Communications with two data rates in the presence of a hostile jammer

The performance of a communication system in a hostile environment can often be evaluated by game theory. If one chooses the payoff appropriately, then the results of finite two-person zero-sum games are directly applicable. In this paper, we study the performance of a communication link with two data rates in the presence of a hostile jammer. Ensemble mean of the time average throughput is defined as the payoff to the communicator and the system is modeled as a two-person zero-sum game. The saddlepoints as well as the value of the game are determined for both symmetric and asymmetric communication strategy cases. Some results for similar systems have been obtained and discussed in Ref. [5]. However, in this paper, we allow the jammer to locate himself in some region at his will, and hence include the model discussed in Ref. [5] as a special case. It is found that the payoff to the communicator is larger if an asymmetric communication strategy is adopted. Like the conclusion stated in Ref. [5], the system results obtain from optimal asymmetric communication strategy may become non-ergodic. The results obtained analytically are applied to a practical and interesting example.