Wireless systems must be resilient to jamming attacks. Existing mitigation methods require knowledge of the jammer’s transmit characteristics. However, this knowledge may be difficult to acquire, especially for smart jammers that attack only specific instants during transmission in order to evade mitigation. We propose a novel method that mitigates attacks by smart jammers on massive multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) basestations (BSs). Our approach builds on recent progress in joint channel estimation and data detection (JED) and exploits the fact that a jammer cannot change its subspace within a coherence interval. Our method, called MAED (short for MitigAtion, Estimation, and Detection), uses a novel problem formulation that combines jammer estimation and mitigation, channel estimation, and data detection, instead of separating these tasks. We solve the problem approximately with an efficient iterative algorithm. Our simulation results show that MAED effectively mitigates a wide range of smart jamming attacks without having any a priori knowledge about the attack type.
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Mitigating Smart Jammers in Multi-User MIMO
Wireless systems must be resilient to jamming attacks. Existing mitigation methods based on multi-antenna processing require knowledge of the jammer's transmit characteristics that may be difficult to acquire, especially for smart jammers that evade mitigation by transmitting only at specific instants. We propose a novel method to mitigate smart jamming attacks on the massive multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) uplink which does not require the jammer to be active at any specific instant. By formulating an optimization problem that unifies jammer estimation and mitigation, channel estimation, and data detection, we exploit that a jammer cannot change its subspace within a coherence interval. Theoretical results for our problem formulation show that its solution is guaranteed to recover the users' data symbols under certain conditions. We develop two efficient iterative algorithms for approximately solving the proposed problem formulation: MAED, a parameter-free algorithm which uses forward-backward splitting with a box symbol prior, and SO-MAED, which replaces the prior of MAED with soft-output symbol estimates that exploit the discrete transmit constellation and which uses deep unfolding to optimize algorithm parameters. We use simulations to demonstrate that the proposed algorithms effectively mitigate a wide range of smart jammers without a priori knowledge about the attack type.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1717559
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10490325
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
- Volume:
- 71
- ISSN:
- 1053-587X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 756 to 771
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Multi-antenna (MIMO) processing is a promising solution to the problem of jammer mitigation. Existing methods mitigate the jammer based on an estimate of its subspace (or receive statistics) acquired through a dedicated training phase. This strategy has two main drawbacks: (i) it reduces the communication rate since no data can be transmitted during the training phase and (ii) it can be evaded by smart or multi-antenna jammers that are quiet during the training phase or that dynamically change their subspace through time-varying beamforming. To address these drawbacks, we propose joint jammer mitigation and data detection (JMD), a novel paradigm for MIMO jammer mitigation. The core idea is to estimate and remove the jammer interference subspace jointly with detecting the transmit data over multiple time slots. Doing so removes the need for a dedicated rate-reducing training period while enabling the mitigation of smart and dynamic multi-antenna jammers. We instantiate our paradigm with SANDMAN, a simple and practical algorithm for multi-user MIMO uplink JMD. Extensive simulations demonstrate the efficacy of JMD, and of SANDMAN in particular, for jammer mitigation.more » « less
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Data files were used in support of the research paper titled "“Experimentation Framework for Wireless
Communication Systems under Jamming Scenarios" which has been submitted to the IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications journal.Authors: Marko Jacovic, Michael J. Liston, Vasil Pano, Geoffrey Mainland, Kapil R. Dandekar
Contact: krd26@drexel.edu---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Top-level directories correspond to the case studies discussed in the paper. Each includes the sub-directories: logs, parsers, rayTracingEmulation, results.
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logs: - data logs collected from devices under test
- 'defenseInfrastucture' contains console output from a WARP 802.11 reference design network. Filename structure follows '*x*dB_*y*.txt' in which *x* is the reactive jamming power level and *y* is the jaming duration in samples (100k samples = 1 ms). 'noJammer.txt' does not include the jammer and is a base-line case. 'outMedian.txt' contains the median statistics for log files collected prior to the inclusion of the calculation in the processing script.
- 'uavCommunication' contains MGEN logs at each receiver for cases using omni-directional and RALA antennas with a 10 dB constant jammer and without the jammer. Omni-directional folder contains multiple repeated experiments to provide reliable results during each calculation window. RALA directories use s*N* folders in which *N* represents each antenna state.
- 'vehicularTechnologies' contains MGEN logs at the car receiver for different scenarios. 'rxNj_5rep.drc' does not consider jammers present, 'rx33J_5rep.drc' introduces the periodic jammer, in 'rx33jSched_5rep.drc' the device under test uses time scheduling around the periodic jammer, in 'rx33JSchedRandom_5rep.drc' the same modified time schedule is used with a random jammer.--------------------------------
parsers: - scripts used to collect or process the log files used in the study
- 'defenseInfrastructure' contains the 'xputFiveNodes.py' script which is used to control and log the throughput of a 5-node WARP 802.11 reference design network. Log files are manually inspected to generate results (end of log file provides a summary).
- 'uavCommunication' contains a 'readMe.txt' file which describes the parsing of the MGEN logs using TRPR. TRPR must be installed to run the scripts and directory locations must be updated.
- 'vehicularTechnologies' contains the 'mgenParser.py' script and supporting 'bfb.json' configuration file which also require TRPR to be installed and directories to be updated.--------------------------------
rayTracingEmulation: - 'wirelessInsiteImages': images of model used in Wireless Insite
- 'channelSummary.pdf': summary of channel statistics from ray-tracing study
- 'rawScenario': scenario files resulting from code base directly from ray-tracing output based on configuration defined by '*WI.json' file
- 'processedScenario': pre-processed scenario file to be used by DYSE channel emulator based on configuration defined by '*DYSE.json' file, applies fixed attenuation measured externally by spectrum analyzer and additional transmit power per node if desired
- DYSE scenario file format: time stamp (milli seconds), receiver ID, transmitter ID, main path gain (dB), main path phase (radians), main path delay (micro seconds), Doppler shift (Hz), multipath 1 gain (dB), multipath 1 phase (radians), multipath 1 delay relative to main path delay (micro seconds), multipath 2 gain (dB), multipath 2 phase (radians), multipath 2 delay relative to main path delay (micro seconds)
- 'nodeMapping.txt': mapping of Wireless Insite transceivers to DYSE channel emulator physical connections required
- 'uavCommunication' directory additionally includes 'antennaPattern' which contains the RALA pattern data for the omni-directional mode ('omni.csv') and directional state ('90.csv')--------------------------------
results: - contains performance results used in paper based on parsing of aforementioned log files
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MIMO processing enables jammer mitigation through spatial filtering, provided that the receiver knows the spatial signature of the jammer interference. Estimating this signature is easy for barrage jammers that transmit continuously and with static signature, but difficult for more sophisticated jammers: Smart jammers may deliberately suspend transmission when the receiver tries to estimate their spatial signature, they may use time-varying beamforming to continuously change their spatial signature, or they may stay mostly silent and jam only specific instants (e.g., transmission of control signals). To deal with such smart jammers, we propose MASH, the first method that indiscriminately mitigates all types of jammers: Assume that the transmitter and receiver share a common secret. Based on this secret, the transmitter embeds (with a linear time-domain transform) its signal in a secret subspace of a higher-dimensional space. The receiver applies a reciprocal linear transform to the receive signal, which (i) raises the legitimate transmit signal from its secret subspace and (ii) provably transforms any jammer into a barrage jammer, which makes estimation and mitigation via MIMO processing straightforward. We show the efficacy of MASH for data transmission in the massive multi-user MIMO uplink.more » « less
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Low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) simplify the design of millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) basestations, but increase vulnerability to jamming attacks. As a remedy, we propose HERMIT (short for Hybrid jammER MITigation), a method that combines a hardware-friendly adaptive analog transform with a corresponding digital equalizer: The analog transform removes most of the jammer’s energy prior to data conversion; the digital equalizer suppresses jammer residues while detecting the legitimate transmit data. We provide theoretical results that establish the optimal analog transform as a function of the user equipments’ and the jammer’s channels. Using simulations with mmWave channel models, we demonstrate the superiority of HERMIT compared both to purely digital jammer mitigation as well as to a recent hybrid method that mitigates jammer interference with a nonadaptive analog transform.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2023.3246226
