Speed Dating Despite Jammers

We study the fundamental problem of how devices, operating over a wireless medium, can discover potential communication partners. For the devices, the spectrum is divided into m frequency channels. As multiple devices share these channels, they have to cope with collisions while they are trying to find other devices in the system. Moreover, we assume an adversarial jammer to block some of the available channels. The devices cannot distinguish between unvoluntary collisions, jamming, and empty channels, i.e. channels on which no device is currently transmitting its information. We construct algorithms efficiently solving the described discovery problem even if the number of jammed channels is unknown to the devices. Moreover, we discuss several jammer models and compare our algorithms to the inquiry algorithm of Bluetooth in simulations of different scenarios.