Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4 Protocol for Smart Environments under Jamming Attacks.

Nicolás López-Vilos,Samuel Baraldi Mafra,Cesar Azurdia-Meza,Claudio Valencia-Cordero,Samuel Montejo-Sánchez

doi:10.3390/s21124079

Abstract

Jamming attacks in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) scenarios are detrimental to the performance of these networks and affect the security and stability of the service perceived by users. Therefore, the evaluation of the effectiveness of smart environment platforms based on WSNs has to consider the system performance when data collection is executed under jamming attacks. In this work, we propose an experimental testbed to analyze the performance of a WSN using the IEEE 802.15.4 CSMA/CA unslotted mode under jamming attacks in terms of goodput, packet receive rate (PRR), and energy consumption to assess the risk for users and the network in the smart scenario. The experimental results show that constant and reactive jamming strategies severely impact the evaluated performance metrics and the variance’ of the received signal strength (RSS) for some signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) ranges. The measurements obtained using the experimental testbed were correlated with analytical models. The results show that in the presence of one interferer, for SINR values higher than dB, the PRR is almost , and the goodput Kbps, but the system performance is significantly degraded when the amount of interferers increases. Additionally, the energy efficiency associated with reactive strategies is superior to the constant attack strategy. Finally, based on the evaluated metrics and with the proposed experimental testbed, our findings offer a better understanding of jamming attacks on the sensor devices in real smart scenarios.

Highlights

Introduction published maps and institutional affilCurrently, the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) to acquire data from several environments has shown a rapid expansion in various areas such as the industrial, farming, health, and smart cities [1]
We correlate and extend the probabilistic unslotted Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA)/CCA Threshold (CA) MAC model [19] for scenarios in the presence of jamming attacks; We propose a novel experimental testbed for the analysis of jamming attacks in an IEEE 802.15.4 network using CSMA/CA unslotted mode; We detail the impact of reactive and constant jamming strategies based on performance metrics such as Packet Data Rate (PDR), goodput, energy consumption, and Received Signal Strength (RSS)
With the experimental data acquired in a non-jamming scenario and a jamming scenario, we correlate the theoretical model with the experimental data to analyze the impacts of the attacks

Summary

Introduction

The integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) to acquire data from several environments has shown a rapid expansion in various areas such as the industrial, farming, health, and smart cities [1]. The transmitted data and the integrity of the network is exposed to several cyberattacks such as tampering, eavesdropping, Denial of Service (DoS), and jamming attacks that diminish the reliability, privacy, and security of the network [3].

Methods

Results

Conclusion