Jamming of UAV remote control systems using software defined radio

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become widely available and their potential unlawful usage introduces new security risks. It has therefore become highly desirable to restrict the unauthorized usage of UAVs in certain areas such as airports, nuclear power plants, etc. Most commercially available UAVs rely on spread spectrum techniques, such as direct sequencing and frequency hopping, in the remote control systems to reduce the impact of interference from neighboring communication systems (including e.g. other remotely controlled UAVs), to increase resistance to jamming and to prevent detection. In this paper, an efficient protocol-aware UAV remote control jamming system is proposed and implemented using an open-source software defined radio (SDR) platform. Experimental results show that for FASST and ACCST remote control systems, the proposed jammer achieves successful jamming at relatively low jam-to-signal ratios (JSRs) as compared to a sweep jammer, therefore requiring less transmitted power to achieve similar results. Furthermore, the proposed jammer impacts other communication systems significantly less than the sweep jammer.