Anti-Jamming Modulation for OFDM Systems under Jamming Attacks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an anti-jamming communication framework for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems under jamming attacks. To this end, we first develop an anti-jamming modulation scheme that uses a spreading matrix to distribute each symbol across multiple subcarriers, enhancing robustness against jamming. For optimal demodulation at a receiver, we devise a maximum likelihood detection (MLD) method and its low-complexity variant tailored to our anti-jamming modulation scheme in scenarios with known jamming variance. We analyze the bit error rate (BER) of our modulation scheme to optimize its modulation order according to a jamming scenario. To adapt to dynamic and unknown jamming environments, we present a jamming-adaptive communication framework consisting of two phases: (i) a jamming-noncoherent phase and (ii) a jamming-coherent phase. In the jamming-noncoherent phase, we develop an approximate MLD method that operates without prior knowledge of jamming variance and enables the estimation of jamming parameters. In the jamming-coherent phase, we use these estimated parameters to optimize the proposed modulation scheme while employing the low-complexity MLD method. Simulation results demonstrate the superior BER performance of the proposed anti-jamming framework compared to existing OFDM communication frameworks across a wide range of communication and jamming scenarios.