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The onset of quantum computing calls for secrecy schemes that can provide everlasting secrecy resistant to increased computational power of an adversary. One novel physical layer scheme proposes that an intended receiver capable of performing analog cancellation of a known key-based interference would hold a significant advantage in recovering small underlying messages versus an eavesdropper performing cancellation after analog-to-digital conversion. This advantage holds even if an eavesdropper later obtains the key and employs it in their digital cancellation. Inspired by this scheme, a flexible software-defined radio receiver design capable of maintaining analog cancellation ratios over 40 dB, reaching up to and over 50 dB, is implemented. Using analog cancellation levels from the hardware testbed, practical everlasting secrecy rates up to 2.0 bits/symbol are shown to be gained by receivers performing interference cancellation in analog rather than on a digital signal processor. 

Covert communication is achieved when a transmitter Alice can successfully transmit a message to a receiver Bob without being detected by an attentive and capable adversary Willie. Early results demonstrated the difficulty of the covert communications problem: with AWGN discrete-time channels between all parties, only O(sqrt(n)) bits can be sent in n channel uses. But it was soon recognized that uncertainty about the environment at Willie, for example, uncertainty in his own noise statistics, could allow for a positive rate: O(n) bits can be sent covertly in n channel uses. However, most covert communication results, including this promising positive rate result, have been obtained for a discrete-time communications channel. Here, we demonstrate that the assumption of a discrete-time channel is problematic when trying to exploit Willie's noise uncertainty. In particular, we demonstrate that if Alice transmits ω(sqrt(T)) bits in a length T interval to Bob on a continuous-time channel, then there exists a detector at Willie that can detect her transmission, as the probability of false alarm and missed detection PMD+PFA→0 as T→∞. In other words, the communication is not covert, unlike the case of a discrete-time channel.