Dark Side of HAPS Systems: Jamming Threats towards Satellites

Securing satellite communication networks is imperative in the rapidly evolving landscape of advanced telecommunications, particularly in the context of 6G advancements. This paper establishes a secure low earth orbit (LEO) satellite network paradigm to address the challenges of the evolving 6G era, with a focus on enhancing communication integrity between satellites and ground stations. Countering the threat of jamming, which can disrupt vital communication channels, is a key goal of this work. In particular, this paper investigates the performance of two LEO satellite communication scenarios under the presence of jamming attacker. In the first scenario, we consider a system that comprises one transmitting satellite, a receiving ground station, and a high altitude platform station (HAPS) acting as a jammer. The HAPS disrupts communication between the satellite and the ground station, impeding signal transmission. The second scenario involves two satellites, one is the transmitter while the other works as a relay, accompanied by a ground station, and a jamming HAPS. In this scenario, the transmitting satellite sends data to the ground station using two different paths, i.e., direct and indirect transmission paths, with a relay satellite acting as an intermediary in the case of indirect transmission. For both scenarios, we study the system security by developing mathematical frameworks to investigate the outage effect resulting from the jamming signals orchestrated by the HAPS. Our results show that the satellite cooperation in the second scenario improves the system's security since the extreme jamming effect occurs only when both links are simultaneously disturbed.