Design and Evaluation of a New Security Method with Dynamic Channel Hopping For Jamming Attacks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in many fields such as military, medical, industrial applications since they provide several advantages like ease of use, lower installation cost, and flexibility. Their practical use will be prevailing in the future as the new application areas are discovered. However, in some areas, such as military applications, building security systems, and patient monitoring systems, the security considerations cannot be overlooked. In such applications, WSNs are expected to be robust against potential attacks. To be assured of secure operations of WSNs, they are also expected to operate their functions in some severe adversary conditions such as jamming attacks that can even block communication between sensor nodes completely. In this paper, we have focused on a dynamic channel hopping method that is used against jamming attacks. Despite jamming attacks, 96% of the nodes can be reconnected to the network in 90-150 seconds and they continue operate with high performance rates. In addition, the method we proposed imposes approximately 11% extra overhead even though in worst cases in terms of energy consumption.