IEEE 802.11b/g WLAN tolerance to jamming

In this paper, the performance of IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g wireless local area networks (WLANs) performance under barrage jamming is evaluated theoretically and using measurements. Single WLAN ad-hoc link performance is measured when receiver station is jammed. WLAN link vulnerability assessment is based on throughput and packet error rate (PER), which depends on different physical (PHY) layer characteristic. WLAN system is found to be more tolerant to narrow-band jamming than to wideband-band jamming. In 802.11b WLAN, processing gain increases the tolerance to jamming whereas coding and different modulations are used to improve the link performance in 802.11g WLAN. Measured link throughputs are far from theoretical values, especially when high data rate modes are used.