Master Thesis : “ Energy - Efficient Jamming and Countermeasures ”

Since wireless networks use a shared medium they are exposed to jamming attacks. Such attacks are carried out by an adversary emitting radio frequency signals. They can severely interfere with the normal operation of wireless networks and, consequently, mechanisms are needed that can cope with jamming attacks. However, unless the adversary has unlimited capacities, it cannot jam all communication channels at once for a long time. In this thesis we want to study the influence of a jammer that disposes of a limited source of energy and can choose when and where to use it for disrupting communication on certain channels. The thesis involves the construction and analysis of algorithms for jammers as well as for wireless nodes, both parties seeking to accomplish an orthogonal task. The aim of the thesis is to gain insights on adversarial jamming in multi-channel radio networks. You will start by reading “Gossiping in a Multi-Channel Radio Network” by Dolev et al. In their paper, an adversary can jam at most t of c channels of a complete graph per round. For a simplified version of the problem, e.g., for ǫ = 0, You will analyze alternative models for the adversarial dynamics, for instance, a dynamic model where more channels can be jammed after quiet times. Both deterministic and randomized algorithms for efficient gossiping are of interest. Depending on your findings, we seek to generalize the results for multi-hop networks and other applications, e.g., time synchronization or leader election.