UP Paper 1689 US-W-JDOWN
Intelligent Jamming in Wireless Networks with Applications to 802.11b and Other Networks
Thuente,DavidNorth Carolina State University
Acharya,MithunNorth Carolina State University
It has long been recognized that complete jamming of wireless networks can be realized by generating continuous noise with sufficient power in the vicinity of wireless network. There are many disadvantages of this approach including high power requirements and a high probability of detection. The purpose of this paper is to show that similar jamming effectiveness can be achieved with very low energy requirements and low probability of detection. In the first part of the paper, we study the effects of periodic jamming on the network throughput for IEEE 802.11b’s two different DCF modes: basic CSMA/CA and RTS/CTS mechanism. Next, we add intelligence to the jammer by using knowledge of the protocol and exploiting crucial intervals and control messages in both of these modes. Intelligent jamming appears to be one to two orders of magnitude more efficient than periodic jamming and up to five orders of magnitude more efficient than continuous jamming.
Dr. Thuente is a Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University where he is also Director of Graduate Programs. He has held a research positions at Magnavox Electronic Systems Company, Hughes Defense Communications Company, and now Raytheon Systems Company Fort Wayne since 1988 where he served as a continuing consultant to their Real-Time Parallel Processing and Communications Modeling IR&D projects. He has also been a consultant for Lockheed Corp., General Electric and Northrup Grumman. He has also served on the technical staff at Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA where he built simulation models of communication and entry control systems. He has held three research appointments at Argonne National Laboratory where he developed nonlinear optimization code that is part of the IMSL, Department of Energy and Numerical Analysis Group software packages. He has published more than forty papers in this area and has presented papers at many conferences including Software Technology Conferences and MILCOM Conferences.