Intentional electromagnetic interference through saturation of the RF front end

Abstract

There is an increasing use of wireless applications in today's society. A big disadvantage of wireless communication is the high vulnerability to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Intentional electromagnetic interference can saturate, and thereby block and desensitize, the wireless receiver. This mechanism of causing a DoS is different from well-studied jamming attacks. It is important to determine and quantify saturation levels of a receiver. The saturation is quantified by the 1-dB compression point, P1-dB. An experimental method is presented that can determine P1-dB over a wide frequency band in a fast and accurate way. Results show the need for a high quality front door filter to be robust against out-of-band interference.