Abstract-LTE is well on its way to becoming the primary cellular standard, due to its performance and low cost. Over the next decade we will become dependent on LTE, which is why we must ensure it is secure and available when we need it. Unfortunately, like any wireless technology, disruption through radio jamming is possible. This paper investigates the extent to which LTE is vulnerable to intentional jamming, by analyzing the components of the LTE downlink and uplink signals. The LTE physical layer consists of several physical channels and signals, most of which are vital to the operation of the link. By taking into account the density of these physical channels and signals with respect to the entire frame, as well as the modulation and coding schemes involved, we come up with a series of vulnerability metrics in the form of jammer to signal ratios. The "weakest links" of the LTE signals are then identified, and used to establish the overall vulnerability of LTE to hostile interference.
In December 2017, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) released the first set of specifications for 5G New Radio (NR), which is currently the most widely accepted 5G cellular standard. 5G NR is expected to replace LTE and previous generations of cellular technology over the next several years, providing higher throughput, lower latency, and a host of new features. Similar to LTE, the 5G NR physical layer consists of several physical channels and signals, most of which are vital to the operation of the network. Unfortunately, like for any wireless technology, disruption through radio jamming is possible. This paper investigates the extent to which 5G NR is vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, by analyzing the physical downlink and uplink control channels and signals. We identify the weakest links in the 5G NR frame, and propose mitigation strategies that should be taken into account during implementation of 5G NR chipsets and base stations.
In this paper, we analyze the feasibility of reactive jamming in a satellite communications scenario and propose a countermeasure that takes advantage of the constraints associated with reactive jamming. A reactive jammer is a type of jammer that has the ability to sense a portion of spectrum and immediately transmit a jamming signal when it senses a signal it wants to jam. Thus, a reactive jammer can counter the processing gain associated with frequency hopping spread spectrum. This paper provides a three-step approach to analyzing the primary constraints associated with reactive jamming, as well as detailed example scenarios (both theoretical and simulated) that demonstrate the feasibility analysis. Additional clarity is provided by splitting the analysis into uplink and downlink jamming. A strategy to mitigate the effects of reactive jamming is presented, which takes advantage of the geometric constraints of reactive jamming by using a coding and interleaving scheme that results in the transmitted bits appearing at the very beginning of each hop. This work demonstrates that reactive jamming is a valid threat to satellite communication systems. The analysis and simulation results suggest that as long as the geographical area around user terminals is free of reactive jammers, substantial mitigation can be achieved using the proposed mitigation strategy.Reactive jamming is widely discussed in open literature [9][10][11][12]. The authors of [3] introduce the concept of classifying jammers into the categories of constant, deceptive, random, and reactive. A large portion of reactive jamming literature is based on wireless sensor networks (WSN) [9,[13][14][15][16]. While
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