointly optimizes beamforming and artificial noise vectors to obscure critical transmissions at an eavesdropper in CF IoT Networks.