5G - jamming, interception and detection properties
Publish date: 2019-02-21
Report number: FOI-R--4727--SE
Pages: 55
Written in: Swedish
Keywords:
- 5G
- jamming resistance
- frequency management
- interference mitigation
Abstract
This work studies pros and cons with new 5G technologies for military applications. The focus is on jamming and LPI/LPD properties, as well as interference and spectrum management. The report consists of a brief description of the 5G standard, analyses of vulnerabilities and robustness for military use of 5G, and descriptions of new technologies that can be of interest for military applications, in particular with respect to jamming and LPI/LPD properties and the possibility of interference and spectrum management. A big difference compared to previous generation cellular systems is that 5G is significantly more flexible, and supports many different types of service with diverging demands on data rate, delay and range. It can be a great advantage in military applications to use a single system for a diversity of different services with diverging demands. It can also convey simplifications in co-localization of different services, and more efficient us of spectrum. A larger degree of flexibility and complexity in a communication system also requires an electronic warfighter attacker to be more qualified to be a threat. A number of analyses are performed for a selection of 5G techniques: OFDM, forward error correction and the synchronization sequence. The results show that the synchronization sequence used in 5G is slightly more sensitive to jamming than the synchronizations sequences used in LTE. However, the location of the synchronization sequence is not fixed in 5G as in LTE, which means that a jammer needs more knowledge of the system to adapt and perform efficient jamming. The report also shows that an OFDM system, using parameters from the 5G standard, is significantly more sensitive to jamming with a CW signal than AWGN. New technologies in the 5G development can create new opportunities in military applications. Full duplex, i.e. simultaneous transmission and reception on the same channel, theoretically provides twice the capacity. Full duplex can also provide new possibilities for military use, such as simultaneous jamming and communication, and new techniques for interference mitigation. Techniques for mmWave (frequencies above 24 GHz in 5G) provide large bandwidths that enables large data rate and capacity within a limited area. Strong path loss, in combination with MIMO, techniques can provide more efficient frequency reuse. MIMO techniques with a massive amount of antennas yields large advantages by increased capacity and robusthness through e.g. beamforming and nulling. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been highlighted as a technique that contributes to increased capacity and fairness in resource allocation in the downlink. Challenges in introducing NOMA are increased receiver complexity, dependency on accurate channel estimates and lowered power margin towards interferences. Techniques to deal with known interference signals, which is the basis for NOMA, are also interesting from a military perspective to mitigate self interference and a limited frequency availability.