Biomimicking Covert Communication by Time-Frequency Shift Modulation for Increasing Mimicking and BER Performances

Underwater acoustic (UWA) biomimicking communications have been developed for covert communications. For the UWA covert communications, it is difficult to achieve the bit error rate (BER) and the degree of mimic (DoM) performances at the same time. This paper proposes a biomimicking covert communication method to increase both BER and DoM (degree of mimic) performances based on the Time Frequency Shift Keying (TFSK). To increase DoM and BER performances, the orthogonality requirements of the time- and frequency-shifting units of the TFSK are theoretically derived, and the whistles are multiplied by the sequence with a large correlation. Two-step DoM assessments are also developed for the long-term whistle signals. Computer simulations and practical lake and ocean experiments demonstrate that the proposed method increases the DoM by 35% and attains a zero BER at −6 dB of Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR).