Robust remote estimation over the collision channel in the presence of an intelligent jammer

Xu Zhang, Marcos M. Vasconcelos

Abstract: We consider a sensor-receiver pair communicating over a wireless channel in the presence of a jammer who may launch a denial-of-service attack. We formulate a zero-sum game between a coordinator that jointly designs the transmission and estimation policies, and the jammer. We consider two cases depending on whether the jammer can sense the channel or not. We characterize a saddle-point equilibrium for the class of symmetric and unimodal probability density functions when the jammer cannot sense the channel. If the jammer can sense if the channel is being used, we provide an efficient algorithm that alternates between iterations of Projected Gradient Ascent and the Convex-Concave Procedure to find approximate First-order Nash-Equilibria. Our numerical results show that in certain cases the jammer may decide to launch a denial-of-service attack with the goal of deceiving the receiver even when the sensor decides not to transmit.