A Novel Frequency-Hopping Sequence for Covert Communication

In this paper, a novel frequency-hopping sequence with lower probability of detection is proposed for covert communication systems. By formulating and solving a constrained optimization problem, a probability vector aiming for covert communication is obtained in the presence of interference. The proposed frequency-hopping sequence chooses channels based on the probabilities, which can achieve the lowest probability of detection under a prescribed bit error rate. Moreover, by using an 1-2 norm constraint in the optimization problem, the maximum Hamming autocorrelation of the proposed frequency-hopping sequence is studied. We also discuss the relationship between the 1-2 norm constraint and the bounds on the maximum Hamming autocorrelation. Simulation results verify the performance of the proposed frequency-hopping sequence.