Enhancing 5G Resilience to Smart-Jammer Attacks: Incorporating Frequency Hopping to 5G

Cellular mobile networks have enabled several new use cases with their rapid development, and they are now considered for mission-critical and even military applications with 5G, their latest commercially available version. However, it is of utmost importance that communication channels operate in a secure and reliable manner for these purposes. Smart jammers pose a significant threat due to their accessibility, strong potential for causing service disruptions, and their difficulty in detection. This issue can be reduced by hopping between frequencies, making it harder for a malicious actor to disrupt communication. In this study, the handover mechanism, which is a supported feature in all commercial devices according to 3GPP standards, is evaluated as a frequency hopping technique in terms of feasibility and performance at preventing the attack. The proposed method is proven effective, as it can switch frequencies every second while keeping data interruptions below 75 ms for 99% of the time.