Experimental and theoretical characterization of angle-dependent jamming attacks in visible light communication systems

English (OpenAlex)

Abstract This study demonstrates that the effectiveness of jamming in visible light communication (VLC) systems can be inherently geometry dependent. Motivated by this observation, an angle-dependent jamming attack model is proposed for VLC systems, enabling the characterization of reliable and unreliable communication regions. A target bit error rate (BER) threshold of 10 −3 , widely accepted as a reliable communication limit in VLC systems, is adopted to distinguish between these regions under jamming conditions. Furthermore, a theoretical framework is developed where the receiver BER performance is utilized as a criterion to define the boundary between reliable and unreliable communication regions under angle-dependent jamming. Therefore, by using this framework, a critical incidence angle can be derived based on the BER criterion to characterize the jamming attack boundary for a given signal-to-noise ratio. The attack model is validated through both simulation results and a field programmable gate array-based experimental system. We demonstrate from both simulation and experimental results that the proposed angle-dependent jamming model defines the reliability boundary, and show that the impact of attack activation probability decreases under angular attenuation.