Topology-based multi-jammer localization in wireless networks

Abstract

Jamming attacks and unintentional radio interference are some of the most urgent threats harming the dependability of wireless communication and endangering the successful deployment of pervasive applications built on top of wireless networks. Unlike the traditional approaches focusing on developing jamming defense techniques without considering the location of jammers, we take a different viewpoint that the jammers’ position should be identified and exploited for building a wide range of defense strategies to alleviate jamming. In this paper, we address the problem of localizing multiple jamming attackers coexisting in wireless networks by leveraging the network topology changes caused by jamming. We systematically analyze the jamming effects and develop a framework that can partition network topology into clusters and can successfully estimate the positions of multiple jammers even when their jamming areas are overlapping. Our experiments on a multi-hop network setup using MicaZ sensor nodes validate the feasibility of real-time collection of network topology changes under jamming and our extensive simulation results demonstrate that our approach is highly effective in localizing multiple attackers with or without the prior knowledge of the order that the jammers are turned on.