Defense and Public Safety

Jamming

All undesirable signals and noise on the same frequency as the communications channel constitutes interference. When the undesirable signal is intentional, and the intent is to disrupt or compromise communications, then a jamming scenario exists.

In some cases, jamming is handled with triangulation techniques to locate and remove the source or by steering antenna nulls in the direction of the jamming signal. However, in many scenarios the jamming signal(s) cannot be removed or filtered out based on directionality, and this is where ISCO comes in.

A significant challenge and exposure for defense, public safety and first responders is that interference and jammers are random, unpredictable and always evolving, making it hard to know what specific RF signals to protect against.  Exacerbating the problem, more spectrum means more interference challenges, and easy access to jammers exposes LTE and 5G networks to severe degradation.  Even more, due to constant change, an effective solution must very quickly adjust as new jammers are identified.

ISCO anti-jamming technology

As a US-based company, ISCO is proud to have patented algorithms and technology that analyze the communications channel and detect the signature fingerprints of various jamming signal types - narrowband or wideband, co-channel or adjacent channel - and deploy the appropriate RF digital signal processing algorithms to remove that interference. Depending on the jamming scenario, that interference can be mitigated or even completely removed.

All of this happens automatically, in real time, without operator or user intervention. Our comprehensive program to provide a strong defense against jammers is built upon four pillars:

Case Study: Jamming escapes from prison

Multiple US mobile operators operating near the US-Mexico border were experiencing RF interference that severely impacted users' ability to connect to and use the 5G network. Upon investigation, the offending source was identified - a prison in Mexico. Authorities were using a jammer to prevent the use of cell phones by inmates inside the prison.

The high-powered, wideband jammer not only jammed the cellular signal inside the prison, but also in the surrounding area. In response to regulatory requests, the prison authorities lowered the jammer's transmit power to reduce its range. Nonetheless, the jammer still degraded the performance of many cell sites, and removal of the jammer was not a viable option.

The solution was ISCO’s Dynamic Spectrum Recovery (DSR). By using ISCO DSR to remove the interference created by the jammer, the LTE & 5G signals, KPIs and network performance significantly improved on all cell sectors, most notably doubling the number of connected users and the downlink data volume.