Channel Detecting Jamming Attacks against Jump-Stay Based Channel Hopping Rendezvous Algorithms for Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract

Recently many channel hopping algorithms have been studied to guarantee rendezvous for Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs). These algorithms propose rendezvous methods without using common control channels (CCCs) to avoid the limitations such as single point of failure, low scalability, and jamming attacks. In particular, the Jump-Stay based channel hopping rendezvous (JSR) algorithms provide guaranteed rendezvous for CRNs with no time synchronization or CCCs (i.e., blind rendezvous). However, the JSR algorithms are still vulnerable to Channel Detecting Jamming Attacks (CDJAs) in which the jammer can estimate the channel hopping sequences within the first jump-pattern. The jammer can compute the entire JSR channel hopping sequence and thus reduce the rendezvous success rate from 100% to less than 20% and 10% using one and two listening channels respectively. To mitigate this problem, we revisit both the Random rendezvous scheme and the Role-based Channel Rendezvous (RCR) scheme extended from role- based rendezvous algorithms to increase the probability of the rendezvous against the CDJAs. We also compare the JSR algorithm to both the Random and RCR algorithms and show the Random and RCR vastly outperform the JSR algorithm when there are security concerns about a channel detecting jammer. Especially, the effectiveness of CDJA is negligible for the Random and RCR schemes but their expected time to rendezvous (TTR) is close to the JSR's expected TTR.