Modelling a Communication Channel under Jamming: Experimental Model and Applications

Traditional studies on jamming effectiveness and propagation over the wireless channel assume ideal theoretical models, such as Friis and Rician. However, the cited models have been hardly validated by on-field assessments in real jamming scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first ones to fill the highlighted gap. In particular, our objective is to provide a realistic jamming propagation model, taking into account heterogeneous operating frequencies and technologies. Our findings, supported by an extensive experimental campaign on outdoor jamming propagation, show that independently from the communication frequency the jamming power received at a given distance from the jamming source (fast fading) can be best modelled through a t-locationScale distribution, while the power of the received jamming decades with the increase of the distance from the jamming source (slow fading) following a power law. As reference applications of the derived experimental model, we describe and demonstrate its usage in two different use-cases, i.e., jamming source localization and dead-reckoning navigation, showing that our model outperforms traditional and state-of-the-art propagation models when dealing with real jamming scenarios. All the acquired data have been released as open-source, to foster experimental research activities on jamming propagation models and their applications.