Energy and Distance evaluation for Jamming Attacks in wireless networks

Abstract

Wireless networks are prone to jamming-type attacks due to their shared medium. An attacker node can send a radio frequency signal and if this signal interferes with the “normal” signals of two communicating nodes, the communication can be severely impacted. In this paper, we examine radio interference attacks from the jamming node perspective. In particular, we assume a “greedy” jamming node, whose main twofold objectives are to attack and interfere the communication of a transmitter and a receiver node, by minimizing its energy consumption and maximizing the detection time. The two communication nodes are static during the attack window time, while the attacker node can adapt its distance from the transmitter in order to select the most suitable range for a successful interference. In order to take into account the distance factor for the effectiveness of the attack, we derive an optimization model for representing the attack and we will study the key factors that allow effective and efficient implementation of a jamming attack, namely a) the energy b) the detection time and c) the impact on the transmission in terms of lowering the PDR. Three different types of attacks will be analyzed, 1) Constant Jamming, 2) Random Jamming and 3) Reactive Jamming. Simulation results show that the effectiveness of a jamming attack in respect to the others not only depends on the position of the jamming node but also on the distance between the transmitter and receiver nodes.