Adaptive jammer localization in wireless networks

Abstract

The shared nature of wireless communication, the open access to wireless medium, the tightly coupled design principle of wireless network protocol and the scarcity of radio spectrum make wireless networks vulnerable to different types of jammers, which prevents the normal communication among legitimate nodes by occupying wireless channel or corrupting network protocols’ working process and poses a serious threat to the stability and security of the network. To tackle this security threat, a few anti-jamming schemes have been put forward including channel hopping, spatial retreat, etc. Among these strategies, jammer localization has attracted much attention in recent years since it is very helpful for jamming-avoidance routing and even jammer elimination. However, existing algorithms mainly focus on the localization of jammers equipped with omnidirectional antennas and fail to handle directional jammers, i.e., those attackers with directional antennas. In order to bridge this gap, this paper puts forward an Adaptive Jammer Localization Algorithm (AJLA) which can locating both types of jammers. At first, an identification method is employed to estimate the jammer’s antenna type. If a omnidirectional antenna is adopted, typical existing algorithm, such as Centroid Localization (CL), Virtual Force Iteration Localization (VFIL), can be utilized to locate the jammer. Otherwise, an Improved Gravitational Search Algorithm (IGSA) is developed for directional jammer localization. A series of simulation experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Experimental results show that AJLA-IGSA could locate the directional jammer efficiently and accurately. Besides, the complexity of information collection and localization process are also analyzed by experiments.