Neighbor based Channel Hopping Coordination: Practical against Jammer?

Abstract — As compared to its wired counterpart, wireless network is relatively new and is exposed to some additional threats specific to the underlying medium. Among these threats the jamming attack which can take place easily due to the open nature of wireless medium. A device or person can continuously emit radio signals to disturb a valid conversation. If it lasts for sometime continuously, it can result in total collapse of a network using single channel. In order to evade a jammer in an ad hoc network, we propose a proactive channel hopping scheme based neighbor correspondence. Rather than detect and react we rely on prevention is better than cure. Each node communicates with its neighbors on different channels, coordinated between them dynamically. Furthermore, the control and data channels of each node are separated. This way redundancy at the node-level is provided so that even if nodes on the jammed channel can not be approached but they still are able to contact others by visiting their control channels; avoiding the node on the jammed channel from starvation. Hence, even if the network is exposed to the jammer, a complete failure is prevented. The simulation results show that our scheme is efficient and is able to reduce the jammer’s impact significantly, as compared to the scheme presented in [8]