Subverting Massive MIMO by Smart Jamming

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how a smart jammer can optimally attack a massive MIMO system during training and data phases to significantly reduce spectral efficiency, highlighting vulnerabilities in large-scale antenna systems.

Contribution

It derives a closed-form expression for spectral efficiency under smart jamming and identifies optimal attack strategies based on energy constraints.

Findings

Optimal jamming strategies depend on energy budget and phase targeted.

Smart jamming can substantially degrade spectral efficiency in massive MIMO.

Impact is more pronounced as the number of BS antennas grows.

Abstract

We consider uplink transmission of a massive multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system in the presence of a smart jammer. The jammer aims to degrade the sum spectral efficiency of the legitimate system by attacking both the training and data transmission phases. First, we derive a closed-form expression for the sum spectral efficiency by taking into account the presence of a smart jammer. Then, we determine how a jammer with a given energy budget should attack the training and data transmission phases to induce the maximum loss to the sum spectral efficiency. Numerical results illustrate the impact of optimal jamming specifically in the large limit of the number of base station (BS) antennas.