Jamming communication networks under complete uncertainty

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This paper describes a problem of interdicting/jamming wireless communication networks in uncertain environments. Jamming communication networks is an important problem with many applications, but has received relatively little attention in the literature. Most of the work on network interdiction is focused on preventing jamming and analyzing network vulnerabilities. Here, we consider the case where there is no information about the network to be jammed. Thus, the problem is reduced to jamming all points in the area of interest. The optimal solution will determine the locations of the minimum number of jamming devices required to suppress the network. We consider a subproblem which places jamming devices on the nodes of a uniform grid over the area of interest. The objective here is to determine the maximum grid step size. We derive upper and lower bounds for this problem and provide a convergence result. Further, we prove that due to the cumulative effect of the jamming devices, the proposed method produces better solutions than the classical technique of covering the region with uniform circles.

Some applications of polynomial optimization in operations research and real-time decision making

“…Our setting, by contrast, allows for the region to be covered to be the union of arbitrary basic semialgebraic sets (see, e.g., Figure 1(a)); this obviously enhances the modeling power. We should also comment that neither our work, nor the works in [16] and [15], satisfactorily address the more difficult problem of optimizing over the location of the transmitters.…”

“…The problem we describe is motivated by some interesting and relatively recent work in [16], [15] (see also the thesis [14]), where the motivation is instead to jam the communication network of an adversary with a wireless transmitter. We note, however, that there are a few differences between our setting and that of [16] and [15], the main one being the assumption about the region to be covered.…”

“…We note, however, that there are a few differences between our setting and that of [16] and [15], the main one being the assumption about the region to be covered. Reference [16] assumes that this region is a set of isolated points (the location of the adversary is known) and this results in a simplified problem.…”

“…However, more complex objectives are considered by the authors; e.g., the goal is to make the communication graph of the enemy disconnected, or to jam a prescribed fraction of the enemy locations, or to decide which transmitters to turn off. On the opposite end, the work in [15] assumes absolutely nothing about the location of the adversary. As a result, the goal is to cover an entire rectangular region by a prescribed level of jamming power.…”

Jamming and anti-jamming techniques in wireless networks: a survey

“…Using a probability of distribution and a mathematical proof, the authors proved that the optimal strategy for the attacker tends to be rather mild and long-term. Commander et al (2008) use a dynamic approach to compute the location for placing jamming devices by integrating the bounds of the area to be jammed. They assume a square-shaped area encloses the network where the jammers are placed at the intersections of a uniform grid.…”