POWJAM: A power reaction system against jamming attacks in wireless ad hoc networks

Abstract

Wireless ad hoc networks are vulnerable to jamming attacks due to their shared medium. Jamming is a type of Denial of Service (DoS), in which the attacker tries to block the communication by interfering with the radio signals. Among the DoS attacks, jamming is very simple to achieve and very hard to eliminate. In this paper, we present POWJAM (POWer reaction system against JAMming attacks), a system to react at jamming attacks in wireless ad hoc networks. The basic idea of POWJAM is to hide the communication from a reactive jammer through changing the transmission power. In normal 802.11 ad hoc networks, if a node A wants to communicate with its neighbors it uses a direct link. However, in POWJAM, A uses a path, in which the jammer cannot hear the communication on this path. By means of simulation, the POWJAM system is evaluated. Results show the effectiveness of POWJAM to defend against reactive jammers.