Resilience of LTE networks against smart jamming attacks

Abstract

Commercial LTE networks are being studied for mission-critical applications, such as public safety and smart grid communications. In this paper, LTE networks are shown vulnerable to Denial-of-Service (DOS) and loss of service attacks from smart jammers, who may employ simple narrowband jamming techniques to attack without any need to hack the network or its users. We modeled the utilities of jamming and anti-jamming actions played by the jammer and the network under the framework of single-shot and repeated Bayesian games. In a single-shot game formulation the only Nash Equilibria (NE) are pure strategy equilibria at which network utility is severely compromised. We propose a repeated-game learning and strategy algorithm for the network that outperforms single-shot games by a significant margin. Furthermore, all of our proposed actions and algorithms can be implemented with current technology.