Efficient jamming attacks on MIMO channels

This paper investigates efficient jamming attacks against MIMO-enabled systems. Previous research has focused on jamming data transmissions. We instead focus on jamming channel sounding symbols, and introduce the MIMO Singularity Attack, which attempts to reduce the rank of the channel gain matrix estimate by the receiver through transmission of specific jamming signals. All MIMO systems need a method to estimate and equalize their channel, whether through channel reciprocity or sounding, and most modern OFDM-based MIMO waveforms use sounding via OFDM pilot tones. We develop the constraints associated with jamming MIMO sounding channels, and further describe how these attacks specifically impact data symbol estimates for OFDM pilot-based sounding systems.