IEEE 2007 International Symposium on Microwave, Antenna, Propagation, and EMC Technologies For Wireless Communications
A Novel Method to Evaluate the Effectiveness of
Communications Jamming
Yang Fei
1 EMC Lab of Beijing Jiao Tong University, 100044
2 The State Radio Monitoring Center, China, 100037
Abstract: This paper presents a novel method to
evaluate communications jamming effectiveness by using
Amplitude Probability Distribution (APD), Average
Crossing Rate (ACR) and Power Spectral Distribution
(PSD). The three parameters give information about
amplitude domain, time domain and frequency domain of
a jamming signal, respectively. In earlier papers the
APD parameters has been considered individually to
analyze the performance degradation of communications.
However, since the three parameters can give more
detailed description of a jamming signal, we can
connect them together with the performance of digital
communications. And then according to the analysis
results, we can evaluate communications jamming
effectively and generate a jamming signal to
accomplish communications jamming. In this paper a PHS
system and pulsed sine wave jamming signals are given
as an example.
Keywords: communications jamming, APD, NAD, PSD,
pulsed jamming
I. Introduction
Many researches have been done to model
interference signals in order to predict the effect on a
receiver and their results are greatly useful for the
research of communications jamming [l]-[2]. Many
different methods of measurement and detectors have
been developed. Amplitude Probability Distribution
(APD) and Average Crossing Rate (ACR) measurements
give information about the amplitude and time statistics
of envelope from the IF-filter, respectively, and Power
Spectral Density (PSD) gives information about
frequency domain.
The use of communications jamming has greatly
stimulated the interest in tactical jamming within
military communications and electrical warfare. The
purpose of the research is to protect communication
systems from disruption and the same techniques are
applicable in the study of jamming systems and in the
1-4244-1044-4/07/S25.00 ©2007 IEEE.
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Sha Fei Song Qizhu and Wang Junfeng
, ,
e-mail: feiyoungerCg), 163.com
study of protecting communications from unintentional
interference. However, the actual jamming
techniques/waveforms used are outdated and not well
researched. It is proposed that the various
communication modulation types (analogue and digital)
are investigated, and optimized jamming waveforms and
techniques developed. Given all the technical details of
the victim (power, modulation, etc.) and the environment
(ground conductivity, path profile, etc.), we would like to
know whether the jamming is successful in disrupting
communication between the transmitter and the receiver.
By modeling the various modulations and channel
effects, APD, ACR and PSD can be developed to
investigate the effect that the different jamming
waveforms will have.
In this paper we study communications jamming by
using APD, ACR and PSD of a jamming signal, which
can be designed by pseudo noise generator [3]. In section
II the infrastructure of measuring methods is described.
Section III gives pulsed sine wave jamming models. In
section IV, we discuss communications jamming using
this method and give PHS system as an example. Finally,
the conclusions are given in section V.
II. The Infrastructure of
MEASURING METHODS
Exhaustive explanations about conventional types
of measuring detectors, e.g. detector, Quasi-peak
rms
detector, Peak detector, Average detector, and so on, are
given in CISPR standard literatures [4]. We can get the
PSD of a signal from the receiver or spectrum analyzer
with these types of detectors. The PSD describes how the
power of a time series is distributed with frequency.
Mathematically, it is defined as the Fourier Transform of
the autocorrelation sequence of the time series. When we
study a signal, we should use appropriate detector due to
our measuring purpose and the rms detector is commonly
used. If the purpose is to evaluate the impact of a
jamming signal on various communication systems, the
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 IEEE 2007 International Symposium on Microwave, Antenna, Propagation, and EMC Technologies For Wireless Communications
rms detector can only be used for evaluating analogue
AM communication systems. So a new statistical
measuring method is proposed by CISPR, which can be
used to evaluate the impact of a jamming signal on
digital communication systems [5]-[6].
The statistical measuring method describes the
envelope statistics of a disturbance from the IF filter of
the measurement receiver and the APD and ACR
statistical parameters are significant ones therein. Their
definitions are shown as follow.
The Amplitude Probability Distribution is defined
as the part of time the measured envelope of a
disturbance exceeding a certain level and APD(R) is the
ratio of time for which r(t) > R within measurement
duration T seconds from start time tQ to end time t0+T
Here r(t) is the disturbance amplitude, and an amplitude
threshold R has a dimension of voltage. Figure 1 shows
an example of the envelope from IF filter and the APD(R)
can be written as
APDiR) tx +12 +t3T
+ +1,
= '"- = . .
(1)
.
Moreover, the relationship between apd(R) and the
probability density function of the envelope is basically
f(R)=^-F(R) R
~APD{R)
where F(R) and f(R) denote the cumulative density
=
(2)
R
function and probability density function of the envelope,
respectively [5].
Envelop of Interference Signal
threshold A,i
level R r" \\
Fig. 1. Envelope of Interference Signal From IF Filter
The ACR(R) is the number of times that r(t)
intersects r in a positive direction per second within the
measurement duration. It can be defined as
ACRiR) n{R) --
where n(R) denotes the number that envelope r(t)
intersects the threshold level R in a positive direction,
which is also the number of impulses that exceed the
threshold level R As shown in figure 1, the threshold R
.
is positively crossed four times so that crd(R) ait
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III.
THE STATISTICAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF PULSED
JAMMING SIGNAL
Jamming signals can be classified on the basis of
their statistical properties as stochastic or deterministic
signals. In this section we are going to discuss the
statistical characters of a representative type of jamming
signals pulsed sine wave.
Pulsed sine wave (PSW) is often used to simulate
the dominant disturbance waveform in modern
electronics, which can be described by three parameters:
.
pulse repetition frequency (PRF) / pulse width Tw and ,
carrier frequency fc. The on/off modulation of the sine
wave considers the face of intermittent interference,
which is shown in figure 2.
-pulsed repetitive time-
Y.hiT
-pulsed width-
Fig.2. pulsed sine wave signal model
Interference local
oscillator spectrunr
analyzer
filter intermediate
>
r(f) frequency
APD
detector
Fig.3. EMI and APD Measurement Receiver Model
The spectrum of the pulse is moved to the carrier
J frequency which becomes band-limited and it can be
measured according to the model in figure 3. The
spectrum analysis method has been mentioned in many
literatures, so in this section we will mainly discuss APD
and ACR. From figure 3 we can also see that the results
of spectrum and APD are affected by the bandwidth of
the filter. Thereby, when we set RBW the same as the
bandwidth of communication filter, we can get the
similar amplitude statistics inside the communication
receiver. In our research RBW is set to 300kHz, which is
(3) the same as the channel bandwidth of PHS receiver.
Moreover, we keep the peak of pulsed sine waves as a
fixed value and change the pulse repetition frequency
(PRF), duty cycle and the bandwidth of the filter (RBW).
The results of APD measurements with different PRF,
= .
duty cycle and RBW are shown in figure 4, while results
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 IEEE 2007 International Symposium on Microwave, Antenna, Propagation, and EMC Technologies For Wireless Communications
10
:Si:
c*
=l
t = = = = = tf = = = = = =1
-e. PRF=500kHz,duty cycle=50%,RBW=300kHz
-B. PRF=500kHz,duty cycle=70%,RBW=300kHz
H-PRF=500kHz,duty cycle=50%,RBW=10MHz
~^~
10
PRF=100kHz,duty cycle=50%,RBW=300kHz
5553 57
disturbance level (dBuV)
Fig.4. comparison of APD measurements
of ACR are given in figure 5. From these results we can
see that APD and ACR are different with the PRF, duty
cycle and (RBW), and we can assume the models as
follows:
APD(R) APDR(fp9Wp9Bf) =
(4)
ACRiR) ACRRifp,JVp,Bf) (5)
=
where / is PRF, W is duty cycle and Bf represents BF.
Figure 4 shows that when the RBW<PRF, the
jamming signals inside the communication receiver will
lose their characteristics of pulse (straight line together
with waterfall region) and the jamming energy is
smoothed equally over all bits of the victim and the
interference caused by pulsed jamming signals can
approximately be seen as Gaussian distributed. While
RBW>PRF, the jamming signal cannot be seen as
Gaussian distributed and the victim perceives a pulsed
jamming. Figure 4 also shows that the pulsed jamming
signal with 70% duty cycle has more average power than
that with 50% duty cycle.
From figure 5 we can also see that when
RBW<PRF the jamming signals lose their characteristics
of pulse (the straight line region). Moreover, we can see
the PRF from the straight line region (the non-straight-
line regions are caused by thermal noise), and we can get
the frequency of certain amplitude that is exceeds a
specified one. This is especially important for analyzing
a TDMA system.
According to the analysis above, we can make a
clear description of pulsed signals by using APD, ACR
and PSD. So when we generate a jamming signal, we can
get its statistical characters firstly, and then evaluate the
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O. PRF=500kHz,duty cycle=50%, RBW=300kHz
.
PRF=500kHz,duty cycle=50%, RBW=10MHz
H-PRF=500kHz,duty cycle=70%, RBW=10MHz
Z^. PRF=100kHz,duty cycle=50%, RBW=300kHz
-PRF=100kHz,duty cycle=50%, RBW=10MHz
rn
==4==^==#==^
6159 63 30 35 40 45
disturbance level (dBuV)
Fig.5. comparison of ACR measurements
communications jamming effectiveness. In section IV,
we will introduce the relationship between the statistical
characters of jamming signal and quality degradation of
communication system. Moreover, we can generates a
pseudo noise according to specified APD and ACR
determined by equation (5) and (6) [3].
IV. EVALUATE COMMUNICATIONS
JAMMING BY USING THIS METHOD
In the previous section we have got the statistical
models. In this section we will try to combine the two
models together with PSD, and establish the relationship
between them and the degradation of PHS
communication.
At first we can get the spectrum of the jamming
signal from PSD, which include the information about
frequency range and signal intensity. Then we can make
APD and ACR measurements at the center of frequency
range. In our research the carrier frequency of pulsed
sine wave is 1906.85MHz, which is center frequency of
40th channel in a PHS system, and the APD and ACR
measurement results of pulsed jamming signals with
different PRF are shown in figure 6 and figure 8
respectively. The duty cycle is set to be 50% and the
RBW is 300kHz which is the same with the channel
bandwidth of PHS system. Figure 7 gives the results of
bit error rate (BER) measurement under the pulsed
jamming signals. From figure 7 we can see that pulsed
jamming signals with lower PRF are more effective than
those with higher PRF. However, when the PRF exceed
500kHz, which is higher than 300kHz the jamming
,
results are very similar. Furthermore, the same trend can
be seen in figure 6. So we can evaluate the jamming
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 IEEE 2007 International Symposium on Microwave, Antenna, Propagation, and EMC Technologies For Wireless Communications

effectiveness by using APD. For our TDMA system the

10 h^ = = = =
ACR of jamming signal is another significant parameter.
Figure 8 shows that the jamming signals with smaller
ACR can cause more performance degradation than
those with larger one. It is because smaller ACR denotes
the jamming signals have more probability to impact on
the using slots. So we proposed a evaluating model for
pulsed jamming:
Pb =APD(R)xP(bit error\jamning>R, ACR(R)) (6)
+(l-APD(R))xP(bit error\janmng<R, ACR(R))
where P(bit error\jamming>R, ACR(R)) denotes the
BER under the condition that jamming signal level is
larger than R and ACR(R).
57 58 59 60
V. CONCLUSIONS
disturbance level (dBuv)
Fig.6. APD measurement results This paper takes pulsed jamming signals and PHS
system as examples to introduce a novel method to
evaluate communications jamming
>.Q!feKr^e5^^ effectiveness and
accomplish communications jamming. According to our
3fc research the statistical characteristics of jamming signals
can be used together with the PSD. Our further research
ill is to get the accurate prediction of degradation of digital
communications by using statistical method and
\~~~1 accomplish more effective communications jamming.
¥:::5_r
References
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PRF=300kHz communication services," Electromagnetic Compatibility,
PRF=200kHz IEEE Transactions. NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2000.
m [2] Lee, S. H.; "Jamming effects on digital communication
PRF=100kHz
PRF=10kHz receivers (timing errors and frequency errors)," M.S. Thesis
PRF=lkHz
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xml
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Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. December 1985.
signal level (dBuV) [3] Yamane, K.; Shinozuka, T.; Ohnuma, K. "Pseudo-noise
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Fig.7. BER measurement of PHS system Electromagnetic Compatibility, 2000. IEEE International
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[4] CISPR 16-1-1 Ed.2: "Specification for radio disburbance and
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10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
disturbance (dBuV)

Fig. 8. ACR measurement results

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