Jamming Mitigation in Multi-Radio Wireless Networks: Reactive or Proactive?

Jamming is a serious security problem in wireless networks. Recently, software-based channel hopping has received attention as a jamming countermeasure. In particular, proactive, or periodic, channel hopping has been studied more extensively than reactive hopping. This paper addresses the question of which of the two defense strategies, namely proactive and reactive channel-hopping, provides better jamming resiliency than the other in the context of single- and multi-radio wireless devices. In the single-radio context, the author develops theoretical models to analyze the blocking probability for combinations of defense and attack strategies. In the multi-radio setting, the author formulates the jamming problem as a max-min game and show through simulation that the game outcome depends on the payo function.