BitTrickle: Defending against broadband and high-power reactive jamming attacks

Abstract

Reactive jamming is not only cost effective, but also hard to track and remove due to its intermittent jamming behaviors. Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) and Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) have been widely used to defend against jamming attacks. However, both will fail if the jammer jams all frequency channels or has high transmit power. In this paper, we propose BitTrickle, an anti-jamming wireless communication scheme that allows communication in the presence of a broadband and high power reactive jammer by exploiting the reaction time of the jammer. We develop a prototype of BitTrickle using the USRP platform running GNURadio. Our evaluation shows that when under powerful reactive jamming, BitTrickle still maintains communication, whereas other schemes such as 802.11 DSSS fail completely.