Power Control Game in Multi-Terminal Covert Timing Channels

We present a game theoretic power control of overlay/overt communications to maximize the goodput (effective throughput of error-free bits) of multi-terminal covert timing channels. Most approaches in the literature on covert timing channels discuss capacities of the timing channels but do not study how the overlay communication can be controlled to maximize the goodput of covert timing channels. We study the factors of the overlay communication that affect the goodput of each timing channel in a multi-terminal covert timing network. We show that the goodput of the covert timing channel can be enhanced by increasing the rate of overlay transmission and by game theoretic power control of overlay communication. We finally extend the game theoretic power control to maximize the goodput of each covert timing channel in a multi-terminal covert timing network by maximizing the asymptotic spectral efficiency of the overlay communication.