Committee: 

Dr. Stuber, Dr. Shamma, Advisors

Dr. McLaughlin, Chair

Dr. Feron

Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to identify security vulnerabilities in LTE/LTE-A networks and devise policies that can help the network combat smart jamming attacks autonomously. LTE/LTE-A networks provide advanced data, Voice over IP (VoIP), multimedia, and location-based services to millions of subscribers around the world. Lately, it has been suggested to utilize commercially and privately-owned LTE/LTE-A networks for mission-critical applications like public safety, smart grid and military communications. Although LTE/LTE-A air interface provides ease of accessibility, flexibility, mobility support, low latency, high data rates, and economy of scale; it also raises serious security concerns. It is shown that the LTE air interface is vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) and loss of service attacks from power and bandwidth-limited smart jammers, without being “hacked” by them. The interaction between the network and the smart jammer is modeled as a two-player Bayesian game with asymmetric information, with the network being the uninformed player. The proposed work addresses smart jamming problem in LTE/LTE-A networks by using learning and policy optimization in repeated games so that autonomous policies can be constructed for the network to combat against these attacks.