Energy-Efficient UAV Covert Communications via Metaheuristic Optimization

Nguyen Minh Quan; Tran Thanh Thu; Nguyen The Ngoc Khue; Ninh Thi Thanh Tam; Trinh Van Chien

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arXiv · 2611.00090

Energy-Efficient UAV Covert Communications via Metaheuristic Optimization

Nguyen Minh Quan·Tran Thanh Thu·Nguyen The Ngoc Khue·Ninh Thi Thanh Tam·Trinh Van Chien

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Abstract

Wireless communication systems increasingly require not only confidentiality but also transmission undetectability, motivating covert communications. This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enabled covert communication system where a UAV serves a legitimate receiver in the presence of multiple active and colluding wardens with imperfect location information. We maximize covert energy efficiency (CEE) by jointly optimizing the UAV's 3D trajectory and transmit power while accounting for energy. To address the resulting non-convex problem with robust covertness constraints, we develop Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)-based metaheuristic algorithms and compare them with a Block Coordinate Descent with Successive Convex Approximation (BCD-SCA) benchmark. Numerical results show that the proposed methods improve CEE while satisfying covertness constraints.

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Nguyen Minh Quan, Tran Thanh Thu, Nguyen The Ngoc Khue, Ninh Thi Thanh Tam, Trinh Van Chien. 2026-10-22. Energy-Efficient UAV Covert Communications via Metaheuristic Optimization. https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00090

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