Integrated Communications and Jamming: Toward Dual-Functional Wireless Networks Under Antagonistic Environment

The multi-functional integrated systems have been emerging recently. This article proposes a generalized framework, named integrated communications and jamming (ICAJ), which has potential to enable communication and jamming to reinforce each other in one system, then achieve more reliable communication and more efficient jamming. Specifically, we first introduce the concept and benefits of ICAJ. In particular, we make a comparison between the proposed ICAJ and the integrated of sensing and communications (ISAC) in the literature. Then, typical use cases including jamming-aided communication and communication-aided jamming are given. Next, performance metrics, as well as fundamental trade-offs in ICAJ are discussed. Further, waveform designs including non-overlapped and overlapped ones are analyzed, respectively. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed ICAJ system, a case study of multiple-input multiple-output based ICAJ for spectrum refarming is presented. Simulation results show that both communication and jamming performance of ICAJ are better than traditional separated designs. Finally, potential research directions are listed to set the path for designing efficient ICAJ systems.