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A Countermeasure against Smart Jamming Attacks on LTE Synchronization Signals

Mert Eygi 1,2 and Gunes Karabulut Kurt 1
1. Wireless Communication Research Laboratory (WCRL), Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul and 34469, Turkey
2. TURKCELL Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.¸ Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract—Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the most frequently used wireless communication technology. As every wireless network, LTE is vulnerable to physical layer (PHY) jamming attacks due to the broadcast nature of channels. Since the jammer attacks are getting smarter and energy efficient, they can target a specific region or physical channel instead of entire band. Targeting the physical LTE downlink Synchronization Signals (SS) could be the most dangerous objective. In this paper, we investigate LTE PHY jamming attack against only primary and secondary synchronization signals. Jammer detection is performed by using Neyman-Pearson theorem. Then, a countermeasure method is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed countermeasure can achieve lower pollution and better correct cell id performances during smart jamming attack against SS.
 
Index Terms—LTE, physical layer, jamming attack, primary synchronization signals, secondary synchronization signals

Cite: Mert Eygi and Gunes Karabulut Kurt, "A Countermeasure against Smart Jamming Attacks on LTE Synchronization Signals," Journal of Communications vol. 15, no. 8, pp. 626-632, August 2020. Doi: 10.12720/jcm.15.8.626-632

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.