New Paper on Jammer-Resilient Time Synchronization

Jammer-resilient wireless communication systems are urgently needed. Spatial filtering based on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) processing is a promising approach to jammer mitigation. While there has been significant progress in the area of jammer-resilient data detection based on spatial filtering, there has been a lack of a corresponding jammer-resilient synchronization method. Without successful synchronization, data detection is impossible.

To remedy this situation, we propose JASS, the first method that enables reliable time synchronization for the single-user MIMO uplink while mitigating smart jamming attacks. JASS detects a randomized synchronization sequence based on a novel optimization problem that fits a spatial filter to the time-windowed receive signal in order to mitigate the jammer. In our paper, we prove that solving this optimization problem ensures successful time synchronization under certain intuitive conditions, and we derive an efficient algorithm for approximately solving it. We also use simulations to demonstrate the effectiveness of JASS against a wide range of different jammer types.

The paper was co-authored by Gian Marti, Flurin Arquint, and Prof. Christoph Studer. A preprint is available on external pagearXivcall_made.