Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted Covert Communication for Smart Grid Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted covert communication for enhancing the security of the smart grid system. Specifically, we exploit the reconfigurability potentials of the RIS and develop an intelligent covert communication system to enhance the security of the communication within the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) of the smart grid system. The design objective is to maximize the covert rate at the smart meters while satisfying the maximum transmit power constraint of the transmitter, the constant modulus constraints of the RIS, and to minimize the probability of the monitor/attacker detecting the transmitter’s transmission behavior, thus ensuring the secure transmission of private information. We adopt some convex approximation techniques to reformulate the resulting problem into a relaxed convex optimization problem. We proposed a low-complexity and sub-optimal solution based on the alternating optimization approach. Simulation results are provided showing the effectiveness of the proposed intelligent covert communication system as compared to the other baseline schemes