Identifying opportunistic repurposing of adversarial jamming for power-constrained nodes

Power-constrained tactical and sensing nodes depend on wireless links to maintain connectivity in contested radio frequency environments. The ability of an adversary to disrupt those links through jamming presents a persistent challenge in wireless communication systems. Prior research addresses detecting, classifying, and countering jamming, often through responses infeasible for nodes with limited processing capability. In contrast, cooperative jamming and backscatter research show that interference can sometimes support constructive use rather than being treated only as a threat. However, this literature does not specify how a power-limited node would assess whether interference satisfies the requirements for constructive use. This work presents a passive assessment method that uses power and signal-to-noise ratio to evaluate whether interference may support opportunistic reuse. The method uses three window-level descriptors: mean power level, power exceedance rate, and persistence across windows. These descriptors identify intervals in which opportunistic communication may be feasible. Results show that selected interference intervals satisfy the proposed criteria and form contiguous segments capable of supporting a short binary status communication. Long-range testbed evaluation shows that the method can be applied to packet-level received signal strength data.