A Case for Low-level Jamming Attacks on Mobile CPS in Target Tracking Applications

Jamming wireless signals has been one of the most effective attack techniques against any system that relies on wireless communications. Such attacks have been shown to cause degradation of quality, severe inefficiencies, and may potentially lead to instabilities. Surprisingly, this paper uncovers some of the benefits realized when systems are subjected to some level of jamming. In particular, we show cases in which low-level jamming attacks can improve the convergence time for systems when compared to systems that are not subjected to attacks. We illustrate such cases using traditional controllers in target tracking scenarios for Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems. We drive our results through analysis, simulation and real experimental implementation using the Surveyor SRV-1 blackfin robots.